So, I'm seeing some mixed reactions to the last season, and honestly I'm feeling them myself as well, so I decided to sit down and sort of breakdown and analyse some of what happened over the course of Oxventure, what seemed to go well and what didn't, and maybe try to get into some litcrit of the whole thing.
Warning: I'm not always nice in this write up, though I have done my best to be fair and honest throughout in what I think the potential pitfalls were and how I hope they might be better addressed in future campaigns.
I've played D&D myself for a few years, listened to other Actual Play series (notably NADDPOD and some D20 at one end of the competency-of-players scale, and Dragon Friends and Dungeons and Drongos at the other), and write... a lot. Including over 250k of fanfic specifically for Oxventure, which started off as an excuse for smut but ended up being a lot of worldbuilding.

System & Setting

Johnny has made no secret that they're not a huge fan of D&D, indicating that they feel it overshadows other systems, and given that the Spicy Rat Caper was meant to be a one-off but fans loved it perhaps they felt a little trapped in the system. This did lead to some funny moments (Faire Trial and Max commenting that they sometimes felt "like a big dice rolling around a tray" sticks with me) but sometimes felt a bit mean-spirited ("Crawl Me Maybe" and the heavy 'lol dungeon crawling is so ridiculous' comes to mind).
It was also clear that at times, none of the group seemed to know the game and the rules super well. From Mike not knowing his movement speed ("30 what? Miles an hour?") to Merilwen not using her animal forms or changing out her spells until level 8, to the underpowering of most of the classes, it became more of an issue as time when on in some ways.
It's easy enough to understand why, live on stage and starry-eyed at Harry McEntire as Aubrey, Johnny missed that in the combat Aubrey cast two levelled spells in the same round (against the rules) as well as using two sorcery spell modifiers in the same round (also against the rules, and they mentioned this on the podcast). Sorcerer was also a new class to everyone, and dealing with a new class is always going to be difficult, especially dropping them in at a higher level rather than starting from level 1 and building up.
However, bluntly, most of the guild weren't using their class/subclass abilities to the fullest. Rules lawyer Andy did the best, so he gets a pass here, and Ellen got sharper with Merilwen over time to stuff like knowing her spell components, tracking her spell slots, and preparing her spells. However, the concept of Egbert as "a paladin who doesn't do paladin things" (quote from the post-Deadlands discussion) was ultimately really limiting not just for Egbert (Mike commented in one podcast episode that he felt he'd trapped himself in only using Egbert's abilities in ways that were funny) but for the entire concept of paladins - Max might as well have been a fighter in the fight in Gnome Alone that they took part in, and we never saw Shattershield fight at all. There were references to combat offscreen in Out of Order, but... that was it. (Additionally, while paladins can be poisoned, as poison and disease are different in 5e rules, paladins can pump out a LOT of healing, and a citadel full of them should have a lot of magical reserves to draw on as a result.)
And Egbert isn't the only one who was limited. One of the biggest features of Great Old One warlocks (which Prudence is, with Cthulhu), is that from level one they have telepathy within 30ft ("Awakened Mind"). Prudence went the entire campaign without using this. Although Johnny allowed the Message cantrip to be treated like this, allowing people to reply to it when RAW it is one-way only, this meant that Dob also essentially gained Prudence's power because he also had Message. Merilwen was limited in her animal forms and the spells that she knew up until level 8, and it was noticeable how everyone was shocked at her power once she had full RAW druid range. Corazón, on the other hand, not only had Andy keeping on top of all of his class and subclass features, but got two subclasses, leaving him about on par or slightly overpowered for the level he should have been looking overpowered because the others didn't use their abilities so well. Meanwhile, Dob was given access to full bardic abilities, but only used bardic inspiration in some of their level 1 adventures and then not much again until the final season.
The counterpart to this under-utilisation of class potential was the amount of 'rule of cool' or 'rule of funny' which sometimes worked well (Merilwen befriending the owlbear in Quiet Riot, or the reflavouring of Thunder Wave to do lightning damage instead based on their initial misunderstanding) and sometimes ended up breaking the game (the "everyone can cast Moonbeam" joke that escalated to the scrolls of Moonbeam that made the finale kind of laughable). Sometimes this seemed to be the time and audience pressure of live shows (allowing Prudence to use the hammer to wheel her way through the skeletons in Stop Hammer Time), but other times it was just letting them do things that went outside the rules (Egbert body-slamming six(?) Otherberts at once in Bad Altitude, or Dob casting all his spells at once in Corpse and Robbers) seemingly preferring the immediate humour or "yes and" over the potential internal logic or end implications.
The contrast between this permissiveness, sometimes to the point of breaking logical immersion, honestly seemed sharper to me when it was laid against Andy's GMing in Deadlands. Whether it was reminding people that there were snipers on the rooftops in Dead Man's Worth or refusing to yes-and a chandelier in More Wonders Than, he made it more difficult for the players and in doing so made them work harder within their skillsets and the setting, making the victories feel harder-won as a result. I'm aware that some people didn't like Andy's GMing specifically because he was less permissive, but I believe that his intention - and the outcome - was a stronger narrative that made the characters feel active and not just lucky. (Liliana lampshaded this in Frenemy at the Gates when she asked whether things often just fell into their laps, like with knowing Binbag, and it almost felt like a spiteful comment so it surprised me to hear it from Johnny.)
What I hope: It has been indicated that Johnny has created the new setting for the next game, so hopefully they have put things more to their liking at the beginning and will not end up seeming to dunk on the premise of their own series. I'm also hoping for everyone to either use more standardised rules, or at least establish in-game standards at the beginning so that all of the characters, and players, feel like they're on a level playing field from the off. Johnny seemed to much more enjoy the systems of Blades in the Dark and Deadlands (which were designed to be less superhero-level) and even the lower levels of Oxventure (especially Tier 1) where the characters were just people who were skilled but not particularly out of the range of normality; I'd be interested to see whether they lean more in that direction and keep the characters lower-powered as a result.

Characters & Character Arcs

Again, it's worth noting that the characters were initially conceived as being for a one-off game, so the initial concepts did not necessarily need planned arcs. However, the rockiness of some of the arcs overall may have contributed to issues with the series, especially as it stretched out over so many years. I'll go through the PCs alphabetically, then Liliana, then mention any other NPCs. There are two elements here - in-character goals, and character arc goals, which both play into things.
Corazón - in my opinion, Corazón had one of the stronger character arcs, which may reflect Andy's interest in writing (and now being published!), going from the coward pirate-wannabe who abandoned his crew to the curse, to the person who threw himself in front of a spell meant for Merilwen. This was highlighted in his reply to Them in Prism Break, even before the Power Word Kill spell. In fact, the Power Word Kill brought a level of pathos to the fact that he had told Them that he was not even done growing as a person. Andy commented on the podcast at some point that he had expected at the beginning to be one of the more morally shady characters (as a pirate), but found himself playing a line of being immoral regarding money but caring deeply about physical hurt or harm to people. Corazón also had two layers of in-character goals - to break the curse (limited) and to become a betterichereal pirate (more open-ended) and find his own identity which allowed him to carry character development over the years even when the curse was ignored for extended periods. Goals: clear and stepped, with the curse as a plot-hook; arc: good and perfectly timed for the finale.
What I hope for: More of the same, really.
Dob - Dob came in early with a clearly defined goal (to find his sister) - but this was done in Brawl of the Wild and Dob has been sort of... undefined ever since. It absolutely makes sense that he would have floundered for a while, but Dob has gone several years without settling on new goal, and Luke also didn't seem to settle on a character arc (the romance subplot in Orbpocalypse Saga through Bride or Die seemed to be almost a character arc, but never got full payoff?) which left Dob feeling... well, at times it almost seemed like Luke wanted to get rid of him to play someone else instead. This was unfortunately also highlighted in conversation with Them, as the response that Dob gave was about him being a "mote of chaos". I obviously couldn't speak for others, but I found this underwhelming and unconvincing as an answer, as it didn't give me any sense of why a powerful celestial being would consider this an argument - if Dob had developed the argument to be that chaos is generative and creative in a way that pure order cannot be, and/or that the free will and agency of sapience demand that they be allowed to act and to try even if they make mistakes or fail, I think there might have been something there, but he didn't really seem to. Goals: had one which formed a good plot-hook, then went without; arc: unclear.
What I hope for: Luke to determine more of a character arc, or series of shorter arcs, perhaps drawing from his Blades in the Dark DMing experience, and to either pick a more open-ended goal or to move along a series of goals over time.
Egbert - Egbert came in with the vaguer goal of "atonement", which gave him more wiggle room, but unfortunately didn't seem to actively pursue it a lot of the time. In Legacy of Dragons it was revealed that he was searching for atonement for the deaths of two Dragon D'Or members - but by this time, so many people around the Oxventurers had died, including innocent bystanders, that the deaths of two other paladins felt like nothing. (Mike commented, again on the podcast, that he agreed with the commenters at the time who agreed that they knew it was his backstory from the beginning because only two paladins had died. The two figure paled next to the collateral damage that the party later caused.) Mike also commented on the podcast that during lockdown, he had made a conscious change with Egbert in to try to avoid combat as much as possible, and to avoid fatal attacks if in combat, but it wasn't clear how long that lasted. It may have been trying to avoid being the annoying/preachy paladin that stopped him from trying to influence the rest of the party or to save lives around them, but unfortunately it meant that it was difficult to see a real sense of wanting to atone in Egbert's arc. Letting innocents die around him isn't exactly less culpable than killing them himself. (Notable incidents included Mule Be Sorry, Wrangle in the Tangle, Hag Reflex, and Squid Pro Quo.) In terms of character arcs, there was definitely an element of going from seeking approval from Dragon D'Or to seeking that of his friends, but that was just a switching of approval-seeking rather than a significant change. Goals: had one, but didn't seem to actively pursue it; arc: moved from pursuing the morals of Dragon D'Or to pursuing the morals of the Oxventurers.
What I hope for: Mike to come back with a character who seeks to pursue their own goals more directly (see Barnaby and Silas, who both felt much stronger in this sense).
Merilwen - Merilwen was supposed to be about balance and protecting nature, but didn't always heavily engage with this point of view, even when the actions of the other Oxventurers should have absolutely led to discussions or disagreements between them. Many people commented on Andy being dickish about shooting seabirds in Legacy of Dragons, but there are other incidents, including the Wrangle in the Tangle (again), Eldritch or Die Trying (where it would have been interesting to see Merilwen's preference for nature clash with the need for the crystal) and the Extinction season which seemed to veer between being set up to be about Merilwen, then swapping to Dob-centric, then cleaning up Corazon's curse. In terms of character arc, I think there might be an element that can be teased out about her not fitting in with elf society and fitting in better with the faster-paced, more chaotic world of shorter-lived peoples, but this feels like speculation on my part more than something intended. Naturally, a character of around 100 is not going to feel as suited to a coming-of-age story as younger ones, but characters of all ages should be able to have character arcs. (Even if they might be slower in longer-lived people like elves - an example I can go to here is Galadriel, from Tolkien, who in her youth was proud and refused a pardon that would have allowed her to return to Valinor, but at the end of LOTR is humble enough to accept and go there. It took millennia for her, but it was a character arc all the same!) In Merilwen's conversation with Them, her uncertainty seemed to talk to this - a lack of clarity about where her characterisation was supposed to have gone over the last few years. I think there was a real opportunity here to explore Merilwen's relationship with morality and the difference between neutrality and passiveness, which unfortunately was missed. Goals: was supposed to be about nature but didn't push for it; arc: [speculation] seeking a non-elven community that she matched better with.
What I hope for: Ellen to have a character with more defined goals or arc, or gaps still to be filled in, rather than a static momentary sketch of personality/character that doesn't feel designed to be changed over time. Again, Lilith with her secrets/looking into the paranormal, and Edie with her goal to help people in a world in which monsters aren't going away, felt stronger as characters with goals and arcs, and I'd be happy to see more of that.
Prudence - Ambitious from the off, Prudence never actually struggled for goals - power, knowledge, magic, influence. The open-endedness of these goals once again served Prudence pretty well for carrying her through individual adventures/games and over the course of the whole canon, even if she didn't come in with clearly-defined (plot hook) goals like Corazón's curse. For the first few years, it felt that her character arc wasn't hugely significant, although there was certainly an element of found family over selfishness that played into it, but Jane also discussed (again, in the podcast) how the werebear element was really quite exciting for her as it allowed her to begin to explore the clash between werebear Lawful Good status and Prudence's usual Chaotic Evil desires. Eldritch or Die Trying explored this in a somewhat exaggerated way, with Cthulhu offering power in exchange for the destruction of the others (I suspect in Prudence's question about specifying people, she was trying to figure out whether she could kill just Liliana) which was a somewhat blatant nod to the character arc but did underline it. (Unlike the others, this also established Prudence's character arc before Them.) Goals: open-ended in a way that leaves them technically incomplete even now but which were stably useful throughout canon; arc: de-isolation and alignment shifting (in a way that should have been ripe for playing off against Liliana's) which played out well.
What I hope for: A character with perhaps some more specific or plot-hook goals as well as broader life goals. Prudence's character arc played out more subtly than Corazón's and sometimes perhaps got lost behind the louder personalities of some of the others, but I do think was well done. A less obvious way to explore or demonstrate it would have been nice.
Liliana - So. Here we go. Liliana was essentially a DMPC for the last season, but was a recurring character before that, with a stated goal of subjecting part or all of G'eth and broader goals (indicated or stated in Prism Break and the finale season generally) of academic/scholarly improvement, arcane knowledge, and the notion of making people appreciate what they have by threatening to take it from them. As a villain, she was threatening, and the layering of goals once again worked here, even with the abrupt movement to 'save G'eth' in the last season because, well, you can't rule what no longer exists. However, I am honestly confused as to what her character arc was supposed to be - whether her stated change of heart in front of Them was real, or whether that was a lie that Them somehow did not call out or challenge. Considering in Frenemy at the Gates, Liliana says that Prudence is the most like her, there was a potential here to play against Prudence's character arc of coming to trust others, even appreciate others, and facing the consequences of suffering making her realise her own flawed logic. I really do not know whether her betrayal of the guild was planned from the beginning (in which case, her talking to Them feels like it was overplayed, and Them should have challenged her on it) or whether Johnny added it because the fight against the giant was over more quickly than anticipated (compare to Dine Hard where the chef was the one person they did not stat up because they didn't expect the guild to fight him). Goals: logical, stepped, and worked for a villain; arc: ????? was there an arc? Was it fake? Was it desperation? Why did she, on 1 hitpoint, try to Power Word Kill Prudence instead of Teleporting away?
What I hope for: I don't know, with this one, really. Liliana's weird arc feels more related to the odd pacing of the last season than an underlying characterisation issue, for me, so I think it's more related to pacing/wanting Oxventure campaign 1 to close out.

Player Etiquette

...okay, this one is going to be a little bit harsh, perhaps. But the main campaign, more than either Blades in the Dark or Deadlands, really suffered from certain players having a bout of Main Character Syndrome.
I say specifically players here, because it was entirely in-character for certain characters (largely Corazón) to think of themselves as the main character and behave as such. However, even if the characters think that, is generally considered good etiquette for the players to treat each other as equals, let each other take turns in the spotlight, and have their Moments.
Good examples would be the group letting Merilwen be the main character in Peak Performance, Prudence explore her sundered relationship with Cthulhu during the Orbpocalypse Saga, or Dob showing off his acting bard chops in Dine Harder.
However, at various times, various people have overstepped. Sometimes in live shows where the audience response and excitement probably played a role (Rolling in the Deep) it's more understandable, but it also happened elsewhere. Mike got some flack for picking up the eyepatch at the end of Cursed Case Scenario and 'ruining' Corazón's moment, but even Johnny called Andy out for muscling in on Dob's subplot in Court in the Act, and Life Finds a Dob was almost uncomfortable at times. There was also something of a trend of Dob deliberately acting against the party for unclear reasons (possibly meant to be humour?) - either running away from them in Life Finds a Dob, refusing to 'share' Corazon's body in Portal Combat, or his contrary behaviour in Hunter Pressure in not wanting to fight the hunters/murderers they were facing.
I'm not sure whether this trend of contrariness fed into the unclear character arc that I mentioned above, or the other way around, or whether the two just fed into each other.
The most extreme example of this was, undoubtedly, Dob jumping in on the shoot-off between Liliana and Prudence right at the end of Portal Combat. Liliana approached Prudence in Frenemy at the Gates because they were the most alike. Prudence was the one with the first kill of the whole campaign, using Eldritch Blast, against the party's wishes and Corazón's protests specifically - how appropriate would it have been for her to get the last kill of the campaign, with Eldritch Blast, in defense of herself and her party and as retribution for Corazón? But instead, Luke inserted Dob into the standoff and Johnny played into it, even to the absurd extent of letting the skeletons use Time Stop (a 9th Level spell) just to explain why Dob's whole conversation with them could take place faster than Prudence could fire off an eldritch blast. Corazón's self-sacrifice and Merilwen's reveal of her Reincarnation spell was therefore also partially overshadowed by Dob sacrificing his magic for one more hitpoint of damage on Liliana rather than letting Prudence have her moment.
What I hope for: some of the lessons learned from other campaigns to lead the players to be better at taking turns, both in terms of people not trying to be the Main Character at inappropriate moments, players stepping up and into the leading role when it is appropriate for them to do so, and Johnny more actively monitoring the balance between the players and shutting down some of the more egregious behaviour

Morality

This... isn't actually going to be complaining about characters behaving immorally or even being evil. Prudence is honestly a great example of how to play an evil character in a way that doesn't break a party, while Corazón works as being immoral about money but moral about hurting people (at least most of the time). I've also thoroughly enjoyed some other games in which the characters have been far from moral (NADDPOD's Trinyvale series is a good example of this - the characters are scam artists, grifters and egotists, and the DM commented that "character growth doesn't have to be positive!"; they complain the entire time while saving the world).
But it's consistency that is more of a sticking point, as well as the player treatment of the moral positions of the party. It's hard to know how to treat the morals of the party when they vary from letting a town burn for being slightly annoying (Mule Be Sorry) to most of the team being ready to forgive a hag who used to eat human(oid) children (Hag Reflex). This isn't just the players either - Stop Hammer Time used the murder of children as a joke, and marked a change in tone for the treatment of NPCs and civilians as not mattering compared to the preferences or comfort of the main characters. The skeletons killing the children wasn't even some sort of monkey's paw scenario about asking for there to be no more orphans in the town, either - it was just nasty shock value, in many ways. And playing this sort of thing for humour makes it quite hard to handle some of the rest of the series as a result.
There also felt like a dissonance, at times, between the objective morality of the characters and how the players seemed to want them to be treated. Prudence never claimed to be anything other than evil, from shooting someone with eldritch blast during the Spicy Rat Caper to enjoying Hammerdahl's necromancy in Extinction - Jane even indicated that she wanted to explore shifting Prudence's alignment post-Fast and the Furriest, which can be seen as Prudence is much less interested in random acts of destruction and seems quite happy to get her kicks scaring or torturing people (Silent Knight) or watching the gruesome spectacle at the end of Knight Shift. So Jane's plans matched Prudence's behaviour - a softening of her deliberately evil acts, but still happy to let others be evil.
For the others, though, it didn't always match. Merilwen's "True Neutral" label often felt more like passively letting her party members be evil, rather than actively seeking balance, Egbert was supposed to be on the search for atonement but regularly allowed or took part in atrocities, and Dob seemed more inclined to act on what the audience or Luke thought was funny (or even deliberately seeking to be contrary) rather than following a consistent attitude to morality. His vaguely annoyed "Skeletons!" and hands on hips in return to "It's orphans, boss" was clearly played for laughs, and in Mule Be Sorry he turns on the town easily, which then makes it feel strange when in Hag Reflex he objects to letting the hag live. Dob's infatuation with Liliana and Katie Pearlhead, both of whom have killed or caused the deaths of great numbers of people, also makes it harder to take his claims to morality at all seriously. The potential moral issues of Merilwen killing the Otherberts to prevent them from taking a message to Liliana (Bad Altitude) is turned into accusing her of "war crimes", but it is absurd in the face of how many other innocent bystanders the guild had killed or caused to die in other stories (from as early as Quiet Riot, in which the paladins were annoying but killing them was honestly overboard, to as late as Squid Pro Quo where Dob seemed to forget that five people had died and then brushed off the deaths).
NPCs also got hit by this at times, from the town mayor in Mule Be Sorry (again) who put his townsfolk on spike growth just to cross it, to the chef in Dine Harder who was abruptly made a cannibal to get a fight going, to the decay of morally Good characters like Captain Shattershield turning away from the Upside Down Mistmire when in his first appearance he had been willing to fight Death itself for being on Mistmire's grounds. It's hard to take seriously moral questions about keeping the Dragon Under Mistmire in its shelter, and the accidentally-caused deaths of two paladins, when the guild has been responsible for much worse.
What I hope for: an approach to morality that does not prioritise momentary humour over consistency; evil behaviour to be acknowledged as evil and owned rather than treated as protagonist-centric; a moral balance which makes it possible to really explore moral issues and concerns rather than extreme behaviour which then makes it impossible to treat conflict seriously. Legacy of Dragons, as a standalone arc seeking Egbert's redemption, exploring the protection vs freedom of the gold dragon, and considering how to improve vs break systems, had some really great potential - but because of extreme 'rule of funny' behaviour in the past, it was impossible to really feel that it had the moral gravitas and weight that it deserved. When the skeletons go from murdering a dozen innocent children (Stop Hammer Time) to giving Merilwen a bad haircut (Mean Gulls) and this is almost treated as somehow consistent in evilness, it makes it harder to respect the characters or the expectation of moral standards.
The Good: The humour, the quick-wittedness, the variety of stories. Roleplaying moments such as Egbert and Shattershield in Legacy of Dragons, Corazón putting his old self behind him at the Curse Hole, or Merilwen saying "I'll make you" to Vex.
The Bad: Unclear character arcs, inconsistent moralities, underpowered classes but at the same time game-breakingly permissive DMing, and some Main Character Syndrome moments.
The Hope: Learning from teething issues and setting up a game system that the DM doesn't resent so much, to better enable people to balance and play off each other in a less jarring and more consistent way.

