Hi my name is Mariah I'm 23 years old I'm looking for someone to role play with me I prefer that we play in first person, I have several scenarios that you can pick from I have two requirements. 1. I prefer that we play in first person, 2. Just be patient with me because I don’t type that fast but I am starting to write a lot more detail during my role-play, so just be patient with me please .3. I accept experienced role-play players.only Please write a lot of detail during the role-play if you can. If you are interested in role-playing with me, just message me I roleplay comfort to dark roleplay I prefer role-playing in Reddit chat because it's easier for me but if you cannot role-play on,Reddit I do Role-play on Twitter,. I hope to chat with you soon, here's a list of the scenarios that you can pick from Let me know what scenario you would like to do with me please do not ghost me a lot of people do that because they don’t like the way I role-play ….please pick a scenario from the list please be 18+. Here the scenarios that we can do
1st scenario
Here’s the scenario You come home from work and your partner tells you that her parents are having a family gathering at their house and she wants to go. She tells you that she was diagnosed with a fainting disorder so you could be aware of it
2nd scenario
Here’s the scenario You come home from work you don’t see your partner in the living room with all the family and you go upstairs to look for them
3rd scenario
Here’s the scenario You come home from work you don’t see me in the living room and you start looking around for me you find me in the corner in our bedroom having a panic attack
4th scenario
Here’s the scenario You are at the store you receive a text message from your partner that they are having another bad mingran and they ask you to bring medication from the store
5th scenario
Here’s the scenario You come home from work and you don’t find me anywhere in the house and you start looking everywhere and you find me in the kitchen having mental breakdown because I am stressed out about everything that’s happening in my life
6th scenario
Here’s the scenario You got home from work and you don’t see your partner in the living room you check everywhere for them you finally find them in the bathroom in the bedroom next to toilet
7th scenario
Here’s the scenario You are at home relaxing from your busy day at work you receive a phone call from your partner and she is crying hysterically on the phone and she tells you that her dad and her got into another argument but it ended bad and she asks you to go get her from her house and take her back to your place.
8th scenario
Here’s the scenario You get home from work and you don’t see your partner in the living room you checked everywhere for them and you finally find them in the bedroom having a autism episode because people are bullying them at work
9th scenario
Here’s the scenario You are at work and you are working as a paramedic and you are driving on the street with your coworker and you stop at a gas station and when you are in the gas station call comes in on the radio and says your home address and you come back to the ambulance and your coworker said they just said they just said your address on the radio and you start panicking because I am home alone and you know I have a couple medical conditions that they are aware of you call me but you don’t get an answer from me rush with your coworker and you go inside the house and you don’t find me anywhere but then your coworker find me in the basement unconscious
10th scenario
Here’s the scenario You are at work and your partner called you from work.they tell you that they are going to go hang out with their friends from college at the club. you told them to be careful and you tell them to have a good time you get home from work and it’s late and you notice that your partner is not home yet and you called their phone no answer and then you get a call from Your partners phone and you answer it and you recognize it not your partner, voice the person told you that your partner was drug at the club and that your partner is on the way to the hospital
11th Scenario
Here’s the scenario You are at work and your partner calls you and tell you they are going to go swimming at a party with friends from college and you get home from work and it’s very late and you tried calling your partner and they don’t answer and get a call from the hospital, saying that your partner has been admitted to the hospital for being drugged and abuse and assaulted
12th Scenario
Here’s the scenario you are on your lunch break at work and you get a phone call from your partners parents and they tell you that your partner is having a Tourette episode and this one is bad and they cannot handle it and they need you to come help them with your partner you know that your partner has a really hard time coming out of these episodes and they pass out after having an episode.
13th Scenario Here’s the scenario you are in a long distance, relationship with your partner and you decide to fly them out to see you and meet your royalty family after your partner meets your family your family that they don’t like your partner and they do everything especially the mother get rid of your partner and you are a prince of England trying to find his queen
14th Scenario Here’s the scenario you are at work and your partner call you and tell you that they are gonna go to the store to get some stuff for the house and when you get home you are parked in the driveway and you get off the car and you go inside and you see them on the floor in the living room unconscious with all their clothes off and you see them beaten up and you see them with the rope around their neck
15th Scenario Here’s the scenario you come home from work early because you have to do a lot of stuff around the house and you call your partner to let them know that you’re coming home early from work you get home and you see your partner in the living room with the lights off and everything and you know that they are having a hard time with being abused, verbally emotionally and mentally and you see them crying hysterically in the living room
16thScenario
Here’s the scenario you are at working at the EMT station and you are doing paperwork and you receive a call from the dispatcher that there was a shooting at the high school they say the name of the school and you start freaking out because your partner works at the school and you get in the car and you start driving over to the school and you see your police officers helping everybody out and you go inside and you find me in the classroom unresponsive with the student on top of me and you can tell that they are unresponsive as well
17th Scenario
Here’s the scenario you come home from work and you let your partner know that you’re home from work and you tell your partner that we are going to go to your parents house because we were invited to a family gathering and we go to your parents house and all your family and greet us and when you are not in the area, they all treat me bad except for your mom
18th scenario
Here’s the scenario You are at work You are doing report because you are a detective you receive a case that someone has been kidnapped and when you get the information on the computer and you realize it’s your partner and you start calling them and they don’t answer their phone
19th scenario
Heres the scenario You are on deployment for two years and you get home from being away for two years and you don’t tell your partner that you’re coming home and you go to the living room and you find them unconscious on the floor
20th scenario
Here’s the scenario you are working a late shift at the fire station and you are working on paperwork with all your coworkers and the captain comes in and says we got a call for a fire at the apartment complex on Hollywood Boulevard 1604 on the third Floor and we need everybody to go help put out the fire, do your coworkers get into the firetruck and get to the scene and realize that the fire is coming from your apartment and you remember that your partner is in the building
21st scenario
Here’s the scenario You are at your parents house after a late shift at the hospital and you stop by to see how your parents are doing and you receive a call the hospital and they tell you that they need you right away and you get back to the hospital and they tell you we have three casualties coming in and when the patients are brought into the hospital, you go up to one of the patient and you see it’s your partner
22nd scenario
Here’s the scenario you are at your parents house helping them clean the house and you are doing spring cleaning with them and you check your phone and you see that you had missed calls and a lot of messages from your partners mother and you call back and your partners mother says I’m worried about my daughter because I think she’s having one of her suicidal episodes and she looked herself in the room and I can’t get a hold of her father because he’s at work so can you come help me please.
23rd scenario
Here’s the scenario you are out home and you receive a call from your partner and they tell you that they are running away from home and they tell you they are running to your house when they get to your house. They are bleeding from their face and you can tell that they been beaten up and they are freaking out and screaming because they are scared
24th scenario
Here’s the scenario you come home from work and you let your partner know that you are home, but you don’t get a response from them and you are looking for them and you find them in the bathroom and they are having flashback episodes because when they were younger, they had experience some sexual assault and verbal abuse and they can’t trust anyone