(continuation of part 1)

III. Searching for Aerith Beyond FFVII

There were absolutely no answers in Remake or OG (at this point in my research, Rebirth wasn’t released yet), no matter how much I looked; nothing at all hinted at how Cloud could’ve obtained the memories of OG that emerge in Remake as MOTFs. I knew I had to look elsewhere to search for more clues, so I decided to check every piece of media ever released by SE with a mention of Cloud or Aerith in it, digging for hints in the compilation and beyond.
And boy, did I find them.
III. a) Core Worlds and Suspension Worlds
There are a couple of general FF rules that we need to establish before going forward.
It’s important to note that there are multiple realms in which the FF stories take place, each with a different name, history and society. This ensures that all FF stories occur separately, never intercepting or interacting— though they do have creatures like moogles and chocobos in common, as well as concepts like airships, gil, magic and some form of crystal. For simplicity, I will refer to these separate worlds in which the numbered FF games (FFI, FFII, FFIII, etc) occur as “core worlds”.
Characters from different core worlds may appear together in non-numbered FF games, the events of which have no impact on the core world at all: it seems that sometime after a FF character has reached the end of their core world’s plot-line, they may somehow be summoned to far-removed realms where they will face new adventures. I call these far-removed realms “suspension worlds”. One example of a FF game that takes place in a suspension world is Dissidia Final Fantasy, wherein characters from multiple core worlds unite to accomplish a mission as a team.
III. b) Final Fantasy Tactics
First on our list of non-compilation SE games to explore is 1997’s Final Fantasy Tactics (FFT), a game whose plot takes place in the suspension world of Ivalice. Let’s plot out the relevant events, and then analyze!
III. b) i. Fact-Finding
The main character of FFT, Ramza, encounters a brunette flower peddler with Aerith’s iconic, gravity-defying bangs:
\"Aeris\" in FFT's Ivalice
If you choose to buy a flower from her, she express her relief: apparently, business isn’t going well because no one is interested in flowers. The girl wistfully dreams aloud:

“When is my knight in shining armor going to take me away from here...?”

Later, Ramza and his companions encounter a mysterious machine that can summon people from across universes. The machine is activated, and a rather rude young man with spiky blonde hair appears. Cloud claims he used to be in SOLDIER, and says the last thing he remembers is “getting stuck in the current”. He looks to be disoriented and lost, and suffers from piercing headaches. Mere moments after being summoned to Ivalice, Cloud rambles:

“What’s this? My fingers are tingling… My eyes… they’re burning… Stop… stop it [Se]phiroth…”

He dashes out of the room, but not without announcing:

“I must go… must go to that place…”

Outside, Cloud encounters the brunette flower girl Ramza met earlier. She offers Cloud a flower, but he only stares at her wordlessly:

“Flower girl: Buy a flower? Only 1 gil.
Cloud: …
Flower girl: Something wrong? Do I resemble someone?”
Cloud: No… it’s nothing.”

As soon as Cloud leaves, a gang of ruffians surround the flower girl and start harassing her, demanding payment that’s apparently overdue. One of them finally calls her by her name: “Aeris”. He grabs her, insinuating that he might sexually assault her in lieu of payment. Aeris is not strong enough to push him away. That’s when Cloud returns:

“Cloud: Get your hand off her!
Thug: What did you say!?
Cloud: Didn't you hear me? Get your dirty hand off her!
[…]
Cloud, to Aeris: Go… now.”

Aeris heeds Cloud’s advice, fleeing the scene before a fight between Cloud and the thug can break out. After Cloud scares the ruffians off with the help of Ramza and his companions, he speaks once more:

“I lost… something very important… Ever since, I’ve been lost […]. What should I do? What about this pain [?] Must go… to the Promised Land.”

III. b) ii. Fact Analysis
There’s a lot to unpack here, all of which you probably clocked in your head upon reading, but let’s put it down in writing.
While FFT Cloud’s memory is far from perfect, the Aeris he encounters in Ivalice doesn’t recognize him at all. FFVII Ultimania Omega addresses this question without answering it:

“[The flower seller’s] name is Aeris, and she has the same appearance and tone of voice as the Aeris of FFVII. However, when she comes across Cloud, she does not recognize him. Could she really be the same Aerith who appears in FFVII but with memory loss, or is she a completely different character?” (“#4 Proof of Omega”, “FFVII in Other Games”, “Final Fantasy Tactics”, page 560).

Regardless of her unknown identity and inability to recognize Cloud, FFT Aeris’ fantasy of a “knight in shining armor” is quite reminiscent of the flower girl/bodyguard dynamic we’ve come to know and love. Cloud’s armor doesn’t shine, but in my opinion, if you’re looking for the dystopian, corporatocratic equivalent of a knight, you can’t get much closer than a supposed-former-SOLDIER-turned-bodyguard. Additionally, despite his rude and cold attitude toward Ramza’s gang, the urgency with which Cloud swoops in to save the flower girl from the ruffians betrays a softer, warmer side to him: the flower girl/bodyguard dynamic strikes again!
FFT Cloud’s dialogue borrows two lines from the speech OG Cloud makes as Aerith lies dead in his arms (disk 1, chapter 28): “My fingers are tingling. My mouth is dry. My eyes are burning!” and “What are we supposed to do? What about my pain?” You might’ve noticed that this glimpse of grief Cloud experiences in FFT bears a resemblance to the fourth MOTF 4 experienced by Remake Cloud (see section “II. a)”). Could it be that FFT Cloud and Remake Cloud have something in common?
Shortly after being summoned to Ivalice, FFT Cloud declares that he must go to “that place”, a mysterious line that is later elucidated when he tells Ramza that he must go to the Promised Land and find the “very important” thing he’s lost. The Promised Land is the Cetra culture’s afterlife, meaning FFT Cloud is looking for someone who’s died, someone “very important” to him. OG suggests this is none other than Aerith:

“Cait Sith, reading Cloud’s fortune: You will find [what] you pursue. However, you will lose the most precious thing” (disk 1, chapter 16, English translation by Kotaku’s “Let’s Mosey: A Slow Translation of Final Fantasy Seven: Part Eight” by Tim Rogers, 9:42-9:52).

&

“Cloud, after seeing Aerith’s hand reach for him through the Lifestream: … I think I'm beginning to understand.
Tifa: What?
Cloud: An answer from the Planet… the Promised Land... I think I can meet her... there” (disk 3, chapter 3).

Finally, let’s try to understand where on the OG timeline Cloud was summoned to this suspension world from and what he remembers. His comment about getting stuck in a current has to be about the Lifestream; apparently, on top of its atemporal nature, it can act as a conduit to other worlds. One only enters the Lifestream if they’ve somehow fallen into the core of the planet or once they’ve passed away and returned to the planet. Both scenarios merit consideration.
On the one hand, it’s possible that Cloud was summoned to Ivalice after he and Tifa fall into the core of the planet: this point in the FFVII OG timeline occurs after Aerith’s death and shortly before Cloud finds out he was never SOLDIER, which matches the gaps in FFT Cloud’s memory quite well. However, this scenario does not account for the vagueness with which FFT Cloud remembers Aerith and her death. Most importantly, Cloud’s realization that he can find Aerith in the Promised Land occurs much later in the game (FFVII OG, disk 3, chapter 3) than when he falls into the Lifestream with Tifa (FFVII OG, disk 2, chapter 8).
On the other hand, FFT Cloud’s vague yet persistent memories of Aerith suggest that he’s been summoned to Ivalice after his eventual death post-OG, but also that he’s lost quite a large portion of his memories. His incomplete memory loss is likely the result of Cloud’s individuality’s erosion by the Lifestream after death, which we discussed in section “II. a) ii.”. We can therefore surmise that by the time he is summoned to Ivalice from the Lifestream, Cloud has been dead for long enough that the Lifestream eroded a large portion of the memories of his lifetime. This post-death scenario is likelier than the first. The memory of Cloud’s realization that he was never SOLDIER must be gone, which explains why he claims otherwise upon being summoned to Ivalice. Contrastingly, vestiges of Cloud’s OG memories of Aerith cling to his soul, even after others have been wiped clean. Could this be a consequence of their soulmate bond? Could the strength of Cloud’s love and grief for Aerith have made his memories of her stronger and more difficult for the Lifestream to erode? Could it be both?
One thing is clear: Aerith is of fundamental importance to Cloud, even when he can’t quite remember her. In fact, the only other character he remembers and/or mentions in FFT is Sephiroth. It does make sense that the memories of those who have marked one’s soul forevermore would be the most difficult for the Lifestream to erode.
III. c) Dissidia Final Fantasy
The next stop on our travels through suspension worlds is 2008’s Dissidia Final Fantasy! Now strap in, because here’s where things get really serious.
III. c) i. Fact Finding
In the suspension world of Dissidia Final Fantasy (DFF), the goddess of harmony Cosmos and the god of discord Chaos are engaged in a never-ending cycle of conflict. Both deities need warriors to fight on their behalf, so they recruit core world characters into their respective teams by summoning them to DFF. Some of these summoned characters are FFIV’s Cecil, FFVI’s Terra, FFVII’s Sephiroth, FFX’s Tidus, and of course, FFVII’s Cloud. The warriors find themselves in the suspension world of DFF with no memories of their core worlds’ plotlines. However, as the DFF adventure progresses, they are able to recover pieces of their memories here and there. It isn’t clear how much they come to remember. Ultimately, the warriors hope to return home to their core worlds by fighting in this war and seeing to its end.
Cloud is summoned to DFF as a warrior on the side of Chaos, who seeks to destroy all existence. Sephiroth is also on Chaos’ side, meaning the two are teammates despite being enemies in their core world of FFVII. It just so happens that Tifa is a summoned warrior in DFF too, though she’s fighting on Cosmos’ side. Intrigued by her vague familiarity, Sephiroth hypothesizes that killing Tifa will bring back his memories of OG’s plot line: before long, the masamune wielder finds Tifa alone and corners her into a one-on-one fight. Thankfully, Cloud swoops in and saves her before Sephiroth can do any harm. Tifa is thankful for Cloud’s help, though confused that Cloud would elect to assist her and turn against a fellow warrior of Chaos; she doesn’t remember what Sephiroth and Cloud mean to each other in OG. In fact, Tifa doesn’t even remember Cloud’s name or that they share a core world, though Cloud feels somewhat familiar to her. For his part, Cloud at least remembers that Tifa is someone he cares about from his core world. As Tifa thanks Cloud for saving her from Sephiroth, something she says elicits an odd reaction from the warrior of Chaos:

“Tifa: The way you showed up and fought that guy off. It was a pretty cool thing to watch. You were like a hero, charging in to save the girl.
Cloud gasps at her words. She doesn’t notice” (Dissidia 012: Treachery of the Gods, report 5: “Unexpected Fulfillment 2”).

On another note, Cloud knows he will have to fight Tifa once the Cosmos-Chaos conflict comes to a head, as they are on opposing teams. He thinks to himself:

“Once [her] memories return, [she]’ll lose the will to fight just like I have. So... Before that can happen, I have to act...” (Dissidia 012: Treachery of the Gods, report 5: “Unexpected Fulfillment 2”).

In order to end the cycle of the conflict and to avoid fighting Tifa, Cloud decides to try and defeat Chaos himself. Predictably, Cloud is no match for the deity. As he dies, Cloud pleads the following to the goddess Cosmos:

“Cosmos, goddess of harmony. If you can hear me, listen to my plea. I beg you. Save her. Save my friend… Tifa.”

Cosmos hears him and responds immediately:

“Cosmos: An end to this conflict, and a life spared? This is your heart's desire? If your will remains unchanged, I shall bring you here when the battle draws to a close. Cloud. My chosen" (Dissidia 0.13: Treachery of the Gods, report 7: “Unexpected Fulfillment 3”).

Cloud’s wish is granted by Cosmos: the first phase of the conflict ends without Tifa getting hurt, and she is sent away from the suspension world of DFF before the second phase begins. Cloud is saved from death, and Cosmos enlists him into her team of warriors for phase two: this time, Cloud is fighting on the good side.
Now we enter phase two of the war. Cosmos tells her team of ten core world warriors that in order to save the world from Chaos’ destruction, they must collect what she describes as crystals containing the power to persist through darkness. I call these the “DFF crystals”. There are ten DFF crystals in total: one for every warrior in Cosmos’ group to find. To obtain their crystal, each hero must overcome a trial that will confront them with whatever personal struggle they faced in their core world; if they prove themselves worthy, their DFF crystal will appear to them. On one hand, some warriors’ DFF crystals simply take the form of the crystals found in their core world. For example, Onion Knight’s DFF crystal looks to be nothing more than one of FFIII’s elemental crystals, which hold little to no personal significance to him. On the other hand, some warriors’ DFF crystals symbolize something more personal to their respective warriors. For instance, Cecil’s DFF crystal looks to be one of FFIV’s dark crystals, which specifically represent the dichotomy of light and darkness he struggles with in his core world’s plot line. Cosmos describes the quest for the DFF crystals as follows:

“Cosmos: The crystals embody the strength to face despair. With ten gathered, there is hope yet to save the world. The path to your crystal will be perilous... and different for each and every one of you. But you must believe in and follow your own path. Even if you know not where that path leads" (Dissidia 013: Light to All, prologue: “A Final Hope”).

From this exposition, simply keep in mind that: Cloud must find his crystal by overcoming a personal trial, and his crystal may have the appearance of an object in OG that’s important to him.
Once the team is debriefed on their mission, Cloud remains reticent to fight; he doesn’t much like the mysterious nature of this conflict. Not knowing exactly what they’re all fighting for is clearly bothersome to the swordsman, and the idea of thoughtlessly engaging in battles leaves a bad taste in his mouth. Fellow warrior Firion understands that without a reason to fight, Cloud’s heart just isn’t in it. He imparts upon Cloud that he must have a dream he’s fighting to protect, something he wants to see come true, to motivate him to stop Chaos from destroying all existence. Unfortunately, Cloud doesn’t have a dream to preserve, or can’t find one for himself:

“Cloud: I've looked, but I'm still empty-handed. And without a dream, what do you suppose I should do? […] Maybe what I'm looking for... isn't here” (Dissidia 0.13: Light to All, chapter 1: “Beyond Doubt”, “Gateway of Good and Evil”).

Another fellow warrior, Cecil, expresses worry for Cloud, whose response evokes the main theme of FFVII OG:

“Cecil: Everyone's worried, Cloud. But... Do you shoulder a larger concern?
Cloud: Concern... Maybe a sense of loss" (Dissidia 0.13: Light to All, chapter 1: “Beyond Doubt”, “Beyond the Continent”).

Whatever Cloud is looking for “isn’t [there]”, and he feels “a sense of loss”: Cloud’s motivating dream has been lost to him. This is later reasserted in a conversation with Terra, another warrior of Cosmos:

“Terra: And you, Cloud... What's your dream?
Cloud: I've lost mine" (Dissidia 0.13: Light to All, chapter 3: “The Chosen Battle”, “Gateway of True Intent”).

Later, Cloud encounters and fights Sephiroth, who is still a part of Chaos’ team. Sephiroth is defeated, but not before he’s taunted Cloud with his habitual puppet talk. However, Cloud remains strong and refutes Sephiroth’s manipulation, asserting that only he can determine his own path. This must’ve been Cloud’s personal trial, because his crystal appears at that very moment: it is a small, light green orb that looks like materia from his core world. Having pocketed his crystal, Cloud decides he must find his own reason to fight. Interestingly, his search is depicted as intertwined with Fate:

“Cloud: Even if I have my doubts... I have to find my own answer […] Until then, I'll keep fighting.
Narration: The warrior has vowed to keep fighting— and keep fighting he will […]. Etched in destiny, his quest for answers continues on” (Dissidia 0.13: Light to All, chapter 1: “Beyond Doubt”, “Gulg Gateway”).

Later, the nemeses meet again in a segment called “Recurring Tragedy”. Their interactions here are particularly interesting. Sephiroth speaks of making Cloud suffer through despair and pain as though referencing their history together:

"Sephiroth: This disease called hope is eating you alive. The world of suffering was born out of such half-baked ideals.
Cloud: If that's the case, I have to endure the suffering. There's no moving on if I run from it.
Sephiroth: If that is what you wish for, you shall drown in the pain. I'll lead you to true despair. [My] shadow is burned into your heart. We'll meet again, Cloud. I'll keep coming back— as long as you are who you are."
Sephiroth disappears. Cloud looks out into the distance before the scene ends.
“Cloud: No thanks. The one I really want to meet is…” (Dissidia 013: Light to All, epilogue: “Conclusion of a Cycle”, “Recurring Tragedy”).

This final line suggests Cloud has finally found a reason to fight: he wants to meet someone unspecified.
Finally, after the war has ended, we arrive at the final cutscene of DFF. I will let you read the full script, with notes added by me in bold behind the spoiler censors. Please do not read my notes if you do not wish to encounter spoilers for FFI, FFII, FFIII, FFIV, FFV, FFVI, FFVIII, FFIX or FFX:

“[The] heroes are all standing together in a grassy field with a forest behind them. Birds are chirping, the sun is shining brightly, and the wind is blowing gently. The heroes look around them in awe. They're all holding their crystals.
WoL: The battle has come to an end...
Tidus notices that his crystal has begun to emanate a blue glow.>! His crystal is a movie sphere from his core world of FFX: a capsule containing sounds and images that people record for later viewing. Tidus’ crystal likely represents the specific movie sphere recorded by his love interest Yuna, which revealed that she’d loved him from the beginning.!<
Tidus: Gotta go, huh...
The blue glow transfers to him as well. He turns to look at the others
[…] Tidus grins at the others, then turns and runs toward a nearby lake. He leaps into it in a manner reminiscent of [the events] of FFX. He vanishes as he descends toward the lake.
Zidane: We're not vanishing. We're returning—
Zidane is sitting on a tree limb as he says this. His crystal begins to glow gold, as does he. His crystal is shaped like a highly important ‘progenitor of all life’ crystal from his core world of FFIX.
Zidane: — to where we're supposed to be.
Zidane spins around the tree limb with the use of his tail and launches toward the sun. He's lost to view.
A white feather then drifts down from that direction and Squall catches it. The feather is reminiscent of his love Rinoa Heartilly, whose character symbol is a white feather. In fact, Squall’s crystal looks like a mix of his revolver gunblade from FFVIII and Rinoa’s feather motif. [Squall glows blue.]
Squall: Perhaps we can go on a mission together again.
Squall vanishes.
Cloud is then visible, standing in [a] flower field. The flowers are white and yellow. Cloud has his crystal, a light green materia from his core world of FFVII, in hand.
Cloud: [(Chuckles shortly, like a scoff)] Not interested.
Cloud walks off into the flower field, gaining a green glow. He vanishes.
A snowflake then falls into Terra's right hand as her crystal begins to glow pink. The flames drawn on her crystal represent her power, which is connected to the element of fire: her character arc in FFVI.
Terra: I think I've learned how to keep going. Thank you— and take care.
Terra glows pink and then vanishes. Bartz throws a stick. He's glowing pink as well.
Bartz: When you're having the most fun, that's when time always flies. His crystal is the Adamantite from his core world of FFV.
Bartz vanishes.
Cecil: It's mine to pass on—
A moon appears behind Cecil and goes through its phases as he begins to glow blue. His crystal has shadowed and illuminated parts, representing the duality of his character, which is central to his personal arc in his core world of FFIV. It also represents his brother Golbez, who has chosen the darkness. Cecil considers his familial bond with Golbez his guiding light and hopes to be with him someday.
Cecil: — this strength I've gained from everyone.
Cecil vanishes.
Onion Knight hugs his crystal and looks up toward the sky. His crystal is shaped like those found in his core world of FFIII**.**
Onion Knight: Everyone... thank you!
Onion Knight briefly glows blue and then vanishes.
There are wild roses at Firion's feet. He and WoL are looking toward the sky. WoL suddenly begins walking away while Firion looks down and sees the roses.
Firion: This isn't the end. Another dream is waiting to begin.
His crystal is the color of the wild roses that were at the center of his dream and of his motivation to fight Chaos. The roses are also the emblem of the Rebel Army he was a part of in his core world of FFII. His crystal is shaped like Pandaemonium, the final dungeon of his core world story. Firion gains a violet glow and then vanishes.
WoL is walking through the field and then comes to a stop. He's looking at something.
WoL: May the light forever shine upon us.”

As you can see, everyone’s crystal is very important to the story of their core world, and in the cases of at least Tidus, Squall, Terra and Cecil, the crystals represent something very personal. What about Cloud and his crystal, then? What about the dream he lost and the person he wants to meet? Let’s begin analyzing to answer these questions.
III. c) ii. Fact Analysis
Firstly, it’s clear to me that the Cloud that appears in DFF is a post-OG Cloud, given how many plot points from OG he interacts with. I’m reticent to say whether or not this post-OG Cloud is dead like in FFT, as he recovers many of his memories of OG during DFF and there is no evidence of him having passed away and joined the Lifestream.
The second thing I’d like to point out is Cloud’s strange reaction when Tifa compares him to a hero who swoops in and saves the girl from the bad guy. Cloud gasps, indicating that her words mean something to him; the trope Tifa references must therefore be included somewhere in the FFVII OG plot-line. Some of you are surely ahead of me by now, having realized that only the tragic antithesis of this trope appears in OG: Cloud is unable to save Aerith from Sephiroth (disk 1, chapter 28). Whether or not DFF Cloud remembers Aerith herself at this point, it’s clear he recalls the pain and guilt of losing Aerith to Sephiroth.
Next, let’s address Cloud’s lost dream: to meet an unspecified person. It seems Cloud is aware at this point that in OG, he was eternally separated from the person he dreams of meeting. So, who was he separated from in his core world? Who can he never meet again, even if his team of warriors defeats Chaos and Cloud returns to the realm of FFVII? There are a few options —his mother, his father, Zack, Jessie, Biggs, Wedge, and any other person he knew who died—, but the sheer narrative weight that Aerith’s untimely death carries makes it clear who he truly wants to meet. This is corroborated by Cloud’s “I think I can meet her… there” line in OG (disk 3 chapter 3), by FFT Cloud’s search for Aerith during his appearance in Ivalice, and by Cloud’s strange reaction to Tifa’s comparing him to a hero who swoops in and saves the girl from the bad guy. All the available evidence suggests that Cloud’s dream is indeed to reunite with Aerith, and that this dream is “lost” to him because she was killed by Sephiroth (disk 1, chapter 28). This would also explain the title of the DFF segment “Recurring Tragedy”, since as we all know, the ultimate tragedy of FFVII OG is Aerith’s death. Considering Sephiroth was the one to take Aerith away from Cloud, Sephiroth’s threats of drowning him in despair in “Recurring Tragedy” only solidify this interpretation of Cloud’s lost dream.
Finally, we arrive at the ending cutscene. Cosmos’ warriors return to where they belong to try and accomplish whatever dream they held as motivation during the Cosmos-Chaos conflict, each carrying their DFF crystal. Cloud is shown standing in a field of white and yellow flowers and walking deeper into it with a light green materia in hand. Why was a white and yellow flower field chosen to represent DFF Cloud’s dream? The answer is obvious. White and yellow flowers symbolize Aerith: she sold Cloud a yellow blossom upon first meeting him in OG (disk 1, chapter 1), and her yellow and white flowerbed cushioned Cloud’s fall when the two reunited in the Sector 5 church (disk 1, chapter 4). What’s more, we have the iconic credits video of the original cut of Advent Children to refer to, wherein Cloud is seen driving near flower fields. Aerith stands there (3:20), seemingly waiting for him. Here’s what Nomura had to say about this credits scene:

"[...] we filmed the video for the ending credits in Hawaii. There are fields of flowers on both sides of the road, and the colors —yellow and white— are the same as the flowers in Aerith's church […]. With Aerith, 'flowers' have been her image throughout the series” (FFVII Reunion Files, “Countdown to Reunion”, “Stories from CG Production”, page 87).

Even in the Advent Children Complete cut of the film, where Aerith is not shown standing in the field, the flowers and their symbolism of Aerith remain. That being so, it’s more than fair to say that the white and yellow flowers in DFF’s ending cutscene serve as yet another confirmation that Cloud’s dream is to be with Aerith.
With all of this established, we can address the nature of Cloud’s DFF crystal. As we established, every core world has its own version of a crystal, each possessing a distinct appearance, function and meaning. Materia are the crystals of FFVII, so one could be satisfied by the proposition that Cloud’s DFF crystal is simply meant to represent a random materia. However, I think Cloud’s crystal is specifically the White Materia, as it represents Aerith’s sacrifice, her importance to the plot and what she died fighting for. If any one object symbolizes her death, it’s the White Materia; it’s even given closeups during the event (2:33-3:02). Besides, unlike any other materia in FFVII, the White Materia is known to glow a light green when Holy has been activated:

“Bugenhagen: If [the prayer] reaches the planet, the White Materia will begin to glow a pale green” (FFVII OG, disk 2, chapter 15).

Here are pictures of the White Materia in OG and Advent Children, and two pictures of Cloud's DFF crystal (in order) so you can compare for yourself:
https://preview.redd.it/0qtumfeyfq0d1.jpg?width=386&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3995f010738c83fca0c5842a0564d0a9ad206dfd
https://preview.redd.it/0kj525tzfq0d1.jpg?width=1144&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=575573ef1d2c937635cf569d4a376886a24b384c
Cloud's DFF Crystal
Cloud’s DFF crystal
So far, in both suspension world games we’ve examined (FFT and DFF), Cloud is searching for Aerith. As a final note on DFF, it may interest you to know that codirector of the Remake trilogy Toriyama was actually a writer for DFF: he may have carried some themes from DFF to Remake…
III. d) Detour: The Final Fantasy 30th Anniversary Farewell Exposition
Before we hop onto the next suspension world, let’s return to ours for a quick detour: the 2018 Final Fantasy 30th Anniversary Expo. Themed with farewells and tragedy, this expo showcased the heartbreaking goodbyes featured in different FF games. Artwork, clips, quotes and images aplenty here! As the highly anticipated Remake was going to be coming out approximately a year and a half later, the FFVII section of the expo featured a few sneak peek Remake designs. This means the expo was at least partly curated with the Remake trilogy in mind; there could be interesting material in the FFVII section of the expo related to Remake. Let’s dive in!
Unsurprisingly, the focus of the FFVII section is Cloud and Aerith, since she is the loved one he lost in OG. Zack is also given a mention, however Aerith was the glaringly central star of the show. To showcase how important Aerith’s farewell in particular was to the expo, the FFVII portion was introduced by a photo of Cloud lowering Aerith into her watery grave and a video of her tragic death:
Final Fantasy 30th Anniversary Farewell Exposition, FFVII Introduction
The description under the video screen reads:

“She was gone in the blink of an eye. But the pain never went away.
Aerith awoke the ultimate magic to protect the planet and the people she loved. Yet her life came to a sudden end at the hands of Sephiroth, a man bent on seeing the world destroyed. Even the usually stoic Cloud couldn’t hide his grief at the unexpected death of an irreplaceable companion. ‘My fingers are tingling. My mouth is dry. My eyes are burning.’ True words, revealing Cloud’s deep sorrow” (Final Fantasy 30th Anniversary Exposition).

Conveniently enough for us, the expo’s tagline is “Who is the person you want to meet again?” Given that Aerith holds the spotlight in the FFVII section of the expo, it’s clear who SE is telling us Cloud wants to reunite with. Recall Cloud’s unfinished line in DFF: “The one I really want to meet is..." (Dissidia 013: Light to All, epilogue: “Conclusion of a Cycle”, “Recurring Tragedy”). We theorized that he must be referring to Aerith, and now, we are certain.
The expo also had pamphlet descriptions of the farewells depicted. Here is the general summary of FFVII‘s farewell story according to that pamphlet:

“The story follows the lead character Cloud, but it is the heroine, Aerith, who opens Cloud’s eyes and helps bring him closer to understanding the mystery that is his past. Through her, we draw closer to the truth of the story.
This scene, in which the heroine Aerith is lost, is easily the most shocking and tragic in the story. No one expected to say goodbye to such a major character in the middle of the story. Rumors of a secret way to revive Aerith spread, and it was clear players were having a hard time saying goodbye to her too. Even now, twenty years later, it still feels like a shocking turn of events” (Final Fantasy 30th Anniversary Exposition Pamphlet, page 36).

It’s interesting that SE would mention the rumors of Aerith’s revival circulated by players back in 1997, especially as fans were awaiting Remake’s release…
In light of everything we’ve analyzed so far, it can be said that between FFT (1997) and this farewell expo (2018), SE has consistently demonstrated that reuniting with Aerith is post-OG Cloud’s goal. That’s a period of over two decades— two decades of wishing, seeking, longing in real-world time for this character. This is a huge long-term commitment for SE to make, and you can bet the devs don’t take it lightly. Again and again, once the events of the OG game have ended, Cloud is shown to desire a reunion with Aerith. This ever-present and ever-insistent theme will become very important to us later in this analysis.
(continued in part 3)

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Memory Transcription Subject: Elias Meier, Former UN Secretary-General
Date [standardized human time]: July 13, 2160
The irritability coursing through my psyche was palpable. Every sound was dialed up to eleven, stabbing at the core of my sensory processing. Constant awareness grated on me after days without sleep, never having any break from the stream of information I needed to digest. There was no way to shut the world off and reset, and no reprieve from the unsettling reality of my physical experience. I was curled up in a ball on the floor, rocking back and forth; I wasn’t sure how much longer I could go on like this.
Virnt scuttled over to me in the spaceship, jostling my shoulder. “Elias? Would you like to turn back from this mission?”
I remembered how I’d spent most of the trip, standing under the water in the shower. There was a special shampoo they’d provided for synthetic hair, like a wig. I held out my phony hand and emptied most of the bottle’s worth of goop, zoning out; I was trying to soak in the distant sensation of liquid running down my spine. Once upon a time, this had been the most relaxing time of my day—letting muscle tension fade away and cleansing grimy skin oils. Now, I knew neither of those two still existed in my day-to-day life to assuage.
Did it even matter to slap soap on some metal frame? There were no consequences of letting hygiene go by the wayside. I didn’t sweat in order to start to reek, and I couldn’t get skin conditions or be affected by bacteria. It could be that I was bathing out of habit, clinging to my old lifestyle, that I kept going to wash up. Perhaps the shower had become my favorite haunt because I felt disgusting in this body. Everything was a reminder that I was an inhuman scrap pile, and it was wearing on my sanity. It wasn’t like anyone related to what I was going through.
I used to spend so much time fussing over making my suits look crisp and perfect—immaculate ties, UN pins adjusted just right. The heavy jackets would trap my body heat in the summer; now, it no longer had that effect. I could bundle up as much as I wanted in 40 degree Celsius heat, unless there was some limit that would fry my circuits. Shit, I might not need a spacesuit in the vacuum of space—I couldn’t freeze or suffocate, after all. Being left out in the void for all eternity didn’t sound that much different from my present experience.
I hate what I’ve become. I hate what they’ve done to me; all I do is think, and every part of my new self lives in the uncanny valley. There’s nothing positive. Maybe it’s time to call it…death was better than this. I can’t bear another day of this hell.
“Hey, stay with me! Distractibility, depression, being unable to maintain concentration—these are natural consequences of sleep deprivation. I’m surprised it carries over without a physical mechanism to grow tired…but I’m working on a sleep suite, I promise,” Virnt said, glossy eyes staring at me.
I groaned. “I’m not tired, but it’s just nonstop. I…I’m having trouble remembering what I read.”
“Here, I’m going to try a temporary fix. You look like you need it. I don’t want you to suffer; just turning you off and on isn’t the same. I’m going to emulate GABA, uh, shut off your optic sensors, decrease the activity in your prefrontal cortex, and simulate delta waves for an hour. We can see if it somewhat fills the need for deep sleep, okay? Relaxation, no processing: worth a shot, right?”
I nodded mutely, staying in the fetal position. I didn’t have the will to move, and I didn’t want to get my hopes up that Virnt’s plan would be any mercy. The sensation of the Tilfish tinkering with my settings was strange, as if my brain was being overridden in the moment. There was no process of falling asleep to give it the air of naturalness. Suddenly, I was blind, trapped in darkness—and a modicum of drowsiness kicked in, limiting my movement. Thoughts died down, offering much-need relief; I faintly wished I could remain in this state.
When I came to, there was a sudden influx of information as the rest mode was switched off; it was hardly a seamless waking, but I’d take it. Peace in my own head was something I’d never take for granted again. I hadn’t thought myself to be a weak-minded individual, but I hadn’t realized how much it wore on you: feeling out of place in your own body every waking second, and not trusting your senses. Brain function had been restored enough that I could get a grip on myself, and rise in my disheveled state. A peek out the window revealed we’d completed our intra-atmosphere transit to the Duerten embassy.
I rubbed my eyes on reflex, but there were no gifts from the Sandman there. “Why couldn’t you have just added everything to start with, Virnt?”
“The humans I talked to said they wouldn’t want to sleep, unless they had to! I put the most focus on your emotional matrix and your facial expressiveness, since I thought that has the highest importance of what makes you human,” the Tilfish replied.
“You could’ve made it at least optional.”
“I sent the option to your holopad for the future, to trigger this program for as long as you’d like. This is a learning process, so I’m sorry for anything that’s off. All trial and error here, but it’s only going to get better! That’s the positive.”
“There are a lot of patches needed. For starters, you’re missing two of the senses: taste and smell. In spite of that, ever since I walked past the Terra Technologies staff eating tater tots, I’ve been craving them at random intervals. I’m not hungry—I can’t consume food!”
“Predator instincts,” Virnt teased. “The Federation was right.”
“I’m serious! Why on Earth would that be a thing? I literally can’t satisfy it, so it’s almost cruel.”
“It’s psychological, Elias. I looked into it after I saw it in your transcript. When humans are under a lot of stress or otherwise feeling down, you seek dopamine from food. It’s something familiar that activated your memories, and promised emotional comfort. That’s why you have the phrase ‘comfort food.’”
“I can already see how the Federation remnants would spin that. A predator’s so-called emotions are tied to food, and stimulate appetite to fulfill their whims.”
“You seem in better spirits. To add to your improved mood, we announced the success of your memory transplant to the world. The response was overwhelmingly positive—history looked back fondly on you. You got a lot of well-wishes, and I was able to get almost all of your social media re-activated. At least, the platforms that are still active.”
“I’m…allowed to share my honest experiences?”
Virnt eased me out of the shuttle, into the sunlight; cameras were waiting, causing me to stiffen. “Of course you can. I’m not here to muzzle you, my friend. Quite the opposite, in fact: I want your experiment documented as thoroughly as possible! You’re the spokesperson for—”
I shielded my face from the reporters, who were lobbing questions. “What is this? I don’t have a prepared statement. This is an ambush.”
“Terra Technologies has a mission of transparency, and improving sapients’ quality of life through digital means. We had to announce such a monumental breakthrough, but you’re under no obligation to speak with them.”
“Good,” a warm voice chimed in from next to me, making me jump. “The poor guy’s come back from the dead, Virnt. Give him a break. He’s here to speak with the Duerten Forum and their ambassador, for some semblance of his old life.”
I turned my head, beaming as I recognized her. “Erin? Oh, sorry: that’s Secretary-General Kuemper, isn’t it? You’ve moved up in the world. The United Nations is in good hands.”
“It’s good to see you, Elias. I bawled my eyes out at your funeral. You cared so much for peace and taking the high road; there isn’t a person out there who could’ve handled first contact with more grace. You inspired me, and an entire generation of future diplomats.”
I embraced Erin, who’d once been a passionate SETI researcher giving me all of the bad news about aliens. As we flailed about in the dark to save humanity and adjust to the galaxy, finally acquiring a few friends, she’d become my Secretary of Alien Affairs. I’d trusted her to do whatever it took to stabilize our extraterrestrial relations. It was a bit of a relief to see a positive reaction from someone I knew; I wasn’t sure how my friends would take my return, but I hadn’t been expecting a welcome with open arms. It brought me solace and comfort to know about the legacy I’d left behind, and the ripple effects my tenure had on the United Nations.
It is strange to see how much she’s aged. That’ll be the reality of anyone that used to be an acquaintance of mine.
The alarm bells pinging in my head faded into the backdrop, and I forgot that the wind gusting against my face only felt like a dull push. My mind slipped away from food cravings that failed to get my mouth to water, how there was no feeling of tightness from my dress shoes, and the stillness of my non-existent diaphragm. I was simply happy to see someone I cared about and enjoyed working with, in my old life. There was safety in having a person I trusted to be on my side. My brain snapped back into diplomat mode, falling into a familiar flow of conversation. If I had nothing else, I still had my social skills—an ability to navigate various cultures.
“So the Duerten Forum agreed to meet with the two of us. They know about the Sivkit attack, but not the full threat,” I spoke aloud, after breaking away from the rather soul-affirming embrace. “I read the strategy meetings for briefing them, and I’m on-board to appeal to nostalgia; humanity saving their homeworld was after my time, but close enough to it that I could serve as a reminder. A blast from the past.”
Erin nodded, her security forming a wall between us and the cameras as we walked toward the embassy. “I always wondered what you’d think of modern Vienna, Elias. All of the aliens willing to be here on our world, and to treat us like people. Friendship used to seem like a pipe dream; we were happy if they’d allow us to exist, tolerate us to that extent. Look at us now.”
“I almost gave up hoping that they could care about us, or stand beside us at all. We couldn’t do it alone then. It’s time we remember to stand together—to rise to the occasion once more. I can’t bear the thought of anything threatening our home, or our friends. I saw enough needless death twenty-four years ago.”
“That pain is a lot more recent to you. It’s completely okay to be wrestling with grief. A billion of ours died.”
“We didn’t become the monsters they thought we were, and we pulled through. We revealed their hatred and treachery, and have chosen a future set on rectifying every right they trampled. I’ll always mourn what we lost, but I’ve never been more proud of humanity in my life.”
Kuemper patted my shoulder. “You sound like yourself, my dear old friend. It’s very good to have you back; you were much better at smiling while they spit in your face than I ever was. Let’s do what’s necessary to get the ball rolling with the Shield.”
“I’m right behind you.”
The exterior of the Duerten embassy had a distinct construction style, with metal and concrete forming the bulk of the outside structure; on Kalqua, sturdiness was at the foremost of their priorities. Winds on a normal day could ratchet up to what we’d consider a tropical storm, according to my brief review of their culture. The door was evidently heightened to facilitate foot traffic from humans, despite the exit hatches on the upper floor which seemed frequented by the avian staff. Their personnel could literally fly away during an emergent situation. I tailed Kuemper into the lobby, and noted how much of the inside’s floor was concrete as well. It was resilient and easy to clean, a perfect surface to avoid being marred by talons.
Most of the gray avians used perches instead of chairs, with several staffers working on paperwork at their desks; in private areas, some met with any humans who had business with the Duerten Forum. The lack of reaction to a predator’s approach was new to me, but a welcome change. Kuemper confidently led the way to an elevator, which had the English and German words for “Welcome to the Duerten embassy!” written above the opening. The generic Shield logo was painted on both sides of the door, and emblazoned with a representation of Kalqua. There were no buttons inside, apart from an emergency exit; a camera surveyed us, before a watching staffer summoned the car upward. I felt a jolt as we reached the top floor.
“To be visited by two Secretary-Generals: one of whom is a ghost! Let me express the Duerten Forum’s honor and delight. Not, of course, that I don’t cherish Ambassador Hannah Marston’s visits.” A silver-feathered head poked out of a door at the end of the hallway, past a spacious lounge; his beak was the precise yellow of corn. “Please, come in. Make yourselves at home. Can I get you anything to drink?”
Kuemper shuffled forward, giving me a knowing look. “Water would be lovely for me. Thank you for the warm welcome, Ambassador Korajan.”
“I second that gratitude. Enchanted to meet you. I’m sure you know, but I’m Elias Meier.” Taking a gamble that the ambassador was more than acquainted with our customs, I extended a hand. Korajan strode forward with confidence, ensnaring my palm in his wingtip. “We appreciate you taking the time to sit with us, Ambassador.”
“Just Korajan,” the avian said, feeling my artificial hand with undeniable curiosity. He finally released my grip, and waited for us to get seated. “There’s no need for formalities, especially when I’m in such esteemed company. What can I do for you?”
“We’ve come to seek your assistance in the fight against the Sivkits’ assailants. The Sapient Coalition needs allies to back us against these menaces,” Kuemper stated. “Any help we can get would make a difference.”
“I see. I heard about your unfortunate defeat in your prior engagement, but I don’t see how it involves or concerns us. The Duerten, as you well know, aren’t in the position we used to be. We’ve turned our focus inward for years, shoring up our defenses to watch out for our beloved planet. The potential benefit it might offer you is so negligible that it’s hardly worth increasing our vulnerability. The risk far outweighs the rewards for any party.”
I studied the avian, careful to avoid a direct stare. “I understand that it’s a lot to ask. However, small bits of help from across the Shield can accumulate to be a massive difference maker. We want to stop this genocidal force from getting anywhere near Kalqua; if we play our cards right, you won’t need defenses.”
“Elias—sorry, may I call you Elias?” Korajan asked, continuing after I nodded. “We’re, of course, concerned to have a predatory species with such power and intentions, outside our known terrain. They bear a striking resemblance to the Arxur, and my government does appreciate the advance warning from the SC so we can make preparations. Yet the Forum is concerned by several of your recent initiatives, which would make us doubly unwilling to back your cause.”
“Go on. What initiatives have unsettled you?” I hope he doesn’t mean me, with resurrecting dead humans; that’d hit close to home, and I don’t know how to defend it. “Perhaps we can clear up our rationale and intentions, ensuring that there are no misunderstandings.”
“I hope I’m not impolite to point it out, but my government is beginning to see a pattern in your recent connections to carnivores. The Sapient Coalition is attempting an uplift on one race, despite what we all know happened on Wriss, and has brought them into your mix while they are at war with each other. We’re also aware of these Osirs—a race you are resurrecting to live among you, despite having no idea what they’re capable of. Present company excluded, species that need meat are not trustworthy types. These Osirs are weapons: look at the fangs*.”*
“Anything is a weapon in the wrong hands. Respectfully, we don’t feel that it’s right to judge a species for their diet. If I’m not mistaken, your own kind were once omnivores, Korajan.”
The Duerten fluttered his wings in acknowledgement. “The Federation changed us greatly—some things for the better, others to erase our intellect. We’re an individualist species, and they tried to make us…what do you humans call it? A ‘hive mind.’ Hive minds, of course, are fiction, yet they tried to make it real. Still, sometimes when you’re changed enough, it makes it impossible to go back to how things were.”
“I of all people grasp that sentiment,” I sighed, without moving an abdominal muscle, reflecting how my life would never be the same in this state. “We believe all sapients deserve a chance at life and happiness. Equality isn’t a principle we withhold based on any factor, and we don’t change species to fit our own whims.”
“This is why we’re content with our relations as is: separate, so we’re not connected to your disputes or obligated to get involved. The Duerten will always have differences between what are considered acceptable behaviors, and our guiding principles and overarching goals.”
Kuemper tapped her fingers on her knee. “Regardless, our choices with the Bissems and Osirs will have no impact or tangible effects on the Duerten. Nor is it a reason to shy away from protecting herbivores, the mandate that led you to stand up to the Federation in the past.”
“That cost us everything. Kalqua took a beating worse than Earth did. We don’t set out to attract the ire of powerful enemies these days.”
“We saved Kalqua. We were there when you needed our help to keep your innocents safe,” I reminded him, knitting my eyebrows with earnestness. “We answer when others call for our help to stay alive; the Duerten know what drives us to answer the bell. Isn’t that worth a smidge of reciprocation?”
“If Earth, or for that matter, Leirn were under siege, we would come. However, it appears to us that you entered their territory, not the other way around.”
“Think of the type of species…no, the kind of governments that would glass worlds. The old-school Arxur Dominion. The Kolshian shadow caste when they were defied. The Krakotl extermination fleet because they hated us. That’s what we see in the Osirs, and the gluttonous killing of Sivkit civilians while refusing to speak. We can’t turn a blind eye.”
“I’m sorry, Elias. Even if I wanted to help you, I don’t have the authority. I’m expressing my government’s position, and I’ve been told the Duerten Forum isn't going to war under any circumstances. I apologize that I can’t be of more use, and regret if you might feel your time has been squandered, leaving empty-handed.”
I shared a look with Kuemper, recognizing that we had been stonewalled; there was an implication in Korajan’s last statement that the discussion on this matter was over. The Forum hadn’t given him any negotiating room, so I didn’t get the sense I could do better than asking for him to take a message. If this was the most friendly party we’d be interacting with, I wasn’t off to a good start wrangling support for an alliance. There were a few other Shield races we could try, but an endorsement from the founders might’ve gotten the whole union on board. We had to find another angle—negotiating with the Fed remnants would be impossible without the Shield as an intermediary.
“Of course we don’t feel that way. The back-and-forth was enlightening, productive communication, as much as humanity would love to stand side-by-side in this endeavor,” I offered. “We appreciate you hearing us out, and do hope you’ll pass along our rationale to the Forum, for clarity.”
“I will,” the Duerten responded. “Your words, as always, deserve to be heard and treated with respect.”
Kuemper followed my lead, rising as I stood. “Korajan, I want you to know I deeply appreciate what you said about coming to Earth’s aid should we ever fall on hard times. That stood out to me, as a reason why our cooperation is so precious and beautiful.”
“I agree wholeheartedly. I do wish you the best of luck in your future engagements; my people hope you emerge victorious.”
“Thank you. Our door will always be open if you have a change of heart.”
In my mind, I had already vacated the Duerten embassy, but it was necessary to retrace my steps to depart the ambassador’s office. Aliens were much more diplomatic in rebuffing us now than in my era, which was the proper way to express disagreements between nations. It wasn’t lost on me that the differences in “behaviors” and “principles” Korajan meant were things such as hunting, omnivory, accepting carnivores, exterminators, and predator disease facilities. The Forum still clung to much of their old lifestyle; the gray avian had stated that some Federation changes were “for the better.” That was telling about how much of their ideology they’d yet to shed.
“Forgive my impertinence, but before you go, Elias…may I ask a personal inquiry? It’s not on my behalf of my government,” Korajan called, as our shoes cleared the threshold of his office.
I turned around, giving him an encouraging smile. “Of course. Go ahead.”
“What…what was it like? To die…to be dead?”
“It wasn’t like anything. It was a singularity of all outcomes: all I ever was, and all I ever could be, condensed to nothing. There are no words to describe emptiness and infinite rest. It’s a peace that knows no equal.”
The Duerten dipped his head. “Thank you. It gives me some…personal solace, to know…to know my daughter is resting peacefully. She died in so much pain after only a short period of remission. Ahem…if you’ll excuse me, I…”
“We’ll leave you in peace,” Kuemper replied, softness in her voice.
I folded my hands behind my back, mulling over the choked-up ambassador’s words. How could I let a few days of mental suffering defeat me, when kids suffered through such terrible diseases—never getting to reach adulthood? This program could give children like Korajan’s daughter a chance to grow up, and be a kid, free from pain. As soon as I was alone, I knew I’d be cast back into a maddening state of consciousness, with my brain struggling to stay tethered to this reality. Where I’d been ready to give up before Virnt’s quick fix, the avian’s story made me want to remain in the fight.
The Tilfish had been right: there was the potential for the technology that had brought me back to do a lot of good, and save others a great deal of heartbreak and suffering. No personal sacrifice was too great to ensure that one day, no parent would ever have to bury their child.
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I’ve been wanting to lose weight for like 2 years now. I’m F22, and at my heaviest weight (188 lbs). However, I always had what I would call “reverse body dysmorphia” where I look in the mirror at myself and think, “I’m not THAT fat.” Well, I took a picture a couple weeks ago next to my fit, handsome, how did I pull this guy boyfriend and well, let’s just say that photographs tell the truth more than the mirror does. But anyway, I got home from college a week ago, and decided to download a book. It was talking about BMI and how BMI isn’t entirely accurate, and I was curious “Hm, what is my BMI?”
29.4. .6 off from obesity. Surely I was like, “Well, I’m home now and have access to a measuring band. Surely I have some muscle mass.”
Calculated my body fat percentage. 32.6. Obese. Like holy fuck, I’ve never thought I could get here. I’m in my 20s.
So, now to really 100% change my relationship with food. Get it to a healthier weight. I have history of heart disease and diabetes in my family. I have to.
Please send luck, and if anyone wants an accountability buddy DM me! 😃

 
@ u/c-student
Is the main theme of

After the Flood

by Van der Graaf Generator in 19/16 time!? Is that what you were getting-@!? I've been trying to count the rhythm … but it's very difficult to do-so … but I think it's 19/16 ! And I have a vague memory of trying to count it many years ago, & finding 19/16 then , aswell.
 