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TL;DR: This is a great place to go for a walk, and you should go do that ;)

Notes

• This hike was done in a group of 8 with Adelaide Bushwalkers - if you want to criticise pace or route decisions, please just think it real hard in their direction, don't @ me! That said, I owe my fellow members many thanks for the opportunity to get out there at all 👍
• LighterPack's UX drives me up the wall, so I don't have one prepared. I'll follow up with a comment about how my gear fared, and anything I don't mention there, well, I guess you could just ask?

Route and schedule

Heysen Trail from the intersection with Moralana Scenic Drive south of Black Gap, through to the Heysen signpost at Wild Dog Creek (just a few k's shy of the Parachilna Gorge Trailhead) where we left the track to follow the creek-bed through a gorge to get a straight shot back to our cars at Angorichina Village rather than trudge up Parachilna Gorge Road.
Yes, the deviation means leaving the track while on private land. Personally I don't feel it's morally wrong until you've been asked to leave, but you should make your own calls about this kind of thing.
Hike conducted over 6 days total, including one repeat stay at Aroona Campground - more on that below.

Trip

Day 0: Angorichina Village

Private car transport to Angorichina. Nice enough place - the store is well-stocked, the camping area is flat, the showers are clean and hot, and unlike the Blinman Hotel you won't be kept awake by a generator. We'd arranged to leave the cars and get a transfer to our start point on one of their minibuses, for which they charged $330. Pretty reasonable when spread over the 10 people who were meant to be there.