 
… and in which Canadian Rock Band Rush get a very great deal of mention; & also, as broaching complex time-signatures somewhat earlier than they were, King Crimson … but there seems to be precious little mention, if any , of any Rock Band other than King Crimson broaching complex time signatures in any great degree before they did.
In the case of Rush, it could-well have had much to-do-with the influence of the literary & philosopherary colossus

Ayn Rand

(whose image appears to have uploaded as the frontispiece of this post … although that seriously was not my intent!) - which is well-known to have indeed been a mighty-&-puissant influence upon them - that they used complex time-signatures so-much: ie the ineffible nuancery of her genius 'translating', or 'sublimating', itself unto their music … or something of that nature.
 

MixdownMag — 13 iconic tracks played in crazy time signatures

This one seems to have an errour somewhat down the page - under the Tool – ‘Lateralus’ section: it says " 8/11 " , & I'm sure it must mean 11/8 !
 

A Reddit »MusicTheory« Channel Post About It — Songs in really odd time signatures (13/8, 15/8, 17/8, 19/8 etc)

 

Youtube Viddley-Diddley — Songs that use 13/8 time

 

Youtube Viddley-Diddley —Songs that use 15/8 time

 

Youtube Viddley-Diddley — 9 Popular Songs With Odd Time Signatures

 

TheRushForum — Time Signatures Index

 

A Reddit »Rush« Channel Post About It — Most Complicated Time Signatures in a Rush Song

 

Youtube Viddley-Diddley —How RUSH Uses Odd Time Signatures!!

 

TheFrankes — Time Signature of Limelight by Rush

 

A Reddit »MusicTheory« Channel Post About It — The Mars Volta's time signatures hurt my head. Can someone help?

 

ProgArchives — Most Complex Time Signature ever!?

 

Youtube Viddley-Diddley —Drummer Series Episode 1: The Impossible Groove (The Mars Volta - "Take The Veil The Cerpin Taxt")

 

SongFacts — Cotopaxi by The Mars Volta

 

TheAmherstStudent — Arts&Living — The Mars Volta Gives Us True Progress

 

TalkBass — Songs with odd time signatures

 

RateYourMusic — We're not in 4/4 anymore... my favourite songs in unusual time signatures [in progress] A list by m0rph3us

 

Wordpress — Paul Sutton Reeves — 21 Albums Featuring Unusual Time Signatures

 

A Reddit »MusicTheory« Channel Post About It — What’s the craziest/most unusual time signature you’ve heard in a song?

 

Steve Hoffman Music Forms — King Crimson-The geniuses of tempo in all of rock

 

Ultimate-Guitar — Top 10 Weirdest Odd-Time Signature Songs

 

Youtube Viddley-Diddley — King Crimson Indiscipline odd-time signatures explained

 

Youtube Viddley-Diddley —What the hell is going on in King Crimson's Frame by Frame??

 

A Reddit »MusicTheory« Channel Post About It — King Crimson - THRAK Time signature

 
One thing that some of the commentors @ this-here Channel seem to fail to realise is that what they come-out with can be directly compared to the discussions I used regularly to engage in IRL, & 'in-real-time', so-to-speak - ie contemporarily with the emergence of the music - considerable time-ago, about the Prog-Rock music of the 1970s upto 1982 or so, in which I took a vigorous part generally without being berated about the stupidity of what I was saying. But maybe we were all stupid, & sorely in-need of the kindly guruhood of these mentioned 'commentors'! And it's strange how so-very often I would have someone who was a staunch believer in the ¡¡ Rock Music ought to be simple !! idiom berating me about my 'bothering with' the weïrd time-signatures of Rush … but suddenly, strangely, it's become a bit 'dumb' even saying so-much as that Rush were exponents @all of weïrd time signatures! … even to the extent of “they just aren't! broaden your horizons!” .
Hmmmmmmn …

🤔

things that make you go “hmmmmmmn” .
 
And coming back to bona-fide music, something else that makes you go “hmmmmmmn” is the way two different songs about The Beast of the Christian apocalyptic text The Revelation of John are both in 9/8 - ie

Aphrodite's Child — The Beast

&

Genesis — Apocalypse in 9/8 ;

although the latter is by-far the more complex: there's a detailed analysis of it in the viddley-diddley

Johan Steensland Music — Genesis Apocalypse 9/8 rythms explained .

I wonder whether there's some mystical significance to that choice that both bands were prompted by, or whether 'tis mere coïncidence.
 
And a thoroughly gorgeous - & also extremely natural-sounding - example of blend of 5/4, 6/4, & 7/4 time signature is

Pentangle — Light Flight :

thus .

 
Have just found the following littyl gemns of wwwebsites, aswell.
 

ICMP Elevate — 10 Incredible Songs in 5/4 and 5/8 Time

 

KVR Audio — Examples of songs which use 5/4 (5/8) time signatures

 

The Evil Jam — Famous Songs in Slightly Odd Time Signatures – A Guide to Rhythms

 

Zeroes and Ones — Ali Jamieson — Examples of Songs in Different Time Signatures

 

The Cavan Project — 28 Songs in Unusual Time Signatures

 

Youtube Viddley-Diddley — 8 AWESOME songs with ODD TIME SIGNATURES that aren't impossible

 

Drumeo Beat — 21 Legendary Odd-Time Grooves

 

ProgArchives — Bizarre Time Sigs

 
Just remembered that this has a passage in 7/8 , aswell:

Youtube Viddley-Diddley — »Blondie — Heart of Glass« .

 
And Say a Little Prayer by

Dionne Warwick

& by

Aretha Franklin

has 11 passages - ie the chorus.
 

My Guitar is a Spaceship

by Gong is in 9/16 and has a

[]7♯9 chord

in it @ one point.
 
And

Pyramid Song

by Radiohead is bonkers : going-by one of the Youtube comments, I think it might be 13/16 .
 

Turn it on Again

by Genesis is in 13/4 .
 

Living in the Past

by Jethro Tull is in 5 ; &

Golden Brown

by The Stranglers has passages in 13 .
 

Morning Has Broken

by Cat Stevens is in 9 .
 
 
@ u/c-student
You were around in 1916!?

🤔

where were you when you read it!? @ the Battle of the Somme, by-anychance!? Maybe you were transported thither by a time machine, like

in the movie »The Twelve Monkeys« !

😆😂🤣

¡¡ Oh silly me !!

🙄

not 1916CE but 19/16 time-signiature ! 'tis a thoroughly lovely time-signiature, though, that is: I'm duly honoured !

😁

I've added a bit more that might interest you - about two completely separate songs about The Beast of The Revelation of John that are both in 9/8 time.

This week I wrote an autobiographical account of my history with sleep paralysis, RLS, and hypnagogic hallucinations.
I was not sure where to share it. I added it and deleted it from a few subs. The only place it ended up was the creative writing sub, though.
And this appears to be the right spot! There are several themes but the hypnagogia is the focus. So it's quite long and probably no one reads it and that's fine. I just wanted to find somewhere to put it in case my experience could benefit someone.
⚠️ ⚠️ WARNING first part is scary and a bit gory... ⚠️ ⚠️

Childhood

The first time that I encountered sleep paralysis was when I was nine or ten. I woke up screaming, my mind gripped with the sensation of searing pain radiating from my left big toe. Though my mouth wasn't moving, I could hear my own blood-curdling cries, echoing through the darkness. An eerie orange glow spilled into the room, illuminating a sinister cauldron at the base of my bed, around which stood three squat witches. Their dark, smoky faces shifted and morphed constantly, eyes glowing red like embers recessed deeply into the shadows of their crawling flesh, jagged teeth gnashing along with their discordant laughter as roaches crawled from their mouths and disappeared into their black straw hair.
Each witch held their own dainty knife and fork, shaking along with their trembling bony hands, and one was slicing expertly down the center of my big toe with the impossibly sharp blade of their knife. I struggled to move my arms and legs, feeling as though I had freedom of movement, but my physical body remained paralyzed. Unfathomable terror washed over me as I realized that I couldn't scream for help; my mom wouldn't hear me, and I was powerless to stop these witches from feasting on my toes.
I lay there, unable to break free from the oppressive paralysis, forced to endure the excruciating pain as my toes were sliced off and consumed. The air buzzed with the witches' terrifying, joyous laughter, as if they delighted in my agony more than the taste of my flesh. Eventually, my body in a full state of terror jarred itself awake, heart beating more wildly than I had ever experienced, my lungs struggling to gasp more than the tiniest breath. After perhaps a full minute of gathering myself, I drew a deep breath and screamed into the night.
My mother came, of course, but was unable to understand the depth and terror of my experience. Her own reality did not include anything close; for her, it was an exaggeration born of childhood fear, and she became exasperated after a time with my refusal to admit that it was a dream, despite being an extremely caring parent.
The witches appeared to me several times between the ages of 10 and 15, their ghastly faces returning to torment me with each episode of sleep paralysis. Every time, I would be trapped in that terrifying limbo, my body frozen while my mind drowned itself in screams of agony and horror. I knew that they would feast on my toes, the slicing of their knives relentless, inexorable. They would smack their lips and toast each other with my blood-covered flesh as I watched.
During those years, restless legs syndrome (RLS) also began to plague my nights. As soon as I began to drift off to sleep, a discomfort would arise in my legs, like there was a swarm of fat round beetles exploring, searching for an exit. A quick kick would settle it down, but it would rise again in a cycle of building tension, acutely uncomfortable climax, and brief relief of a second or two would follow before it began again. My mother, again meaning well but busy and unfamiliar with RLS, told me it was leg cramps and made me eat more banannas. This didn't help.
It became an increasing problem, stealing precious sleep that my young body needed to thrive. The frustration of RLS merged with the terror of a potential visit from the witches. Without medication, I would lose entire nights to the relentless discomfort.
By the age of 15, the sleep paralysis episodes had occurred at least 10 times, each leaving me with the gut-wrenching memory of being eaten alive that I would carry all the next day in my gut like a sack of bricks. As I lay sleeping, every single night, I wondered if they would visit, and braced myself for an encounter.

Early adulthood:

I can't remember how many times the witches visited before I finally stopped panicking. It was after countless God awful nights when I finally accepted that no matter how terrifying or painful the ordeal felt, I would be whole once it was over. I had survived the agony a hundred times before and could endure it again. One night, when the eerie glow of the cauldron illuminated their shifting faces, I felt a calm settle over me. I saw the witches, but for the first time, I wasn't afraid.
They noticed my defiance, their laughter fading into an uneasy silence. Without fanfare, they stood up, collected their cauldron, and retreated into the darkness of my room. Though I still saw them occasionally at the foot of my bed, they became more present than threatening. Sometimes, at the start of an episode, they'd appear briefly before disappearing altogether. They had become inconsequential, and I couldn't even be sure if they were there half the time.
In my early 20s, I discovered that I could almost guarantee a bout of sleep paralysis simply by sleeping during the day. At first, nothing particularly unusual happened, but the paralysis always returned whenever I dozed off, particularly between the hours of 11am and 2pm. I was often sleeping during the day because by then, the restless legs syndrome (RLS) had grown so severe that many nights passed without sleep at all. My body felt like it was full of angry snakes now instead of beetles, desperate to escape. The sensation soon crept upward from my legs to my arms. The cycles of build up, climax, and agonizly brief relief increased in frequency and magnitude. I would often resort to sitting in the shower, flipping the water from icy cold to scalding hot all night, simply to keep myself alert enough to avoid the twitching and spasming until the blessed relief of dawn arrived.
With the daytime paralysis came a variety of hallucinations. Sometimes the witches stood at the foot of my bed, other times they'd disappear, leaving behind benign apparitions like tickling gnomes. There was nothing threatening about these visions, and I began to find a strange sense of comfort in them. I would relax into a dark place where I felt my own energy burning like a sun, present but without physical form. In this state, I felt euphoric, fully aware yet separate from myself. I started taking naps during the day and eagerly anticipated this odd experience.
Yet at night, my sleep remained troubled as RLS tormented me. Eventually, I began taking ropinirole to manage the symptoms, and it brought much-needed relief, helping me reclaim my nights and giving me several years of mostly not worrying about RLS unless I forgot to take my medicine, or the odd night where it bothered me but was still less severe.

New experiences:

I spent several years relishing those euphoric moments of peace, where I could feel the pure energy of being alive without a personal history or identity. In those moments, everything else faded away, and all that remained was a brilliant, infinite energy. My waking life was absorbed by study of comtemporary and historical teachings of non-duality, and with my family and progressing my career as a software developer. I was absorbing Eckhart Tolle and Gautama, Meister Eckhart and Seuhn Sang and integrating their teachings into my daily life. The feeling inside of me that reality ultimately made no sense had found an expression, and I dug in every waking moment for a clue as to the true nature of experience. Given this context, I especially looked forward to and found solace in the experience of being impersonal, boundless energy.
In my late 20s, I also experienced a new type of sleep paralysis hallucination. One day it began that there were no visions or hallucinations; instead, I simply lay in a state of paralysis, aware of the room as a darkened and monochrome version of itself. I entertained myself by trying to move my arms and legs against the paralysis, and developed the idea that I had two bodies; my physical body lay on the bed, while my energetic body struggled and flailed. It was like my energy body could move separately, creating a phantom limb sensation. I felt my energy arms and legs extend out, yet my physical body lay still. As my energy body reached further from my physical self, it would snap back as if held by a rubber band.
Intrigued, I began experimenting with this phenomenon, managing to build enough momentum to "pop" out of my body one afternoon. Suddenly, I found myself looking down at my own sleeping form, resting on my back and breathing gently beside my wife, who was playing a game (probably Candy Crush) on her phone in the bed. It was surreal, and I wasn't sure whether I was hallucinating or truly perceiving my own body from a different perspective. Regardless, it was a revelation, and I felt a new sense of exploration as I gazed down at myself.
That first time, I found myself drifting through the house, checking on my two young stepdaughters as they slept. I had recently married, and it was a quiet weekend afternoon with everyone napping peacefully. Once satisfied, I ventured outside, where I took to the sky and flew around the neighborhood, spying on my neighbors. Though it felt like I was limited in speed, I seemingly had no constraints on the continuity of this hallucination. Everything appeared as a perfect physical representation of Earth, and I could travel without interruption.
The landscape was strikingly accurate, but it appeared in monochrome hues — grays, blacks, and whites — with no bright colors. Letters and numbers were unreadable, reduced to blurred nonsense. Despite these distortions, the sensation of soaring above the rolling hills and rooftops was pure euphoria. I sped along at hundreds of miles per hour, basking in the freedom of movement, and immersed in the stunning view that stretched out below me. There did seem to be some sort of very generous limit to how far I could travel, but I thoroughly explored within the boundaries for hundreds of miles around my home.
Over the years into my early 30s, I tried to pursue this opportunity of flight and exploration every chance I could. But during that time, my restless legs syndrome also became more relentless. In the past, no matter how agonizing the night had been, dawn would bring relief like a cold bath washing over me. I would sit outside and watch the sunrise, and the sensation of snakes slithering through my body would finally calm down, perhaps due to circadian rhythms and dopamine regulation. The cycles now began to climax in totally involuntary movement, spasms that caused me to tense my whole body and draw in a sharp breath every time. It would be 5 seconds of rapid buildup, spasm, a second or two of relief, repeat.
Eventually, even the dawn failed to provide respite, and I struggled during night or day whenever I relaxed too long or became even a bit drowsy. Napping became impossible, depriving me of the euphoric dreams I had learned to look forward to. I switched from ropinirole to pramipexole, hoping for relief. The medication helped me sleep five or six hours a night on good nights, but I still missed one or two nights of sleep entirely each week and rarely could nap during the day, because I took the medicine only a couple hours before bed.
Even though my restless legs syndrome worsened, one out of every ten times, I'd still manage to avoid twitching and drift into that state of peaceful paralysis during the day when I dozed off involuntarily. I gradually lost interest in pursuing out-of-body travel and instead sought every time the burning energy of the sun inside of me — the sensation of being infinitely powerful and formless simultaneously. I would retreat into this boundless feeling whenever I had the opportunity.
During these rare occasions when I could sleep during the day, I stumbled across a third type of experience. It felt like I was being sucked into space at impossible speeds, zooming past the planets of our solar system and beyond until I reached a darker patch of space. This spot seemed like a vast, corrugated sewer pipe that swallowed me whole. I rocketed through the universe, traveling at what could only be the speed of light. Eventually, I would break into the atmosphere of some unknown world, drifting down to its surface sometimes, others crashing painfully into terrain. Sometimes, I would hear a loud sound like an explosion in mid travel, and suddenly aterialize on another distant world without any sort of entrace.
These journeys were exhilarating, and each new landscape presented a mystery, revealing worlds unlike anything I'd ever seen.

The Traveling Years:

One of the first journeys I had involved zipping through space before drifting down through a hole in the top of a greenhouse. The world was painted in shades of orange and brown, its dirt swirling in powerful winds like clay cyclones. The greenhouse itself was dirty and grimy, almost opaque with crusted dirt, and filled with dense green plants — ivy and other dark green foliage that covered every inch inside. Outside, the orange sky churned with the swirling clay, making visibility nearly impossible.
I made my way down a ladder and emerged outside, where I found a man and a boy standing beside a white pinto horse. They both wore hardened leather over rough potato sack-like clothing, their long hair dotted with bone jewelry, their noses and eyebrows profusely pierced with other fragments of bone adorned with feathers. The man seemed to be instructing the boy on something to do with the horse. I approached them cautiously, fully aware of my lucid dreaming state and retaining all my memories, reasoning, and thoughts. Everything about the scene was vivid, from the clay dust swirling around to the squinting struggle to see in the wind.
Unlike the man and the boy, I had no long hair, no mouth covering, and no leather visor shielding my face from the swirling clay-dust. As I tried to speak, it seemed like they couldn’t hear me, and I wondered if I might be invisible to them. Unconcerned, I reached out to pat the horse on its nose, but before I could make contact, the man swiftly drew a long knife from his belt and stabbed me. He struck again, and the intense pain and feeling of my own scalding hot blood streaming down my pants legs snapped me awake.
Not long after my experience in the greenhouse, I found myself learning more about the worlds I could explore, though the opportunities remained rare. One day, I was transported to a beautiful blue tropical world, crashing into the dunes of a pristine white beach. There, I encountered three women, each towering over me at seven or eight feet tall. Their long black hair framed their pale faces, with blood-red lips striking against their alabaster skin. But what stood out most were their fingernails — long and crimson, curling back upon themselves dozens of times like spiraling ribbons. They were two or three feet in length and added a surreal menace to their presence.
They asked me my name and the name of my father, along with other odd questions, and seemed absolutely intriqued with me. There was a certain sort of heavy molasses quality to their voices that was more than sound and impossible to describe. It had the effect of making me feel drowsy and stupid and slow to move.
As I stood there, they began touching me with their nails, tracing them across my body in elaborate, almost ritualistic patterns. I felt my energy drain with every stroke, a profound exhaustion seeping into my core. The sensation was so intense that I woke up feeling completely drained, my limbs heavy and my spirit sapped.
Another time, I appeared without explanation after my space travel in a cavern brimming with glowing fungi and luminescent crystals. I wasn't myself in this world but instead had taken the place of someone else. My father stood beside me, guiding me through the luminous landscape. He taught me how to identify the bizarre and fascinating flora surrounding us — lessons that etched themselves into my mind and last to this day despite the surreal, made-up nature of this world. The glowing crystals and fungi cast eerie shadows across the cavern walls as my father explained the properties and uses of each.
In real life, these experiences would last for about five to eight minutes, but in the dream realm, the passage of time was different. What seemed like mere minutes could stretch into hours or even days, and in rare cases, the dreams spanned much longer.

RLS becomes terrible:

I had a new busy career, an infant daughter, two active growing stepdaughters, and a wife with a hectic job, and I struggled hard through the years between 35 and 39. Each night was pure torture, as restless leg syndrome robbed me of sleep. Days of sleep deprivation left me barely functioning, often teetering on the edge of collapse while the disease gnawed away. The unrelenting discomfort made it impossible to fall asleep, even as my body craved rest. I had no choice but to continue, as I had yet to find a doctor that knew how to move past the ropinirole and pramipexole stage of treatment, and these medicines had almost entirely ceased to be effective for me. My love for my family drove me to conceal the intense effort that day to day living had become. I managed to keep up with my career by farming a prescription for Adderall. I don't have ADHD, so it had the effect on me of methamphetamine and allowed me to push through the God awful existence that life had become.
The toll became overwhelming. I couldn't escape the agony, even after days of desperate attempts to sleep. More than once, I ended up in the emergency room after going four or five nights without sleep. For some people, this will seem like an exaggeration; I assure you, it is not. I would be nonsensical, having conversations with people tha weren't in the room, drifting in and out of intense 1 second dreams before snapping awake with painful spasms. At the hospital, they would give me percocet, and the painkillers provided brief reprieve from RLS for some reason, allowing me one solid night’s sleep, but the relentless cycle quickly resumed, leaving me struggling once again.
Eventually, I found a neurologist who prescribed Neupro patches that provided temporary relief. For a few months, I managed to sleep more consistently, but the patches quickly lost their effectiveness. It wasn't until I added methadone to the treatment that I finally found more lasting relief.
During those difficult years, I immersed myself in non-dual philosophy. In that crucible of suffering, my conviction solidified: my true nature was more aligned with the energy hallucinations I experienced than with a body made of skin, bone, and brain. That transcendent energy, more real and enduring than the physical form I occupied, became my identity in daily life, watching peacefully as my body and brain navigated the situational complexity of life.
Approaching my 40th birthday, I found that I could sleep at night and dream during the day. My life was in good shape, I lost 60 pounds without effort, and I felt fundamentally and imperturbably peaceful. Suddenly, life was in the palm of my hands, every moment pristine and still and perfect. I felt weightless without the burden of needing to endure trauma every night.
Most importantly to this story, I worked from home and could nap on my lunch breaks.

Rapid learning through iteration:

Rarely, I would fail to nap at all due to RLS. Sometimes I would simply doze off and wake up 10 minutes later to my cell phone alarm. But three out of five times, I would travel.
I visited dozens of worlds in a matter of a few short months and quickly was able to confirm some rules that I had suspected were true from my previous adventures.
One rule is that no one I know in real life ever shows up in the travelling dreams. No matter the place or circumstance or strange beings that I encountered, there was never a familiar face.
Another rule was that no dream person ever had a name or a father. The absence of both seemed to be an unspoken universal truth among these dream world inhabitants. Once I had internalized the significance of this, I began introducing myself to most beings that I encountered as "John, son of Michael." It left a strong impression. My name and lineage seemed to set me apart, bestowing an almost mythical quality upon me that earned me a peculiar reverence among all that I met. This knowledge became the key to navigating the dream worlds with confidence and a consistent purpose of discovery.
I learned accidentally of a unique ability during my travels: a form of telekenesis that allowed me to project force from the palms of my hands. This development led to many episodes of paralysis spent ignoring exploration and instead hilariously and painfully attempting to master this ability for the purpose of travel. Over time, I refined my skill, learning to fly much like Iron Man, but solely through the focused propulsion from my hands. Without stabilization from my feet, I had to carefully control the angle of projection and the amount of force applied to control my trajectory and speed.
Mastering this ability took significant practice, but eventually, I could navigate obstacles with ease and travel great distances in short amounts of time. I also no longer crash landed, thankfully. Importantly, I could harness this power to overcome any threatening beings that I encountered. Previously, my best option was to hide or flee, and that did not always work out. Now I had this amazing sense of fearlessness and confidence that simply cannot be rivaled by real world experience. Every time I heard the buzzing sounds and felt the WUM WUM WUM of energy as I prepared to launch into space, I embraced the journey with eager anticipation, confident in my ability to protect myself and learn about whatever strange world awaited me.

To Present Day:

As I grew more confident in my ability to travel almost at will, I began to incorporate spirituality into my experimentation. One day, on a whim, I expressed to the universe that if there were a being that had my best interests at heart and loved me fully, then I gave them permission to guide my dreams and lead me to greater truths, even if they were uncomfortable. This openness led to a new experience immediately, and I began to preface many of my journeys with a similar, simple prayer.
That first time, I fell down instead of up -- into myself, into the infinite dimensionless darkness where I could spin and burn and bathe in the euphoric sense of my own eternal nature. But my peace was quickly interrupted by an intense feeling of pressure at the base of my spine, though I couldn't have pinpointed where the body was that the spine inhabited. Very, very slowly, with a CRUNCHA CRUNCHA CRUNCHA noise for every milimeter of ground gained, it crawled upwards towards my head.
As it climbed, the energy below it intensified, growing exponenentially as the surface area covered grew. It wasn't painful, exactly, but it was terrifyingly intense. That first time, I managed to stay calm long enough for it to reach my shoulder blades before it became unbearably frightening and I jerked myself out of it, sure that I would die if I allowed it to continue upward. Over the last few months I have vowed to myself that I would endure any level of discomfort to see what happens at the end, but I keep chickening out. I have let it go as far as the base of my skull, at which time my head started vibrating so much that I could feel my teeth chattering violently even in my paralysis.
Another time recently when I made this prayer, I went to space as usual, but when I entered the atmosphere of a lush Earth-like world, my telekenesis failed me for the first time ever. Instead, I was pulled like in a slow tractor beam down beneath the perfectly round canopy of a giant, unfamiliar kind of tree. I felt a great sense of calm and peace and simply meditated there for quite some time, maybe 9 or 10 hours of relative time, before I heard a voice from behind the tree.
The man who stepped out from there had his face hidden in shadows. He wore a long dusty leather coat and a huge cowboy hat that shrouded him. As I write this, I find that I am not yet prepared to write about what he said to me, or how I responded. But when we had spoken, he walked solemnly over to me and lay his hand upon my head, and I jerked awake in a state of perfect bliss, despite some conflicting emotions surrounding our conversation. I call him Cowboy Hat Man, and maybe I will write more about him later.
A third time with the prayer, right before I sped off to my normal adventures, I felt a cat jump onto my bed and snuggle against my left leg, purring. It curled up there, and I assumed that it was my actual cat in real life, although it would be very uncharacteristic for him. I actually thought to myself, "Wow, I guess Buddy Socks is my spirit guide today." However, when I awoke, I realized that my door was shut and the cat was not in the room. On that trip, I went to a world that was reminiscent in quality perhaps to 15th century Europe, except on a world where the surface was far more underneath water than on Earth.
I followed the invisible cat to an old man and asked him, "Do you know the truth?" He answered, "No." I followed the invisble cat to young boy and asked him, "Do you know the truth?" He also answered, "No." It was an odd one, really.
Every time I do this, I am setting an alarm for ten minutes. Sometimes the dreams last days in relative time, but I have never yet failed to wake up before that alarm goes off.

Present Day (like seriously earlier this week is what me want to write this):

I lay down eagerly for my lunch break nap, hoping to avoid the disappointment of an off-day. I flew into the atmosphere of a world that seemed to made of rock, with nothing growing on the surface. However, I caught glimpse on the surface of a bright spot, and when I descended, I found that somehow there was a relatively thin crust of sorts around a hollow inside-world.
I lowered myself slowly through a great opening in that crust, down into a lush jungle. It was beautiful but uncomfortably humid, and I quickly found a cool and dry cavern complex to explore rather than dealing with sweat and unfamiliar insects.
As I navigated through the cavern system, able to see somehow with dim light despite no obvious light source at times, I broke out into a very large open cave with a huge exit out into the jungle. I saw that it was dawn and realized that I had spent the night, however long it was on this world, in the caves.
Suddenly, my four year old daughter, Curly, with her naturally bleach-highlighted rings of long blonde hair and bright blue eyes, drifted slowly over my left shoulder and out towards the exit. She moved at a brisk adult walking pace, her back to the cave opening, her expression curious yet slightly concerned. She called out, "Dada?" in a tone that suggested wonder and slight confusion, but no real alarm in the presence of her father.
Reacting instantly, feeling my gut clench solid into a fist of rock, I used my telekinesis to close the gap between us and gathered her into my arms. She wrapped her legs around my waist and settled her butt onto my forearm, a ritual that we have practiced every day of her life. The force gripping her evaporated instantly, and suddenly, my darling girl was there in my arms, as real as any physical embrace. I could feel the tickle of her hair on my neck, the beautiful warmth of her skin, and was enveloped in her familiar scent.
Initially, I was filled with white hot rage, fueled by my instinctive reaction to the thought that some idiotic dream world inhabitant had decided to mess with my family and harm or kidnap her. But as I held her and she nuzzled her nose into my neck, the anger gave way to sheer amazement. For the first time in a decade of navigating these dreamscapes, someone that I knew from my waking life had entered the dream. This was a rule-defying moment that really rocked me, a serious breach of the established norms of these experiences.
A group of maybe 8 or 10 small winged goblins flew down from out of sight above the top lip of the exit and fluttered into the room, laughing in a very non-threatening way. They radiated a sense of innocent mischief, and my fear and anger subsided and gave way to annoyance. I whipped my right hand out and blasted a huge hole in the cavern wall to my right, startling Curly into a yelp. Unphased, I raised my voice and demanded, "Who is your King? I am John, son of Michael, and this is my daughter and she WILL NOT BE TOUCHED AGAIN."
The goblins scattered, their merriment giving way to concern that I might blast them into dust. Behind me, a deep chuckle seemed to rise from the ground itself. A voice echoed in the cavern, neither kind or cruel, full of what felt like wisdom, though that doesn't make sense in the waking world.
It spoke: "I am Eloxman, and I am their King." At hearing him announce his name, my head whipped around in the dream and in real life so hard that I woke immediately with a sprained neck that is still bothering me. I looked at my phone and saw that there were two minutes and fourteen seconds remaining in my ten minute window. I lay on the couch in shocked disbelief: Curly was in my dream, and someone had a name. As I replayed it over and over in my head, I realized that Eloxman was still speaking. I think he may have been preparing to provide the name of his father.

The End:

Sorry, that's actually it. I am going to just see if this continues somehow, but if it does not, then I might get creative with it and make up my own ending. I hope that you enjoyed this if you read this far!

I think I maybe have a narcissist mother :C
Hello,
I'm nearly 16 and I live in France. And I feel very Bad, I think my mother is toxic (or at least the did toxic things to me) but the problem is that she isn't always, sometimes she is kind with me so I don't know what to think or what I should do. (And also because of that I have some sort of trauma, and I have a really poor mental health).
Any advice would be appreciated :) Thank you.
A few examples of things she said to me :
“I hate you, I hate you”; “You’re just a piece of shit”; “I should have aborted”; “You are my worst mistake”; “You’re crazy, you need to be hospitalized”; “Why are you ruining my life”; "You are useless" ; “Why aren’t you like such a person, you’re rubbish”; “You are as ugly on the inside as you are on the outside”; “I’m going to put you in boarding school”; “Why do you exist”; “No one loves you and never will”; “You will end up alone all your life”; “You have no personality and you only copy others”; “You are pathetic/miserable”; “Why I have to put up with you constantly”; "I do not care about you" ; “As soon as you turn 18 you get out of my house” (we agree on at least one thing xD); “You have a heart of stone”; “You are selfish” “The day I die, don’t come cry at my grave”; “You dress like a tramp”; "Everything is your fault" ; “You are worthless”, “I will destroy your race”; "Why do I have a child like you who is not normal" You are the most toxic of diseases" etc... (there are probably many others but they don't come to mind)
A few examples of things she did to me :

• Hit me and push me against the wall while sticking to me so that I don't move
• Threaten to humiliate me by revealing my secrets to my friends if I don't do what she asks of me
• Lock myself outside the apartment for an hour (well theoretically it's in front of the door) but it's still limited in my opinion
• Ignoring me for days and weeks without speaking to me
• Once I came out of the bathroom naked to take my clothes to my room, and she threatened to take a photo of me like that (but never did)
• (It may not be much, but it really hurt me) she has already
• She tells MY problems to people she knows without my consent
• Played with my feelings/emotions
• Has a totally conditional love with me
• Threw objects on me to hurt me
• Wrote all of my passwords on a document to access all my accounts.

I think I maybe have a narcissist mother :C
Hello,
I'm nearly 16 and I live in France. And I feel very Bad, I think my mother is toxic (or at least the did toxic things to me) but the problem is that she isn't always, sometimes she is kind with me so I don't know what to think or what I should do. (And also because of that I have some sort of trauma, and I have a really poor mental health).
Any advice would be appreciated :) Thank you.
A few examples of things she said to me :
“I hate you, I hate you”; “You’re just a piece of shit”; “I should have aborted”; “You are my worst mistake”; “You’re crazy, you need to be hospitalized”; “Why are you ruining my life”; "You are useless" ; “Why aren’t you like such a person, you’re rubbish”; “You are as ugly on the inside as you are on the outside”; “I’m going to put you in boarding school”; “Why do you exist”; “No one loves you and never will”; “You will end up alone all your life”; “You have no personality and you only copy others”; “You are pathetic/miserable”; “Why I have to put up with you constantly”; "I do not care about you" ; “As soon as you turn 18 you get out of my house” (we agree on at least one thing xD); “You have a heart of stone”; “You are selfish” “The day I die, don’t come cry at my grave”; “You dress like a tramp”; "Everything is your fault" ; “You are worthless”, “I will destroy your race”; "Why do I have a child like you who is not normal" You are the most toxic of diseases" etc... (there are probably many others but they don't come to mind)
A few examples of things she did to me :

• Hit me and push me against the wall while sticking to me so that I don't move
• Threaten to humiliate me by revealing my secrets to my friends if I don't do what she asks of me
• Lock myself outside the apartment for an hour (well theoretically it's in front of the door) but it's still limited in my opinion
• Ignoring me for days and weeks without speaking to me
• Once I came out of the bathroom naked to take my clothes to my room, and she threatened to take a photo of me like that (but never did)
• (It may not be much, but it really hurt me) she has already
• She tells MY problems to people she knows without my consent
• Played with my feelings/emotions
• Has a totally conditional love with me
• Threw objects on me to hurt me
• Wrote all of my passwords on a document to access all my accounts.

I think I maybe have a narcissist mother :C
Hello,
I'm nearly 16 and I live in France. And I feel very Bad, I think my mother is toxic (or at least the did toxic things to me) but the problem is that she isn't always, sometimes she is kind with me so I don't know what to think or what I should do. (And also because of that I have some sort of trauma, and I have a really poor mental health).
Any advice would be appreciated :) Thank you.
A few examples of things she said to me :
“I hate you, I hate you”; “You’re just a piece of shit”; “I should have aborted”; “You are my worst mistake”; “You’re crazy, you need to be hospitalized”; “Why are you ruining my life”; "You are useless" ; “Why aren’t you like such a person, you’re rubbish”; “You are as ugly on the inside as you are on the outside”; “I’m going to put you in boarding school”; “Why do you exist”; “No one loves you and never will”; “You will end up alone all your life”; “You have no personality and you only copy others”; “You are pathetic/miserable”; “Why I have to put up with you constantly”; "I do not care about you" ; “As soon as you turn 18 you get out of my house” (we agree on at least one thing xD); “You have a heart of stone”; “You are selfish” “The day I die, don’t come cry at my grave”; “You dress like a tramp”; "Everything is your fault" ; “You are worthless”, “I will destroy your race”; "Why do I have a child like you who is not normal" You are the most toxic of diseases" etc... (there are probably many others but they don't come to mind)
A few examples of things she did to me :

• Hit me and push me against the wall while sticking to me so that I don't move
• Threaten to humiliate me by revealing my secrets to my friends if I don't do what she asks of me
• Lock myself outside the apartment for an hour (well theoretically it's in front of the door) but it's still limited in my opinion
• Ignoring me for days and weeks without speaking to me
• Once I came out of the bathroom naked to take my clothes to my room, and she threatened to take a photo of me like that (but never did)
• (It may not be much, but it really hurt me) she has already
• She tells MY problems to people she knows without my consent
• Played with my feelings/emotions
• Has a totally conditional love with me
• Threw objects on me to hurt me
• Wrote all of my passwords on a document to access all my accounts.

[FIRST][LAST][NEXT]
After Action Report - Venlil Colonial Defense Force
Subject : Captain Farva
A gentle giggle rose from the foot of my bed. I curl up in my blankets at first not willing to be woken by the kids; Whatever they were up to; my mind still foggy from morning dreariness. I heard chief Donu exchanging excitedly with someone not far away in engineering speak, my tired brain could not parse. The tones of synthetic beeps, and electrical humming slowly entered my awareness. I raised my paw to wipe the morning dew from my eyes but I felt some kind of resistance to my paw. I sit up confused, I am not in my bedroom, or my quarters aboard my ship.
I am on a soft bed, with a soft blanket made of a finely woven material draped off my form. Around me is a curtain wall hung off of a curved metal pole which encompasses the entire bed, and I am flanked on both sides by medical equipment. Boxy screens display what I assume to be my vital signs accompanied by a strange blocky alien script. Inspecting my arm I notice an IV drip is inserted into the vein. Feeling a fading headache I reach up to my forehead where I feel a bandage covering a tender wound. Where Did I….
A sharp meep escapes my mouth. I am on the predator ship!
I quickly begin to tear at the IV line, not wanting whatever poisons the predators are feeding me to further enter my body. The room goes quiet, the curtain wall is disturbed, I focus on tearing away the bandage, panicking my coordination falters but I almost have it out when a paw reaches out to stop me. A cream colored venlil has rushed to my bed frantically batting at my arms in an attempt to stop me from saving myself.
“Captain, please let me help. I don't want you to hurt yourself!”
Not thinking, in full stampede mode I back hand the interloper with my paw.
A startle meep escapes her lips.
The IV is ripped out with the sudden motion.
Orange Blood begins to drip from the improperly removed IV.
This site further raises my heart rate.
The Venlil Recovers and I recognize her.
“Nurse Fila, What are you doing? what's going on?!”
“Farva you need to calm down, your going to be alright let me look at that arm”
“NO!”
I pulled my injured arm away. Jumping up to stand on the bed. Why was Fila working with the predators? What had they injected into my body?
“What are they holding over you! Why are you working with the predators! Where's Nyan?!”
“Captain Farva please calm down, These predators are different, they don't want to hurt us, you need to believe me”
It must have been some mind altering drug, these predators clearly have her under their spell! I needed to get out of here. I couldn't force her to come with me. I needed to escape and regroup, and pray to whatever gods will listen that I could get off this ship somehow.
I bolted from the bed crashing through the curtains, they did not move out of the way fast enough and my mass caused the curtain rods to be hoisted from their housings. I collapsed upon the floor, my movement hindered by the tangled mass of predatory linens. I struggled against the vile curtain entrapment. I had to use my claws to tear my way free of them. I looked up, predatory growls of surprise, and startled meeps echoed out from all around me.
My peripheral vision was filled with images of both predator and prey alike, I was surrounded on all sides. Nurse Fila was behind me stunned by my sudden actions. Donu looked towards me with concern, and I looked to the far end of the room to see Nyan, In the clutches of a blond haired predator. Digging her claws into his young flesh.
Donu gets up gesturing with her tail in a placating motion. “Easy now Farva, don’t do anything rash!” Donu speaks.
They have her too!
I bolt past her and the massive predator standing next to her. I go to grab Nyan, but he is pulled from my reach! The large predator turns her body to shield me from her catch.
“Hey easy now!” It barks, holding Nyan away from me.
Nyan reaches his paw out past the predator. A horrified look in his eyes.
With only the frantic strength a mother could conjure, I grasp his outstretched paw and pull him from the predator's grasp. With him once again in my arms I see the door to the pen we are in begin to open. Wasting no time, I bolt full sprint from the door. Only to be met by a large black mass. A tall impenetrable wall of muscle, cloaked in foot to shoulder black artificial pelts. Holding a colorful pink box, no doubt gaining that color from being caked in the blood of innocent prey animals. I raise my paw not holding Nyan to swipe at him, to rip my way past him. But before I can make contact my arm is grabbed by the predator's meaty digits. It holds me tight just below the paw where the wound from the ripped out IV sits. Blood dripped from the wound, no doubt triggering its bloodlust. I drop Nyan to free my other paw, I go to swipe the predator to free my arm but again I am stopped. I look to my right to see Donu restraining my arm.
“Donu let go!” I scream. “You're not of your own mind!”
“My mind is fine thank you!” She replies.
I turn to kick her away, striking her twice with quick kicks. Desperately trying to free myself from her deranged clutches. I wind up to kick a third time only for Nyan to wrap his whole body around my legs.
“Nyan Stop” I cry, my heart beating at a million light years per hour.
“Please…Don't hurt Teal’c and Donu” Nyan pleads.
I frantically wiggle my body desperately trying to regain autonomy from my traitorous captors.
“Im going to sedate her” proclaims my former ship nurse Fila.
Grabbing a Needle she stalks towards me, eager and willing to deliver me into the jaws of her captors.
“That will not be necessary” says the large predator holding my arm. He sets his package upon a nearby bed, and grabs my other arm from Donu, and then easily flips me around. And holds my arms behind my head, he then proceeds to kick my legs out from under me and forces me to the ground in a vice-like headlock.
“BE CALM CAPTAIN FARVA” It bellows “Further resistance will only cause more harm to yourself, and more worry from your crew, listen to them”
“Captain please just relax your safe, if they wanted to hurt you they could have a long time ago” Donu almost seems to try and trick me to the predator's side. But I see her glancing nervously towards the cut on my arms. Deep down I think she knows what that means. Nyan also pleads with me to listen. It's at this I begin to tear up at the hopelessness of it all. I wail out in despair frantically thrashing to free myself from the predator's death grip but to no avail.
I sit here once again, bested by predators, having failed those I love, but instead of rotting in a cattle pen or in the belly of an Arxurs stomach. They lie in a different kind of pen, their minds’ no longer theirs, as they fall victim to the predator's spell. Brainwashed to serve as the perfect compliant cattle.
Nurse Fila approaches a needle in her hand.
“I'm going to sedate her I need to look at that wound”
“Hold up a second” speaks the blond predator, she seems to be calming down.
The truth is I have no will left to fight, I have been bested time and again, there is only sorrow left and self pity. I only wish for a swift end now. I don't wish to live with the weight of this long string of failures weighing on my mind any longer. I go limp in the predator's arms.
“Please just… make it quick predator” I manage to say, sobbing making it hard to talk as I get out the words between snuffling breaths.
“It's okay Farva, please don't be sad” Nyan pleads as he clings tightly to my waist.
The predator holding me growls quietly into my ear. “I am going to release you now, do not attempt to harm nurse Fila as she is trying to help you now, do you understand?”. I tilt my ears in the affirmative, nothing happens for a moment until Donu signals to the predator who I guess whose name is Teal’c that I responded in the affirmative. My arms are slowly brought to my side. My left arm is released but not the wounded right one. Teal’c displaying some knowledge in medical etiquette seems to be intentionally applying pressure to the wound to prevent bleeding, I am led back to the bed.
Nurse Fila is about to attempt to fix my wound but is stopped by the blond predator.
“Allow me, this should go a lot more smoothly with this.” The blond predator produces a strange golden metal device, it appears like a strange wiry gauntlet, with metal claws and a strange crystal in the center. It emits a strange pulsing sound that I cringe at, but I am held firm by nurse fila, I can't look away as the strange glow it emits passes over my arms. The curtain of despair lifts for a moment, replaced by incredulousness as before my eyes the wounded artery in my arms miraculously seals itself, as elegantly as a flight suit being zipped up. My arm is left feeling slightly warm which soon fades, any sign of the wound is gone.
Fila speaks in an incredulous tone.
“It is endlessly baffling how your medical bay is stocked with simple alcohol based disinfectants and primitive bandages and sutures. Like something I'd see in a primitive yotul field hospital, while simultaneously containing healing tools so advanced they would make the finest Zurulian theoretical medical engineers sell their own tail.”
The blond predator lets out a high pitched broken chortle, which my translator pings as laughter. “I don’t know what a Zurulian is but compared to what we've seen this is nothing, this is a miniature version of the same technology used in a Goa'uld sarcophagus, which can reanimate dead tissue, bringing people back to life even after complete brain death.”
“Fascinating” Donu replied “what is the nature of this radiation”
“That technology itself is actually derivative of an ancient healing device created by our distant primordial ancestors the Alterans, which emitted subspace based healing radiation. We currently have the original device back in our home dimension being reverse engineered back in area 51” Spoke a third predator, who was standing up against the far wall.
He seemed to be holding onto himself quite fiercely, perhaps he struggled to hold in his bloodlust, unlike the two predators currently at my side.
“For predators they have such wondrous technology Farva” Donu says as she takes my paw and massages it gently in an attempt to ease my anxiety. “I almost wouldn't believe it if not for what they have shown us so far. Tell me, do you know how they got us off of our ship?”
A wave of realization washed over me as I sat dumbfounded in the bed. How did they get us off this ship? My brain had been in nonstop flight mode since the battle. I had been so occupied with survival I never stopped to contextualize my mere presence, on this ship, in one piece, why had we all seemingly awoken in this ship's hangar bay. No wait we didn't awaken, most of us were standing. Maybe we were drugged and removed, with no memory of the lost time. But that couldn’t be right. I was looking at the countdown to the core explosion. It had hit zero. I saw the flash myself.
“I was on the bridge holding Nyan in my arms, but after that I remember being in that hangar bay, with Nyan, in the exact same position.”
“The humans have a technology that allows them to break down matter at the atomic level, transfer it via an electromagnetic molecular confinement beam, and reassemble it at a different location completely remotely!” Donu excitedly proclaimed.
“You were teleported directly from the bridge to our ships hangar bay with your crew, and Donu to our infirmary due to her severe radiation poisoning.” Commented the blond predator.
Nyan finished crawling up the bed and snuggled into my side. “They fixed Donu, Samantha fixed her with her healing glove!” Nyan excitedly brayed, his tail wagging uncontrollably.
My stomach dropped, how had I forgotten, how did I let that slip my mind, Donu was subjected to at least 3.6 standard units of gamma radiation. Her presence here was a miracle. I hugged her tightly, my guilt for my actions only increased, how could I neglect the damage done to one of my oldest friends. Was I so predator diseased that I forgot to think of my herd?
The predator whose name was Samantha spoke ”Yeh sorry it took us so long, we cut it a lot closer than we wanted, but we had to adjust our transporter lock to account for the radiation flooding the ship, the levels experienced were harmless for the most part, but enough to cause problems.”
The fear chemicals were slowly draining from my mind, my head became clearer as I started to consider the actions of these predators so far. They had offered to help my ship while risking their own vessel, they had tried for peace before throwing themselves into battle, they had little reason to help us and little reason to try and take our technology as their capabilities seem to surpass ours in many ways so far.
I looked towards the blond haired predator, towards Samantha.
“Why did you help us? What do you hope to gain?”
She responded ”Well now we would like to maybe get some intel about this local region of space, we are not from around here and frankly we could do with some help securing some parts. But with that in mind we didn't really expect anything out of you when we first got your hail. We helped because you were in trouble, and your situation sounded dire.”
“And I'm just supposed to believe that! Prey ships would be waging pros and cons before even thinking about helping another ship under attack, especially with not knowing anything at all about the other ships capabilities”
Donu squeezed my paw and interjected. "These humans aren’t like normal predators, they are pack predators, they are very social, and even appear to feel genuine empathy, they even eat plants, they have been feeding us from their own reserves!”
“How is that possible?” I ask, having never heard of such a thing.
“Well where we come from” Samantah responded ”Omnivorous life is extremely common, not just on our home planet but nearly every one of the thousands of habitable planets we have visited contain omnivorous life in some form or another, It is an incredibly beneficial evolutionary trait.”
“Thousands! How can that be, our scientist have never encountered such a thing”
“That's the thing, they're not from this galaxy Farva, they're not even from this dimension!”
Donu gets into explaining the technical aspects of the Daedalus's faithful journey to our dimension, while Nyan, an always hungry growing boy, runs off during her explanation, to approach the large predator known as Teal’c.
“Can I have another donut?” he asks, pointing to the box that I now realize is not covered in blood but instead merely painted a gaudy pink.
“You may, but only after you have completed your grooming rituals, it is important for little ones such as yourself to learn and maintain proper hygiene practices” Teal’c spoke, his growls almost seeming to take up a fatherly aura.
He looks disappointed slightly but then his ears and tail perks up as he runs behind Samantha and out of sight, he remerges with a hairbrush and plops himself down on the predator's lap. To which she responds by snarling at him intensely.
“Donu” I shriek, interrupting the third predator's speech on the volatile nature of fourth dimensional space. Shocked at how quickly the predator could go from civility to volatility so rapidly. I was quickly calmed by Donu and Fila assuring me that this was merely an odd habit of the humans. The upturned teeth baring signaled happiness to them. Samantha made it clear to me that since her jaw was not clenched it did not indicate aggression. Her explanation sounded dubious, but after further observation, her following actions did not seem to indicate she wanted to harm the boy. Nyan offers her the brush once he sees that I am finished panicking.
She gives and odd closed mouth smile. "You have an almost PHD level knowledge of physics! don't tell me you don't know how to brush your own fur”
His tail gives a meek wag. ”I like when you do it, you have such nice flat nails and warm fingers!”
He makes his eyes go wide like a pup pleading for attention. The predator’s resolve immediately falters. ”Awh how could I say no to such a cute little angel”.
Samantha begins to help the boy detangle his fur, running her long grasping appendages through his fur in combination with the brush to gently pull apart the knots. He’s already clean from the grime that was present on him from when we were back on the heavily damaged ship, speaking of which I gesture to nurse Kila.
“Kila, how is the crew? How are they holding up? why aren't they here?”
“17 survivors including yourself, the humans have set up a triage center in their hangar bay, keeping the crew together and trying to give them some space, their stable but many of them are bedridden. They're quite scared naturally but,“ nurse Kila gives a look towards the humans “but I think we are going to be alright.”
“So what happens now?” I asked, “you aren't from this dimension and you said you were having drive problems, can you fix those? What are your plans for this dimension?”
The third predator stalked out from his isolated corner to address the room in a posture that emphasized the obvious restraint that was required to contain his instincts around us. “Hi ummm.. My name is Doctor Rodney Mckay, I think I can help with that question, simply put, our drive system uses a specialized quantum subspace field generator to warp 4th dimensional space in a way that allows us to track and catalog dimensional eddies as we call them, and track their specific frequencies which allow us to…….”
------- one long boring explanation later ------
“Ah So I see, you came to this dimension by mistake and need a replacement part that you cannot manufacture yourself to return home, but you think we might be able to manufacture a replacement with our industry?” I asked for clarification from Rodney.
“I discussed with your chief engineer earlier, we should be able to reproduce the part we need at what Donu described as a hyper fabricator, the meta materials available in your dimension you use for warp travel should be sufficient to recreate the part we need”
“In exchange I believe we can help you with your little arxur problem.” Spoke Samantha, running her grasping appendages through the fur of a contented Nyan, who was happily munching away at the strange circular Staryu-like treat the human Teal'c had presented him. Samantha proclaiming it to be sourced from his personal stash.
I was taken back by the revelation that they wanted to offer further assistance, when the predators first mentioned their damaged drive system, I thought they might try to leverage our place as rescued survivors as a means to get access to the part they needed to repair their damaged vessel. But now they were offering further assistance in exchange?
“I don’t understand, you've already done so much? Why would you help us more and risk more damage to your vessel?”
“Well if you want the reason we are going to put on paper, “Samantha said, ”it's to gather intel about a potential threat, and to ensure trust and cooperation of the locals to better expedite the procurement of mission critical drive components. If you want our real reason, its that no one deserves what has been done to you, we can't stay because we have responsibilities in our home dimension, but we don't see why we can’t help you while we are here.”
“So wait, are you proposing what I think you're proposing?”
“I am, from what we learned from your crew the arxur take a large portion of their abductees as cattle, we can track your subspace trails quite quickly and we think we have a good chance of hunting down the arxur transport ships.”
Nyan angled his head to look at both me and the human. Hope in his eyes, the idea of getting my family back would normally seem like an impossible dream, but here I was being comforted by predators, offering to risk their lives for a very lopsided trade in our favor. An ember of hope for the first time in many claws went alight in my chest.
I looked to Donu, who while trying to hide it, looked forlornly in Nyans direction. He was so happy to hear about a rescue plan and excited by all the predators' incredible technology, but while my family was young and fertile enough to be taken as cattle and potentially rescued. I had little doubt that if his family wasn't eaten, or killed in the bombing of the colony, the arxur would have no reason to hold a couple of such advanced age as cattle.
While I myself was a meek prey and a hopeless failure of a military officer, these Humans, despite obviously being fierce predators, had shown off an odd compassion. If anyone could; stand up to the arxur, and hunt them in return it was them.
I would help them anyway I could, they were unfamiliar with our foe, but they have shown themselves to be quite adaptable so far. Working together, we just maybe had a chance at making up for my failures. To set things right, and to save innocent prey from a fate worse than death.
“I think I may have to take you up on your offer kind predator”
Officer Report - Captain Caldwell
CLEARANCE LEVEL 5
Our interim chief engineer Dr.Mckay has successfully clamped open the 4th dimensional hole in space ; as he calls it; so we are clear to jump through this dimension freely without losing our path back to our home dimension. While my first impulse would be to jump to Earth, Unfortunately it seems that this dimension’s earth cold war went hot and it is currently a bombed out waste land. That being said carter and Mckay have struck a deal with the captain of the destroyed venlil defense frigate, in exchange for aiding in the rescue of captured civilians, they are willing to grant us access to the advanced manufacturing equipment needed to repair our Quantum drive.
While the antagonistic cannibalistic arxur are certainly an intimidating foe, they are not invincible and our ship stacks up favorably against theirs when specialized techniques are employed. The problem they cause for us is more unique. Carnivores are rare in this dimension and seemingly more so are omnivores. The Herbivore species known as the venlil are quite afraid of us, having dealt with these arxur for so long, and also due to a seemingly quite intense biological fear response, have been very wary to deal with us. Fortunately due to our admittedly unusually charismatic crew, and their admirable diplomatic efforts, we seem to have gotten them to calm down a lot since we initially transported them onto our ship. I am going to check up on the venlil crew and captain in the Medbay now, as they will be the most essential venlil to our efforts going forward.
As I walk in it seems that captain Farva is fast asleep, while Rodney appears to be using a Donut to explain the workings of a stargate to the aliens engineers.
“Okay so the stargate, you see this donut, imagine it's about 10 venlil tall, and made of metal” Rodney picks up another donut and hands it to the Child named Nyan. ”Okay first off don't eat that, secondly imagine you are a ancient alien race, and you want to get to point A to point B as fast as possible. Ftl isn’t quite fast enough so what if you could instead skip the trip and skip to the end. The stargate network allowed the ancient alternans to simply walk from planet to planet” Rodney used his finger to gesture from donut to donut in his explanation of the stargates, speaking about their functions as well as their dangers, mentioning some notable accidents associated with their use, like unwanted time travel, stellar poisoning and dimension hopping, the ladder being a large part of why we were here in this dimension to begin with. Most concerningly however, the venlil Nyan took a bite out of the donut when rodney finished his explanation.
Samantha was working quietly with nurse Fila and looked up from some chemical diagrams when she noticed I had entered the room. I asked if I could have a word, and took Her, Rodney, and Teal'c aside to have a meeting with them. We left the room due to the venlil’s exceptional hearing, as we had previously discovered when various medics made some inappropriate comments on how the venlil were “cute enough to eat '' thinking they were out of earshot.
Having taken them aside I spoke up. “I have already told this to Shepard and our medical staff in the hangar bay, and I would like to congratulate you on your remarkable progress on bridging the gap with the venlil. Going from shoot on sight in the hangar bay to literally eating out of your hands in a matter of hours represents some major diplomatic prowess.”
“Thank you captain” Samantha Said.
“There behavior is indeed most unusual” followed Teal’c
“But seemingly quite understandable given what they have been through with the wraith, Sorry! Arxur, Freudian slip.” chimed rodney.
“I would love to look at the biosphere of one of their planets, their ecology seems preposterous judging by the way they describe it. But they are a space faring species so they presumably know what they are talking about.” added Samantha.
“I myself am curious based on what you reported general, their dimension is quite odd but I suppose ours would be weird to them as well, but we have responsibilities back home.” I responded curtly. “I do have a question for you all though, The Venlil are a herbivorous species with intense emotional reactions and societal values pertaining to the consumption of meat, including animal products correct?”
Samantha answered ”We have been avoiding the subject of meat consumption as much as possible, focusing on our plant based foods for the venlil’s comfort, and they have been happy to keep that topic to a minimum after the initial introductions, but I don't believe they would respond well to the idea of consumption of…..” Samantha trails off with a worried look. “Oh god wait, please don’t tell me”
Teal’c looks confused, Rodney facepalms.
“You do know that donuts have eggs in them? Don't you.”

2.5. DITTHUPĀDĀNA

Ditthi upādāna - clinging to a speculative/wrong view due to the lack of proper consideration/mindset (yoniso manasikara).

According to the Brahmajula Sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya, in the 6th century B.C in India there were 62 wrong views. All the 62 can be philosophically grouped into two. They are annihilationism and eternalism - (Ucchedavada and Sassatavada) [THE CONCEPT OF UPĀDĀNA AND ANUPĀDĀNA IN EARLY BUDDHISM (R Punna)]

Theravada (as Vibhajjavāda) here rejects Ditthi upādāna.

2.5.1. Attavadupādāna

Ucchedavada and Sassatavada are based on attavada or attavadupādāna (attachment to the soul or self), not in line with the Ariya Sacca (the Noble Truth). Attavadupādāna is based on sakkaya ditthi, which is instinctive; everyone is born with it.

Sakkaya (Sa or Santo, that means which really exists, and Kaya, aggregate) means the five aggregates which really exist. Ditthi means 'view'. These two words constitute Sakkaya Ditthi... Sakkaya Ditthi is the breeding and the birth place of the sixty two kinds of Ditthi.

• Sakkaya ditthi means clinging to nama and rupa as I am—i.e. this body is me, mine. That is to say clinging to impermanent things, which will soon no longer exist, is a painful mistake.

The Buddha gave a detailed analysis of these wrong views asserted in sixty-two ways and pointed out that these views had their origin in feeling which arose as a result of repeated contact through the six sense bases. Whatever person holds these wrong views, in him feeling gives rise to craving; craving gives rise to clinging, clinging gives rise to existence; the kammic causal process in existence gives rise to rebirth, and rebirth gives rise to ageing, death, grief, lamentation, pain, distress and despair. [Guide to Tipitaka: Canonical Pâli Buddhist Literature of the Theravâda School (U Ko Lay):]

• Vedana (expecially pain) makes us to cling to our bodies and fearful of pain, death, aging, and disease.
• Contemplating and witnessing the nature of anicca (impermanence) regularly for a long time can cut off this clinging.
• We must regard nama as nama and rupa as rupa, not me or mine.

One who has sakkāya ditthi views the body as I am — this body is me.

Upadana leads to attavadupadanam/attavādūpādānaṃ (Soul-theory). Attavadupadanam can also be understood as sakkaya ditthi (regarding the nama-rupa complex as I am).
Pali Commentaries Atthakatha - English Translations Collection:

(v) Cattaro upadana-kamupadamn, ditthupadanam, sflabbatupadanam, attavadupadanam.

1. Sakkaya-ditthi - sati + kaye + ditthi, literally, view when a group exists. Here kaya refers to the five Aggregates of matter, feeling, perception, mental states, and consciousness, or, in other words, to the complex-compound of mind and matter. The view that there is one unchanging entity, a permanent soul, when there is a complex-compound of psycho physical aggregates is termed sakkaya-ditthi. Dhammasangani enumerates twenty kinds of such soul theories (see Dhammasangani Translation, pp. 257-259). Sakkaya-ditthi is usually rendered by self-illusion, theory of individuality, illusion of individualism.

2.5.2. UPĀDĀNA (Birth Determinant)

Upādāna (attachment/clinging) is the opposite of anupādāna (detachment).

4 kinds of clinging are: sensuous clinging (kāmupādāna), clinging to views (diṭṭhupādāna), clinging to mere rules and ritual (sīlabbatupādāna), clinging to the personaljty-belief (atta-vādupādāna).

Upādāna (clinging) occurs as the mind clings to perceived reality: man, cat, dog, car, a woman's voice, a cat's meow, the taste of meat, the smell of a flower, etc. Upādāna occurs as a belief in perceived reality as real and permanent (unchanging). Why do we believe a man is a man, a cat is a cat, a car is a car, a woman's voice is a woman's voice, a meow is a meow, etc? We do so because we instinctively believe they are real and stable. Why do we believe something exists and is real?
A cat is only a perceived reality. The reality (paramattha) is there is no cat but a nāma-rupa complex.
The process of perceiving, believing and clinging is so short. There is no natural resistance against this process. Thus, the Buddha advised the bhikkhus to develop indriya samvara sila.

As a result, one is able to comprehend the true reality of the sense objects without reacting to them with greed or aversion resulting in wholesome thoughts and actions.

• Perceived reality (wrong concepts and ideas) is a wrong view.
• Clinging to perceived reality (wrong views) leads to wrong actions.

Avijja-paccaya saṅkhārā (Dependent on ignorance, reaction (conditioning) arises).

We act according to our instincts. Upādāna is instinctive. We cling to something with love or hatred. Upadana is deeper than memory. It is a part of Paticcasamuppada: Anuloma (forward order). It determines the future form/birth:

vedana-paccaya tanha; Dependent on sensation craving and aversion arise ;

To know a cat as a cat means clinging, and clinging means to be reborn as a cat.
'Know a dog as a dog' means to be reborn as a dog.
'Know a hen as a hen' means to be reborn as a hen.
'Know a fish as a fish' means to be reborn as a fish.
We cannot be reborn as a car, a house, a boat or a tree; however, we can be reborn as something that can cling to that car, that house, that boat, that tree, etc. Whatever being (a bitch, for example) is living in that car, that house, that boat, that tree, etc., can become one's mother.
Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw explains thus,

for having pleasurable attachment to his properties with greed, when he died, he was conceived in the womb of a bitch at his own house. The bitch gave birth to an infant dog in about one and a half or two months time. [Subha's father, Todeyya, was reborn as a dog]

If no animal is there to become a mother, then there will be a ghost (peta) to haunt a property or an item. Some stories are collected in Vimānavatthu and Petavatthu. (Vimānavatthu and Petavatthu)
To see something as mere nāma and rupa can correct the view. Why don't we see nama and rupa but cat, dog, man, car, alcohol, etc.? When we hear a sound, why do we know it's a cat, a car, a dog, a person, etc.? When we smell something, why do we know it is a flower, perfume, fresh air, etc.?
Because we memorised them and because our instinct is to perceive and memorise them that way.
The wrong view leads to clinging. Clinging means one is flowing with the current. The process of cutting off attachment is to let go, and that is also to go against one's true nature or instinct. That is not the nature mentioned in the Bloodstream Sermon — "The one who knows his nature is a buddha."
'To let go of something' means to have appropriate mindset (yoniso manasikara).

2.5.3. Yonisomanasikāra

yonisomanasikāra : [m.] proper consideration. Yoniso Manasikara (PropeWise Attention)

Yonisomanasikāra could be translated as 'appropriate mindset', with which one could reflect appropriately anything in any situation. Mindset (Vocabulary.com):

a habitual or characteristic mental attitude that determines how you will interpret and respond to situations.

Luang Por Pasanno: Wise Reflection (audio)

[35:00] The 2nd Noble Truth ... to let go of suffering ... What's its cause? What's its source? ... The cessation of suffering is to be realised. The path leading to cessation of suffering is to be caltivated and developed... We don't pay much attention to the cessation of suffering. If we were suffering all the time, we wouldn't be here... [Without paying attention to the end of suffering] We go on to the other subject, identifying another suffering ... not here yet, but it's gonna come...

WISE ATTENTION: YONISO MANASIKARA IN THERAVADA BUDDHISM By Dr Ari Ubeysekara

“Monks, with regard to internal factors, I don’t envision any other single factor like appropriate attention as doing so much for a monk in training, who has not attained the heart’s goal but remains intent on the unsurpassed safety from bondage. A monk who attends appropriately abandons what is unskillful and develops what is skillfull.”[3]

PERIPHERAL AWARENESS Ajahn Nyanamoli Thero

Body postures are more general than attending to a particular action or perception. But having a “body there” is even more general than the postures. Because to be walking, sitting, standing or lying down, one needs to have a body in the first place. That’s why one can also use the knowledge of “there is body”, as the peripheral anchor for one’s daily actions and experiences.

2.5.4. Samyojanna (Fetters)

Self identification view. The view that mistakenly identifies any of the khandha as "self"; the first of the ten fetters (samyojana). Abandonment of sakkaya ditthi is one of the hallmarks of stream entry (see sotapanna).

Mogok Sayadaw advised that before meditating, one should remove five (1-5) samyojanna and establish Right View.

(1) personality-belief (sakkāya-ditthi)

• Rāga and tanhā are the same.

2.5.5. Ten kilesās:

1. False views (sakayaditthi)
2. Doubt (vicikiccha)
3. Belief in the effectiveness of rituals
4. Sensuous pleasure (raga)
5. Aversion (dosa)
6. Passion towards rupa jhanas (pertaining to the sphere of forms)
7. Passion towards arupa jhanas (pertaining to the formless sphere)
8. Self pride (mana)
9. restlessness and worries (uddhacca)
10. Ignorance (avijja)

• Kilesā are saṅkhārā.
• One must suppress these kilesā, especially during mediation.

2.5.6. Saṅkhārā: Vaci (verbal), Mano (mental) and Kaya (physical).

Sila and Indriyasamvāra Sila support the Samādhi.
Sammā Samādhi supports the mind to anchore on the vipassanā object and prevent the saṅkhārā.
Samādhi: focus,
Knowing the state/nature of the body and mind (nāma-rupa) is pannā—yathā bhuta nāna dassana.

2.5.7. vedana-paccaya tanha

Vedana occurs at the physical and mental sense organs:
Types of vedanā and a State Beyond Vedana (Vipassana Research Institute):

• Kāyika vedanā (bodily feeling) are five kinds.
• Cetasika vedanā (mental feeling) are 52 kinds.

Five Kinds Of Vedana

• sukhindriya (pleasure)
• dukkhindriya (pain)
• somanassindriya (mental joy)
• domanassindriya (mental grief)
• upekkhindriya (equanimity)

Five Kāyika Vedana (Bodily Feeling)

Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching occur at the panca kamaguna (five sense elements): eye, ear, nose, tongue and body.

2.5.8. The 52 Cetasikas:

[Mental Factors or Mental Properties (= Cetasika): Mental Factors in group (page 5-7):]

• 13 ‘Aññasamāna’ Cetasikas (common with the other)
  • Common with Kusala Cittas, Akusala Cittas, Vipāka Cittas or Kiriya Cittas
  • “ethically variable”
• 14 Akusala Cetasikas (unwholesome)
• 25 Sobhana Cetasikas (beautiful mental factors)

[Nārada Thera:] No sobhanas - (beautiful) occur in an immoral consciousness.

Aññasamāna Cetasikas are two types:
[quote]

• 7 sabbacittasadharana cetasikas
• 6 pakinnaka cetasikas

Whereas in the Suttas all phenomena of existence are summed up under the aspect of 5 groups:

• corporeality,
• feeling,
• perception,
• mental formations,
• consciousness (s. khandha),

The Abhidhamma as a rule treats them under the more philosophical 3 aspects:

• consciousness,
• mental factors and
• corporeality (citta, cetasika, rūpa).

Cetasika or mental factor, is another type of Dhamma which arises together with citta, experiences the same object as citta, falls away together with citta and arises at the same base as citta. Cetasikas have each their own characteristic and perform each their own function. There are 52 types of cetasikas in all.

[end quote]

cetasika : [adj.] mental; (nt.), a mental property.

The four realties are citta, cetasika, rupa, Nibāna.
Due to ignorance (heedlessness, lacking sati/mindfulness), vedanā (sensation) can lead to saṅkhārā (thought, speech, body movement). During meditation, thought and body movement are disruption and considered as kilesa.

kilesa : [m.] passion; lust; depravity; impurity.

Vedana → Saṅkhārā → Taṇhā → Upādāna

tanha-paccaya upadanam;

Upādāna: (One is) clinging to saṅkhārā with the force of Taṇhā.
The strength of taṇhā is essential for upādāna.

Avijjā and taṇhā are always paired to renew a being. [The Connection Between Atta and Dukkha: Buddhist Analysis of Human Experience and the Ways to Transcend Unsatisfactoriness (Bhikkhuni Dhammanandā)]

2.6. Swimming Against the Current

U. Mapa

One can be re-born in the deva world due to some past good deeds (kamma) but once the force of the good kamma is exhausted there will be the descending journey which could even be to the very bottom of the plains of existence

Dhammapada - Verse 218.)

In that person a deep yearning for the undefined Nibbána has arisen. He has already touched it mentally. He is called a swimmer against the current-an upstream bound person. He has already started the process towards Nibbána.

2.6.1. Samatha-vipassanā:

MOGOK SAYADAW'S WAY TO THE VIPASSANA PRACTICE:
Venerable Mogok Sayadaw, in a lecture: အပါယ်လေးပါးတခါးပိတ်တဲ့အမြင်, explained about who was born in the past and who will be born in the future lives. He said nama rupa (Mind-body-complex) lived and died in the past lives. Nama rupa also live the current life. Only nama and rupa will be reborn to live and die in the future lives before reaching the Nibbána. Samsara is the birth and death of rupa and nama recurring.
The Nama-rupa process is not somebody or a being. The past body is not me, not my life. The current body is not me, not my life, either. If there is the future body, regarding it as 'me', 'my body', 'my life' is unwise.
That lecture related to the Three Parinnas:

1. You must recognise and differentiate between mind [nama] and matter [rupa] in the present sensation that develops. This is called Nataparinana.
2. You must recognise and realise the impermanence, suffering and impersonal qualities (Anissa, Dukkha and Anatta) of the present sensation. This is called Tiranaparinana.
3. You must realise that the present sensation is neither your body, nor your mind and try to avoid clinging (Tanha) and self-conceit (Mana) and delusion or wrong view of regarding consciousness as your soul (Ditthi). This is called Pahanaparinana.

2.6.2. The Three Parinnas

Also in The Vipassana Dipani (The Manual of Insight), Mahathera Ledi Sayadaw explains the Three Parinnas in details. However, they are large and complex subjects. Reading alone could not be enough to understand them.
Quotes from Mahathera Ledi Sayadaw's book:
Parinna means profound knowledge.

1. Nata-parinna, Autological knowledge.
2. Tirana-parinna, Analytical knowledge.
3. Pahana-parinna, Dispelling knowledge.

Nata-parinna:
a profound and accurate discernment of mental and material phenomena with all their proximate causes, and also of Nibbána, as shown in the previous sections on the Truths and the Causes.
Tirana-parinna:

1. Anicca-parinna: a perfect or a qualified knowledge of the law of death (marana). Here by death is meant the two kinds of the same, conventional death (sammutimarana) and the ultimate death (paramatthamarana).
2. Dukkha-parinna: a perfect or a qualified knowledge of the intrinsic characteristic Ill or infelicity. Here Ill is of two kinds:
   1. Vedayita-dukkha (Pain-feeling ill): bodily and mental pains
   2. Bhayattha-dukkha (Fear producing ill): Bhaya-nana (knowledge of things as fearful), and of the Adinavanana (knowledge of things as dangerous)
3. Anattá-parinna: the perfect or the qualified knowledge of things mental and material as possessing the characteristic of No-soul." By this knowledge of things as no soul [no atta], the Anatta-nanna, all the mental and material phenomena that belong to the ultimate truths are discerned as having no soul.

Pahana-parinna:
the perfect or the qualified knowledge that dispels hallucinations. It dispels the three Nicca-vippallasas by means of the insight acquired through the contemplation of Impermanence, the three Sukha-vipallasas and the three Subha-vippallasas, by means of the insight acquired through the contemplation of Ill, and the three Atta-vippallasas by means of the insight acquired through the contemplation of No-soul.
[End quote]

2.6.3. Nibbāna Is Near; Not Far Away: Sammary

Dhamma Talks by Mogok Sayadaw; 15th December 1961
Nibbāna is a natural phenomenon (Sabhāva Dhamma). Atthi Bhikkhave Nibbānaṃ – Monks! Nibbāna exists. In the Saṁyutta the Buddha said: Nibbānass'eva santike – Nibbāna is not far away, very near (SN.1.46/ (6). Accharāsuttaṃ).
There are trains from good rebirth to good rebirth (sugati to sugati), good rebirth to bad rebirth (sugati to dugati), and good rebirth to Nibbāna. Except the Paccekabuddhas, the world naturally takes the two trains as it can know Nibbāna only with the help of a Sammasambuddha.
The Buddha taught to Rohitassa Devaputta to look for Nibbāna at 2-armed-lengths body (AN.4.45 Rohitassasuttaṃ). One cannot see Nibbāna before penetrating kilesa (mental defilements). Nibbāna, the asaṅkhata dhàtu is the end of the saṅkhata dhàtu. So Rohitassa Devaputta contemplated this 2-armed-lengths body back and forth and saw the inconstancy and disenchantment of it. One who sees the inconstancy and disenchantment of this 2-armed-lengths body can make a firm decision as it's truly dukkha sacca. That way one can come to an end of asaṅkhata dhàtu.
If you win kilesa, you will find dukkha. By penetration of dukkha and then Dukkhasa antaṃ karissati – at the ending of dukkha, you will realise Nibbāna.

2.6.4. Maha-Rahulovada Sutta: The Greater Exhortation to Rahula

In the Maha-Rahulovada Sutta, the Buddha gives a method of focusing on the four mahabhutas.

"Rahula, any form whatsoever that is past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near: every form is to be seen as it actually is with right discernment as: 'This is not mine. This is not my self. This is not what I am.'"

• The Buddha advised Venerable Rahula to establish Right View on the four internal elements (solid, liquid, gas, heat).
  • This solid is not me, not mine.
  • This liquid is not me, not mine.
  • This air is not me, not mine.
  • This heat is not me, not mine.

2.6.5. Mūlapariyāya Suttaṁ The Root of All Things

The Mūlapariyāya Suttaṁ explains how to develop Right View on the four rupa elements.

The ordinary person

2.6.6. Satipatthana:

In walking meditation, as a way of kayagatasati, a yogi can know the start and the end of a step. When doing other actions, the yogi notes the start and end of these actions. A yogi can focus on the start and the end, just these two, as the meditation object. The yogi will be aware that the start followed by the end.
In anapanasati meditation, the yogi focuses on the breath in and out and the start and the end of the breath — to understand death (marana) and the momentariness of existence. Someone new to this practice can focus on the area the in and out air touching. As breathing naturally and fully, one can remain mindful for a long time. One can know the breath, as it can be fast, steady or slow. One will naturally become aware of the start and the end of each breath.
In anapanasati meditation, some focus on the breath (air) moving along the windpipe, and some on the abdomen inflating and deflating.
One can also contemplate on marana (death/impermanence) as Dhamma-satipatthana. This body is impermanent; it will be thorwn away one day. This body is not me; it goes its own way.
In the vedanā-satipatthana training, the goal is sannāvedāyita nirodha.

[PATICCASAMUPPADA] Through deep insight, the Buddha discovered that the crucial link is vedana. In the anuloma-paticcasamuppada, he says "vedana-paccaya tanha'' (with the base of sensation, craving and aversion arise). Vedana is the cause of tanha, which gives rise to dukkha. In order to remove the cause of dukkha or tanha; therefore, one must not allow vedana to connect with tanha; in other words, one must practise Vipassana meditation at this juncture so that avijja becomes vijja or panna (wisdom). One has to observe vedana, to experience and to comprehend the truth of its arising and passing away, i.e., anicca. [...] [MN 28] One who sees paticcasamuppada sees the Dhamma. One who sees the Dhamma sees paticcasamuppada... [The Buddha - Vipassana - J Krishnamurti (Research Study); (Topics:) Ignorance and Conditioning - Consciousness]

2.6.7. Right Effort

• Concentration (samādhi)
  • Right effort (sammā-vāyāma)
  • Right mindfulness (sammā-sati)
  • Right concentration (sammā-samādhi)

Sustaining undisrupted awareness is sammā-vāyāma (Right Effort). Before meditating, one should determine, "I will keep my mind focusing on the breath. I will not let my mind leave it."
Keeping the mind focused on a meditation object is to prevent the saṅkhārā. Preventing the saṅkhārā (and kilesa) is to avoid agitation and pleasure, and to stop Paticcasamuppada in regular (anuloma) motion.

samādhi : [m.] meditation; onepointedness of the mind.

Samadhi: Stilling and straightening the mind to end it from clinging to affection or aversion is to go against nature and swim upstream. A developed mind has strong samadhi and is skilful in avoiding wrong view/thought and emotion (saṅkhārā and kilesa).

Sila, Samādhi, Pannā

Samatha-Vipassana means preventing the active saṅkhārā (mano, vaci, kaya).
One should keep the body and mind stable. Mouth, mind and body must be kept motionless, except the motion of breathing. The mind is stablised by being mindful of breathing.
Mano-saṅkhārā are thoughts (thinking, seeing images, hearing songs, etc.).
Kaya-saṅkhārā are physical activity (movement, changing position, bodily sensations).
Vaci-saṅkhārā are verbal sounds, speech and thought that includes words.
When saṅkhārā appears, one must notice it until it ends.
When an emotion (greed, anger or whatever it is) appears, one must know/notice it; but make sure to witness the end of it.
The goal is to see the end (anicca).
Seeing (noticing) the anicca is panna (insight).
And then one knows there is no longer such thought or emotion.
According to the Theras, the saṅkhārā must be cut off before it becomes upadana. If the end of the saṅkhārā is noticed, it will not become upadana. Then anupadana can be attained by the end of the vedanā if the end is noticed/acknowledged.
Noticing is sati (mindfulness).
Understanding or seeing the cutting off (ending) is panna (insight).
Anapanasati Sutta: Mindfulness of Breathing
Practical Vipassana Meditation Exercises Mahasi Sayadaw

2.7. THE FOUR FACTORS OF A SOTAPANNA

[Quote] The Venerable Mogok Sayadaw in his discourse on Sotapanna given on the 2nd March, 1960, in Upper Burma, explained the four factors of a Sotapanna, quoted from the original Pannaca Pali.

1. A person who has a right view towards the absence of self or personality view, but the aggregation of five corporeal and mental parts in every being.
2. A person freed from any doubt about this view.
3. A person who has a firm and non-wavering decision about this view.
4. A person who comes to know this view not only through external sources but also with his or her own effort to know this view through Vipassana meditation and insight. [End quote]

Upon losing the wrong view of self, a person establishes the right view and voluntarily dispossesses his attachment to others. He gives up claiming 'this is me', 'that is mine'. He becomes a sotapanna.
That is, however, different from a Bodhisattva losing "individualized will-control" (Lanka Chapter 13).
Sariputtatthera Vatthu:

Verse 11: They take untruth for truth; they take truth for untruth; such persons can never arrive at the truth, for they hold wrong views.

Today we're building Kevin Kaslana, 1st of the 13 Flame Chasers. This is Part 8 of me building the 13 Flame Chasers in D&D.
Let's start off with our goals for this build. First and foremost, we need to be as powerful as possible as Kevin is overpowered as fuck. Second, we need to wield both a Greatsword and Pistols for the Judgement of Shamash. Lastly, we need to deal elemental damage as you do have some powers of fire and ice.
Now, before we start, a bit of a disclaimer. Given Kevin’s status in the game of being extremely overpowered as fuck and basically the final boss of Part 1, his stats and abilities would be more in line with that of a BBEG than a player character. As such, it’s almost impossible to replicate him exactly in D&D as a Level 20 player character without either insanely lucky stat rolls at the beginning and/or needing to go fully beyond Level 20 and basically combine 2 or 3 full classes into one. So for the sake of keeping it SOMEWHAT realistic, we won’t be going past Level 20, but he will be having 18s in all his stats, since that’s the most you can have at Level 1 if you roll for stats. This is very much a build done for entertainment/memes and is not something you should go out of your way to replicate in-game.
If you wish to play this build in a more legitimate manner, then focus on having Strength, Charisma, and Constitution be your highest stats.
For stats, let's just say that Kevin got REALLY REALLY lucky and rolled 18s in all his stats, and nobody questioned him about it since nobody questions Kevin.
18 Strength, as Greatswords are Strength weapons and you wield them as if they were weightless.
18 Dexterity, as that's the stat for Pistols, and you're incredibly fast.
18 Constitution, as you are incredibly hard to take down.
18 Intelligence, as you are a genius scientist and strategist.
18 Wisdom, as you have insanely keen senses.
And lastly, 18 Charisma, as you are incredibly influential and intimidating
For race, Kevin is obviously a Human, but we'll go with Tasha's Custom Lineage for +2 to Strength, putting it at 20 right off the bat. Take History for your Skill of choice, and for your Feat, take the Great Weapon Master Feat. This lets you make a melee weapon attack as a bonus action if you land a Critical Hit or reduce an enemy to 0 HP. You can also subtract 5 from your attack roll with a heavy weapon you're wielding to add 10 the damage of the attack if it hits. Take the Soldier Background for Athletics and Intimidation as you've spent your entire life fighting.
Now, for class, Kevin is a self-righteous warrior who swore to himself to be the savior of humanity from the Honkai, which to me, sounds like Paladin. 1st-level Paladins can take 2 skills from the Paladin list. Insight and Persuasion would be my picks. You get Divine Sense, letting you detect Celestials, Fiends, and Undead in a 60 foot radius around you for a turn, an amount of times per long rest equal to your Charisma modifier + 1. You also get Lay on Hands, a pool of healing equal to 5 times your Paladin level that you can use your Action to heal yourself, since you don't care about your teammates.
2nd Level Paladin is where the fun starts. First, you can pick a Fighting Style, and Great Weapon Fighting will let you reroll 1s and 2s on damage dice with your greatsword for more consistent damage. Secondly, you’re able to cast spells. Paladins can prepare an amount of spells up to half your Paladin Level plus your Charisma Modifier, so 5 for now. Take the spells Searing Smite, Wrathful Smite, Thunderous Smite, Command, and Shield of Faith. Speaking of Smite, Paladins also get Divine Smite, letting you spend a spell slot when you make an attack to deal an extra 2d8 Radiant damage on a hit, increasing by 1d8 against Fiends and Undead, and you can increase the damage by 1d8 or each level of the spell slot used, up to 4th level.
3rd Level Paladins can take their Sacred Oath, and Oath of Vengeance is perfect for someone like Kevin. You get Channel Divinity, which you can use once per short or long rest to do 2 different things. Abjure Enemy, as an Action, forces a Wisdom Saving Throw on a creature within 60 feet. On a failure, the creature is frightened for a minute or until it takes any damage and it cannot move, half movement speed on a success. But the more powerful option is Vow of Enmity. As a bonus action, you can point at an enemy within 10 feet of you, and for the next minute or until they die, you have advantage on all attack rolls made against them. Vengeance Paladins also get Oath Spells, those being the spells Bane and Hunter’s Mark. These Oath Spells do not count against the amount of spells you can prepare. Lastly, 3rd Level Paladins get Divine Health, making you immune to disease.
4th Level Paladins get an Ability Score Improvement or a Feat. We’ll take the Fighting Initiate Feat for another Fighting Style. Defense will give you +1 to AC while wearing armor for that extra protection. You also prepare another spell, but we’ll wait until the next level for that.
5th Level Paladins get an Extra Attack, letting you attack twice in 1 turn. You can also learn 2nd Level Spells and get 2 more Oath Spells, those being Hold Person to paralyze a foe and Misty Step to teleport around. For your extra prepared spell, take Branding Smite.
6th Level Paladins get Aura of Protection, giving you or any allies within 10 feet of you a bonus to saving throws equal to your Charisma modifier. You can prepare an extra spell, so just take Cure Wounds for more healing. You’re mainly gonna be using your spell slots for buffs or Smites, anyway.
7th Level Vengeance Paladins are Relentless Avengers, meaning when you hit someone with an opportunity attack, you can move up to half your movement towards them as part of the attack to chase them down.
8th Level Paladins get another Ability Score Improvement or a Feat. We’ll take Magic Initiate to grab 2 Cantrips and a 1st Level Spell from the Sorcerer spell list. For your Cantrips, take Green-Flame Blade and Ray of Frost for a bit of fire and ice, and for your Spell, take Shield. 9th Level Paladins can learn 3rd Level Spells. From your Oath Spells, you get Haste and Protection from Energy. Haste is what matters here, as it gives you doubled movement speed, +2 AC, advantage on Dexterity saving throws, and an additional action to Dash, Hide, Disengage, Use an Object, or make another weapon attack. Lasts for up to a minute, depending on your concentration, and when it ends, you can’t do anything for a turn to catch your breath. For your Prepared Spells, take Blinding Smite and Elemental Weapon.
10th Level Paladins get Aura of Courage, meaning you and any allies within 10 feet of you are immune to being Frightened. Kevin is meant to be fearless, after all.
11th Level Paladins get Improved Divine Smite, adding a d8 of Radiant damage to all your melee weapon attacks.
12th Level Paladins get another Ability Score Improvement or a Feat. we’ll actually cap our Charisma for an extra spell to prepare and better spell save DC.
13th Level Paladins can learn 4th Level Spells. From your Oath Spells, Banishment is good to send a Honkai Beast back to the Sea of Quanta, and Dimension Door is useful for long range teleportation. For your Prepared Spells, take Find Greater Steed, Remove Curse, and Staggering Smite.
14th Level Paladins get Cleansing Touch, letting you use your action to end any spell on you or an ally you touch an amount of times equal to your Charisma modifier per long rest.
15th Level Vengeance Paladins get Soul of Vengeance, letting you use your reaction to make an attack against a creature under your Vow of Enmity if they are within your range when they make an attack.
16th Level Paladins get another Ability Score Improvement or a Feat. We’ll cap our Constitution for the most HP.
17th Level Paladins can learn 5th Level Spells. From your Oath Spells, you get Scrying if you really need to track someone down, and Hold Monster to paralyze non-humanoid targets. For your Prepared Spells, take Destructive Wave and Banishing Smite.
18th Level Paladins have their Auras of Protection and Courage increased to 30 feet.
19th Level Paladins get our last Ability Score Improvement or a Feat. We’ll grab the Tough Feat for a crapload of HP.
Our capstone is the 20th Level of Vengeance Paladin, letting you go full Diablo mode with Avenging Angel. As an action, once per long rest, you can give yourself a 60 foot flying speed, and you emit a 30 foot aura around where creatures that start their turn or enter for the first time within range must make a Wisdom saving throw or be frightened for 1 minute or until they get hit, and any attack rolls made against Frightened creatures are made at advantage.
Now that we’ve hit Level 20, let’s see how strong this build is. Well, if it wasn’t obvious enough. You’re really freaking strong! 264 HP, 19 AC with Full Plate or 24 with Shield, 60 foot flying speed, Great Weapon Master and multiple forms of Smites for high damage, Vow of Enmity for advantage, and spells like Haste to really lay down the hurt. With a Greatsword, Haste, 2 attacks (one of them being a Critical Hit), Great Weapon Master, the bonus action attack from GWM, Improved Divine Smite, and a Divine Smite cast with a 4th Level Spell slot, you can deal 10d6+15d8+60 damage in 1 round. That’s an average of 162 total damage! You also have a very high bonus to all your saving throws thanks to Aura of Protection, making you heard to pin down. Lastly, you have Lay on Hands for any emergency healing.
While this build is very powerful, it does have glaring weaknesses. First, almost all your spells require Concentration, meaning you can only have one of them up at a time, including all your Smite spells. While you can easily keep them up with little issue, you can’t stack them. You also likely won’t be able to procure yourself some Laser Pistols for the Judgement of Shamash’s other form unless you’re playing a futuristic campaign, meaning you’ll be missing out on half the build. If the Latter is true, then that means you have only Ray of Frost as your ranged damage option, so while you do have a lot of movement on the ground, you’re gonna be struggling with airborne opponents. Lastly, this is a very Selfish and powergaming build, AKA the type of build that is frowned upon at many tables. Given that Kevin is a cold-hearted lone wolf who hates interacting with people, such a translation into a D&D game will make you the scorn of both your party and DM.

If anyone is willing to discuss, I'm a Tier-1 Roleplayer who's been doing this style since 2020 and my logistics to creating a character has varied. Although in recent months, I've been interested in detail and how much is too much or too little, I know it may depend on the current events, storylines or group but I'm just wondering if there's a middle ground.
[Several Examples from different OCs]
{Example 1}
Divine Marksman, (The DM-47 "Sanctified Echo," a divine instrument of war, is Claus Michigan's embodiment of Roman martial excellence and celestial engineering. Forged in the sacred fires of Vulcan's underground forges and blessed by Mars, the god of war, this sniper rifle marries the indomitable spirit of Rome with the precision of the heavens. Its 50-inch frame, constructed from adamantine sourced from the depths of the Roman underworld, boasts a resilience capable of withstanding forces up to 15 megatons, symbolizing the empire's enduring legacy. The 32-inch barrel, adorned with laurel wreath etchings in gleaming silver—a mark of triumph and divine favor—ensures each .60 Olympian round fired achieves a muzzle velocity of 5,000 m/s (16,404 ft/s), delivering a force of 4,000 joules straight into the heart of Claus's foes.
The stock, carved from the wood of trees lining the sacred Via Sacra, absorbs recoil with the grace of a Roman legionnaire in formation, while the grip, fashioned from the hide of the mythical Caledonian Boar, ensures an unyielding hold. The oracle glass scope, capable of discerning truths hidden to mere mortals, offers up to 20x magnification, a nod to Janus's dual-faced vision of the future and the past. This celestial weapon, weighing 18 pounds and measuring 2.5 inches in width, balances perfectly in Claus's grasp, its twilight hues—bestowed by Venus herself—shifting from the ethereal blues of the Roman skies to the regal purples of imperial robes.
The "Sanctified Echo" is not just a sniper rifle; it is a testament to Claus Michigan's divine heritage and his role as a modern-day legionnaire, a guardian of both the earthly and the divine realms, ready to unleash the might of Rome with every silent, calculated shot.)
{Example 2}
Air Manipulation, (Claus can generate winds up to 300 mph (Air & Impact Pressure at 500 tons) though he can condense them into simple daggers. The wind-daggers are of a 16 inch and 1 lb ratio with the sharpness allowing them to tear through 20,000 PSI strength. While another aspect of air is to generate currents in and around his body within the span of .090 M/S to bend light particles and appear invisible. Though he must remain focused and keep the winds at a steady 200 MPH (Pressure of 800 tons) to launch a counter attack as the winds can be infused. He can utilize aero kinetic energy to infuse air-like properties into inanimate objects such as weapons and clothing. He's previously done this to his boots which allows him to fly whenever he needs to without the necessity to utilize winds for this matter.)
{Example 3}
Black Tactical Jacket, (A jacket crafted from storm dragon scales, grinded up griffin feathers and interwoven blood fibers from wood elves. The dragon scales create a reinforced layer meant to aid in durability regarding impact/water pressures up to 4 megatons. While the griffin feathers aid in a mystical link to Aelius preventing it from being stolen or loss when in combat or during everyday life events and the ability to be essentially weightless. As an added precaution, the elven blood prevents temperatures ranging from -200,000°C to 300,000° Celsius, assisting in burn/freeze damage to his jacket, allowing it to sustain peak condition. The jacket is corrosion and tear resistant with a pH level of 8.0 and able to handle a PSI force of 4 megatons involving descent/ascent of air and gravity pressures whether rapidly or gradually changing as well as increasing/decreasing.)
{Example 4}
{Tertiary Weapon}
Bowie Knife "Oath of Ashes", ( Crafted with meticulous precision and imbued with mystical properties, the Oath of Ashes Bowie Knife is a formidable weapon wielded by Aelius Ahmed. Fashioned from the mystical amalgamation of tungsten steel, red dragon bone, angel feathers burned to ashes, Jötunn horns, chopped elf flesh, and divine ichor, this blade radiates power and menace. The 18-inch blade features a scarlet-red pattern etched throughout, serving as a seal for hell-fire magic, capable of reducing adversaries to ash with a single strike. The hilt, made of empyrean steel and wrapped in a piece of flesh from the demon king Beelzebub, exudes both elegance and strength. The weapon's design incorporates a slight curve at the hilt, enhancing its ergonomic grip and facilitating fluid combat maneuvers. With a weight of 3 pounds and a density of 15 g/cm³, the Oath of Ashes Bowie Knife offers unparalleled balance and maneuverability in the hands of its master. Its temperature resistance ranges from -300,000°C to 400,000°C, allowing it to withstand extreme heat and cold alike. The blade's durability, rated at 5 megatons, ensures its resilience in the heat of battle, while its pH level of 12 grants it a corrosive edge against foes. Strapped to Aelius's right thigh in a 20-inch midnight black leather sheath adorned with a layer of obsidian studs along the edges, the Oath of Ashes Bowie Knife is a symbol of his prowess and determination, ready to unleash devastation upon those who dare to oppose him.)
{Example 5}
Immortality, (As a Pyrotherian, Aelius isn't inflicted with mortal ailments such as disease, hunger, dehydration, age and a higher resistance to temperature, air, water and impact pressure. Although poison of a supernatural, psionic, demonic, dragonic, divine, spiritual, angelic origin can incapacitate him or downright kill him. This does not apply to man made poison due to his higher concentration of metabolism resulting in his cellular structure to repair any damage from poisonous substances of this origin. The damage can be repaired in a continuous stream of 1 millisecond to be completely healed after 3 milliseconds including an optimization process. This is a natural process that increases the strength of an organ, limb, skin tissue, muscle fiber, bone density/cartilage and tendons to 3 times their previous capacity. As a being that's Half-Phoenix, if his immortality is removed/negated and he's killed, after 1 minute, he's revived and optimized to 6 times his previous capacity. Although the condition is the death had to not have destroyed the entirety of his soul, mind and body including his source. If this happens, his existence is reset and it'll take 1 hour to fully revive as the enhancement of his Vampire side allows this to happen due to a greater amplification of natural powers. As a bonus to being Half-Vampire, indulging in higher doses of blood results in a temporary state of enhanced capability and permanent if the blood is from an immortal including eating their organs.)

I'm a new DM running the Frozen Sick with four players. Two of the players are brand new to DND and the other two are more experienced- we're in another campaign together outside of this one. There isn't much guidance in the module itself about the players' experience traveling to Eiselcross. I started to write a ChatGPT prompt to help create some random encounters... and then immediately learned about the many many encounter tables already available 😂 I ran my prompt anyway and edited/embellished the ideas it spit out. I think I'll have players roll at the beginning of each day to see if an event happens, and if it does then we'll roll for an encounter.
Here are 20 randomized encounters for traveling across the Frigid Depths to Eiselcross:

1. Whispering Ice: While passing through a field of drifting icebergs, the players hear faint whispers emanating from the frozen depths below. Investigating further, they discover that the whispers are the echoes of souls trapped within the ice, cursed by the necromantic energies that permeate the region. As night falls, your players are plagued by haunting nightmares. Trapped in a swirling snowstorm, surrounded by towering ice spires and malevolent specters, they are pursued by shadowy figures cloaked in darkness, whispering cryptic warnings of impending doom and recalling past misdeeds. Awakening with a start, the characters find themselves drenched in sweat, their hearts pounding with fear as they struggle to shake off the lingering echoes of their nocturnal torment. Your players are frightened for the next eight hours.
2. Kraken's Warning: As the ship sails through a particularly turbulent stretch of water, a massive kraken emerges from the depths, its eyes glowing with an otherworldly light. Instead of attacking, the kraken communicates telepathically with the players, warning them of the dangers that lie ahead in Eiselcross. It speaks of the ancient ruins of Salsvault and the malevolent forces that dwell within, urging the players to proceed with caution if they wish to uncover the secrets of the past and find the cure they seek. The Kraken bestows several resources upon your players that may be valuable for trading, such as rare ink sacs or exotic materials.
3. Frozen Supply Cache: The ship discovers a frozen cache of supplies trapped within an ice floe. Players must work quickly to extract the resources before they are lost to the sea. Among the provisions, they discover a weather-beaten map adorned with cryptic symbols and faded markings, hinting at the location of a hidden cave where the weary travelers may find shelter from the elements during their journey, as well as modest collection of cold weather equipment, including fur-lined coats, insulated boots, and thick gloves to ward off the biting chill of Eiselcross.
4. Aurora Borealis: A breathtaking display of the Aurora Borealis lights up the night sky, mesmerizing the travelers. Players who take the time to appreciate the phenomenon gain inspiration, granting them advantage on their next ability check or saving throw. Moved by the majestic display, the crew begins a celebration. As lively music fills the air, the players find themselves swept up in the infectious energy, letting loose and dancing under the shimmering lights. Amidst the laughter and revelry, the players forge new friendships with the crew and fellow travelers, creating cherished memories that will warm their hearts long after their journey is over.
5. Guardian Seal: The ship encounters a lone seal swimming alongside them, seemingly guiding their path. Upon closer inspection, the seal bears a magical mark resembling the symbol of Aeor. The players realize that the seal is a guardian spirit, tasked with protecting travelers who venture into these perilous waters. In exchange for their respect and reverence, the guardian seal imparts valuable knowledge about the region and offers its assistance in navigating the frozen labyrinth that lies ahead.
6. Chuul Ambush: Chuuls emerge from the depths, attempting to board the ship and snatch crew members with their powerful claws. Players must repel the attackers and prevent any casualties. Surviving crew members reveal rumors of a hidden Chuul lair in a nearby cave system concealed beneath the ice. Inside, your players would encounter a nest of chuuls, ancient crustacean creatures rumored to have once been servants of the Aeorian necromancers. The chuuls guard a cache of ancient artifacts and arcane knowledge, including clues that could lead the players closer to uncovering the truth behind the frigid woe and its origins.
7. Orcan Migration: A pod of orcas swims alongside the ship, their haunting calls echoing across the icy waters. Players who interact with the orcas gain insight into their migration patterns, potentially unlocking a shortcut or safe passage through dangerous waters.
8. Storm Giant Encounter: A lone storm giant appears on the horizon, observing the ship with curiosity. Players must decide whether to approach the giant diplomatically or keep their distance. Successful interaction may lead to valuable information about the surrounding area. Following an unsuccessful or combative interaction, the storm giant descends upon the ship, threatening to engulf it in a maelstrom of ice and snow. As the crew struggles to keep the vessel afloat, the players are confronted by visions of their past sins and failures, haunting them like specters in the night. To survive the storm and emerge stronger on the other side, the players must confront their inner demons and find the strength to persevere against all odds.
9. Cetus Menaces: As a pair of cetuses surfaces near the ship, threatening to capsize it with their powerful tails, their monstrous forms trigger a sense of deja vu among the crew and players notice something peculiar about their behavior. A closer examination reveals that these cetuses bear unusual markings reminiscent of ancient Aeorian symbols. Players must devise a strategy to defeat, distract, or deter the creatures while the crew steers the vessel to safety. Once they reach safe waters, the ship's crew reveal information that hints toward a hidden connection between the cetuses and the necromantic experiments conducted by Ferol Sal within Salsvault. Their encounter with the creatures becomes not just a battle for survival, but a clue to the deeper mysteries surrounding the origin of frigid woe.
10. Iceberg Artistry: While passing through a field of icebergs, the players notice a particularly elaborate iceberg sculpted into the likeness of a majestic dragon. The crew marvels at the craftsmanship of the natural wonder, and the captain invites the players to join in a friendly competition to create their own ice sculptures. As the players fashion their frozen masterpieces, they bond with the crew and share stories of their past adventures, fostering a sense of camaraderie among the travelers.
11. Divine Intervention: A divine entity manifests before the travelers, its presence radiating with an otherworldly glow. As players bask in the deity's divine aura, they experience visions of Eiselcross before the Calamity, a land teeming with life and vitality. The deity, revealed to be an ancient guardian of Aeor, imparts upon the players a sacred quest to restore balance to the frozen wasteland and purge it of the taint of frigid woe. Armed with divine blessings and celestial artifacts, players embark on their journey with renewed purpose, knowing that their actions will shape the fate of Eiselcross for generations to come.
12. Mutiny of Shadows: Tensions among the crew reach a boiling point as whispers of mutiny echo through the ship's corridors. Players must navigate the treacherous waters of betrayal and deception as they uncover a sinister plot orchestrated by agents of the Uttolot criminal family. Through cunning diplomacy and decisive action, players quell the mutiny and earn the loyalty of the crew. However, the shadow of the Uttolots looms large over the journey, reminding players that their enemies will stop at nothing to thwart their quest for the cure for frigid woe.
13. Eagle-Eyed Scout: An eagle-eyed scout, adorned with Aeorian relics and symbols, appears before the travelers, offering guidance on their journey through the icy wastes. As the scout leads the ship through treacherous waters, it shares cryptic visions of a long-forgotten prophecy foretelling the end of frigid woe and the rebirth of Eiselcross. Through riddles and mismatched symbols hidden within his stories, players discover that this scout knows nothing of frigid woe and instead was luring characters to an encampment of Ice Sailors with the goal of stealing the players loot and imprisoning them.
14. Ice Fishing Extravaganza: On a particularly clear and calm day, the crew organizes a friendly ice fishing competition on one of the larger ice floes, inviting the players to join in the fun. Armed with makeshift fishing rods and buckets of bait, the players eagerly cast their lines into a small hole drilled into the ice, hoping to catch the biggest or most exotic fish. Laughter fills the air as players reel in their catches, swapping stories and boasting about their fishing prowess. The competition ends with a hearty feast featuring the freshly caught fish, bringing everyone together in a joyous celebration of camaraderie and good-natured competition. Players earn temporary hit points for the next 24 hours.
15. Aeorian Echoes: The players stumble upon the remnants of an ancient Aeorian vessel buried beneath the ice. As they explore the sunken wreckage, they uncover fragments of forgotten lore and arcane artifacts left behind by the long-lost civilization. Among the relics, they find a mystical crystal imbued with the memories of the past, allowing them to glimpse visions of Aeor's glory and unravel the mysteries of the ancient city-state. Inspired by their discoveries, the players gain newfound insight into their quest for the cure to frigid woe, as they realize that the answers they seek may lie hidden within the ruins of Aeor itself.
16. Elemental Encounter: While sailing through the icy waters, the players encounter a pod of elemental spirits dancing amidst the swirling snowflakes. If your players describe their quest to cure frigid woe, the elementals become upset by the prospect of weakening ice magic. If the players attempt to reason with the ice elementals, explaining their noble intentions to save lives and alleviate suffering, there is a chance that the elementals may relent, albeit begrudgingly. If the players opt for a more aggressive approach, engaging the ice elementals in combat without attempting to negotiate, the guardians respond with unrelenting fury, unleashing their full might upon the players in a desperate bid to protect the frigid woe at all costs.
17. Ghostly Warning: A ghostly apparition materializes on deck, its ethereal form shimmering with an otherworldly light. The ghost, revealed to be the spirit of a former inhabitant of Salsvault, implores the players to heed its warning and turn back before it's too late. Through cryptic messages and fragmented memories, the ghost reveals the tragic fate that befell the inhabitants of Salsvault and the insidious nature of the experimental disease unleashed by Ferol Sal. Its haunting presence serves as a grim reminder of the dangers that await within the ancient ruin and the urgency of finding the cure for frigid woe.
18. Lost Explorer's Journal: Your players spot a tattered journal that has washed ashore on an ice floe. If the characters retrieve the journal, they will read the brief adventures of a lost explorer who succumbed to the frigid woe while in search of a cure. Players who decipher the journal's cryptic entries gain valuable knowledge about the dangers ahead and a tattered, but mostly-discernable map which marks the trek from Syrinlya to Salsvault.
19. Frosty Fortunes: As the ship sails through the Frigid Depths, the players spot a shimmering glint of light reflecting off the ice. Upon investigation, they discover a cache of frost crystals scattered across the frozen landscape, sparkling like diamonds in the sunlight. Excited by their find, the players gather the crystals and marvel at their beauty, knowing that they will fetch a handsome price in the markets of Syrinlya.
20. A Spectral Plea: The ship becomes ensnared in a treacherous whirlpool, pulling it toward a watery grave. As players work together to free the vessel from the swirling currents before it's too late, they catch glimpses of spectral figures trapped within the whirlpool's depths. These apparitions, revealed to be the restless souls of those claimed by frigid woe, implore the players to break the curse that binds them. Escaping the whirlpool becomes not only a matter of survival but a pivotal moment in their quest to uncover the secrets of Salsvault and find the cure for the deadly disease.

Hi India!
I'm working on an article about genetic testing as a preventative health measure. I'm looking for experiences of people who have done genetic tests - what you were looking for, what you got, and how/whether it changed your lifestyle habits.
I'm particularly interested in hearing from those who have used gene testing to identify potential risk factors for lifestyle diseases (like diabetes or heart disease) or rare inherited conditions. In India especially, where we are seeing research that gives us a higher risk of developing conditions like diabetes, for example.
Have you undergone genetic testing for preventative health reasons? If so, I'd love to chat with you for a short interview about your experience. I'm looking in particular to hear your thoughts on:

• Why you decided to get tested
• What kind of information you learned from the results
• How the results have impacted your approach to health and wellness

If you're interested in participating, feel free to leave a comment below and I'll drop you a DM.
Thanks in advance for your time!

Hi, my name's Josh and I'm 21. I've been DMing for about 6 years (going on 7) and don't get to be a player very often, and I would like to change that. I posted this last week but unfortunately have not gotten into a game, so I’m shortening last last week’s post.
To get some logistics out of the way: I'm not looking for a paid game; I'm looking for games that go for about 2.5-3.5 hours (I can do 4 hours but that's usually pushing it); I don't want to be playing later than 11pm EST; and my preferred mix of roleplay, combat, and exploration is something along the lines of 40/40/20 or 40/30/30.
For my strengths as a player: I'm a naturally collaborative/team oriented person. I really like helping people and showing empathy, so generally my characters are both mechanically and emotionally supportive, haha.
I like to think I'm a good listener; I won't hog the spotlight, and I intend to share it with others.
I'm fast in combat, and I also flavor my actions. I know my turns ahead of time and do my best to get through them in a timely manner. Additionally, I try to keep the energy going during combat; I like to add flair to my turns. I add sound effects, describe my actions ("I push aside his shield as I stab into him with my sword," or "I drop low and begin murmuring an incantation and cast..") and other such things as opposed to just saying "I move 6 squares. I roll to hit. I did 12 damage." I find it makes the entire experience so much more fun.
Finally, I like to think I'm good at staying in character and making my character unique and felt. I do accents, I change how I talk, I give them quirks, I know how they think, etc. My characters will be very distinctive.
So, for said character concepts:
Oris: a redeemed thief turned cleric who wants to try and treat an illness in the world (such as a plague, a common disease, etc.) to make up for his past transgressions. However, while this change of heart is surely welcome by all, it did not come without major suffering. After angering someone far more powerful than him, a powerful mage took Oris into their laboratory and transmuted his body with one of a crow, saying that it's what a scavenger like him deserves- to physically become a representation of who he is inside. As a result, this character is a humanoid like crow- something adjacent to a kenku, at least visually.
Vog: after being betrayed [for story/campaign fitting reasons] by his employer, Vog and his partner-in-arms were dumped off at some sort of mountain- high above the rest of the world, left to die in the snow. And die they did: Vog only recalls waking up, having forgotten what had happened (at least temporarily) over the past few hours, and had to dig his way out of the snow and ice, determined to not suffocate and wanting to save his friend who was buried next to him. Only after he has escaped does he realize that neither he nor his friend are breathing- Vog, having a bit of a breakdown (he is not used to being betrayed, having his breathing halted indefinitely, and waking up buried in ice and snow after all) DEMANDS that his friend returns to life, which he does.
Vog is a sorcerer-based necromancer build and just wants to return himself and his friend back to life.
If you're interested in having me in one of your games, please DM me with your elevator pitch! The time, date, group size, campaign concept, and all of those details will make it easier to decide if I feel I would be a good fit for your game. Thank you for your time and I look forward to chatting with you!

Hello everyone! I'm working on an article about the growing trend of preventative genetic testing in India. I'm particularly interested in hearing from those who have used DNA testing to identify potential risk factors for lifestyle diseases (like diabetes or heart disease) or rare inherited conditions.
Have you undergone genetic testing for preventative health reasons? If so, I'd love to chat with you for a short interview about your experience. It would be fantastic to hear your thoughts on:

• Why you decided to get tested
• What kind of information you learned from the results
• How the results have impacted your approach to health and wellness

If you're interested in participating, feel free to leave a comment below and I'll drop a DM.
Thanks in advance for your time!

Hi, my name's Josh and I'm 21. I've been DMing for about 6 years (going on 7) and don't get to be a player very often, and I would like to change that. I know making an LFG when not offering to host is a bit of a shot in the dark, but I figured I'd show you neat character concepts and hoped that would intrigue some people. :]
Also, to get some logistics out of the way: I'm not looking for a paid game; I'm looking for games that go for about 2.5-3.5 hours (I can do 4 hours but that's usually pushing it); I don't want to be playing later than 11pm EST; and my prefer mix of roleplay, combat, and exploration is something along the lines of 40/40/20 or 40/30/30.
For my strengths as a player: I'm a naturally collaborative/team oriented person. I really like helping people and being kind and empathetic, so generally my characters are emotionally supportive and kind, if not literally (mechanically) supportive lol.
I like to think I'm a good listener; I won't hog the spotlight, and I intend to share it with others.
I'm fast in combat, and I also flavor my actions. I know my turns ahead of time (most of the time anyways, assuming the silly wizard doesn't fireball all the guys I was planning on killing *I shake my fist at them*) and I can usually breeze through both my actions, movements, and choices pretty fast. Additionally, I make my turns interesting: I add flair. I like to add sound effects, describe my actions ("I push aside his shield as I stab into him with my sword," or "I drop low and begin murmuring an incantation and cast..") and other such things as opposed to just saying "I move 6 squares. I roll to hit. I do 12 damage." I find it makes the entire experience so much more fun.
Finally, I like to think I'm good at staying in character and making my character unique and felt. I do accepts, I change how I talk, I give them quirks, I know how they think, etc. My characters will be very distinctive.
So, for said character concepts:
Oris: a redeemed thief turned cleric who wants to try and treat an illness in the world (such as a plague, a common disease, etc.) to make up for his past transgressions. However, while this change of heart is surely welcome by all, it did not come without major suffering. After angering someone far more powerful than him, a powerful mage took Oris into their laboratory and transmuted his body with one of a crow, saying that it's what a scavenger like him deserves- to physically become a representation of who he is inside. As a result, this character is a humanoid like crow- something adjacent to a kenku, at least visually.
Vog: after being betrayed [for story/campaign fitting reasons] by his employer, Vog and his partner-in-arms were dumped off at some sort of mountain- high above the rest of the world, left to die in the snow. And die they did: Vog only recalls waking up, having forgotten what had happened (at least temporarily) over the past few hours, and had to dig his way out of the snow and ice, determined to not suffocate and wanting to save his friend who was buried next to him. Only after he has escaped does he realize that neither he nor his friend are breathing- Vog, having a bit of a breakdown (he is not used to being betrayed, having his breathing halted indefinitely, and waking up buried in ice and snow after all) DEMANDS that his friend returns to life, which he does.
Vog is a sorcerer-based necromancer build and just wants to return himself and his friend back to life.
If you're interested in having me in one of your games, please DM me with your elevator pitch! The time, date, group size, campaign concept, and all of those details will make it easier to decide if I feel I would like to be in your game. Thank you for your time and I look forward to chatting with some of you!