Day 1: Moralana Scenic Drive to Wilpena Resort via Bridle Gap (~14km)

This is the one part of this walk I'd done before, so no surprises here.
No chance of getting the bus up to the Black Gap carpark, and we somehow failed to get on the walking route, so this started out as a pretty dreary kilometre or two on the access track.
Things improve rapidly from Black Gap as you wander up a series of creekbeds for about 2km before things get pretty seriously steep - you gain about 200m elevation over the following kilometre as you work up towards Bridle Gap.
View looking outwards from Bridle Gap
Descending into the Pound the trail is a little vague, but some irritating bastard has come along and put a marker in every 200 metres, so you'll figure it out pretty quickly if you lose it. I cannot convey by words alone how much I hate these markers - every kilometre would be OK, but this frequency means you can't think about anything except how far it is to go. Just awful. This is a recurring issue on the Heysen - in most sections the markers are a bit sparse and you'll often find yourself thinking they could be a little more clear, but apparently the alternative is National Parks giving you a marker every 90 seconds.
The back inside face of the hill is much less steep, and the floor of the Pound is higher than you'd expect so there isn't far to descend. After about 1.5km you reach the floor. Unfortunately, this is the end of your fun for today - you get 4.5 good kilometres, then begin some of the most boring walking of this whole trip. It's only about 6km before you reach the Hills Homestead (water and toilets here) but it feels about 3 times longer between the tedium and the national parks sign guy (henceforth "Mr Star Picket").
Onwards to the resort - apparently they're having an issue with water treatment, so make sure you check in to camp to get your water cask allocation.
Bit weird to have a bar, restaurant, and showers on the first day out, but you'd be a fool to say no! Food is good, facilities are good, booze selection is meh but I'm not gonna argue with a couple of beers.
Be sure to camp away from the kitchen/shelters, seems those lights stay on all night 😩

Day 2: Wilpena Resort to Yanyanna Hut (~23km)

First five k's out are pretty nice... about the time you reach the newish Wilcolo Camp (long drop loo and water tank) it starts to sink in that you've got 10km of service road to walk before anything interesting is gonna happen. The views are nice to begin with but it gets pretty repetitive in this section.
Over the course of the morning it became apparent that I'm accustomed to walking way faster than the group average, and we settled on the system that will keep me somewhat sane for the rest of the trip - we name a time to stop for the next break, I walk at whatever speed I like, and 10-15 minutes out from that time I make a judgement call about how far ahead I reckon I've gotten, find a spot to sit down, and wait for the rest of the group to show up. I'm not exactly thrilled about how much sitting still is involved in this system, but it's better than dragging my feet.
Somewhere in this stretch we were passed by some day walkers headed towards Wilpena, and spent some time perplexed about where the heck they could possibly be going...an hour or so later we've stopped for lunch and they find us as they come back up the track, asking if there's a turnoff ahead (we're about 500m away from it). Turns out they meant to do the Wilcolo circuit, and have added about 6km to their day for no particularly good reason.
At 14.5 km we reach said turnoff, and things take a turn for the better. New scenery! Shade! An amble up a creek, then onto some glorious well-graded singletrack as we climb towards the Bunyeroo Lookout. This section is delightful, and I highly recommend the Wilcolo Circuit to anyone looking for a day walk in this area - it's only barely marred by the tireless work of Mr Star Picket. Views on the way up aren't bad either, although I seem to have had some crap on the lens for all the photos I took this day. On the way up I pass our day walkers again - full credit to them, they turned and walked up the hill despite having already gone further than they'd intended for the whole day.
Some of the group don't agree with me about how fun this trail is, and arrive at the top more than a little knackered, but eventually we regroup and make our way down into the Bunyeroo Valley - not exciting, but pleasant walking for the next 5km or so.
At about the 21km mark we lose the trail just before it works its way up a steep hill... perhaps we're just idiots, but I suspect this is pretty easy to do. Still, we know where it's meant to be and make our way up to the saddle to pick it up again without any dramas, aside from our side of the hill being even steeper than the one you're meant to go up.
Two more little peaks to negotiate, down the other side, and into Yanyanna Hut. Plenty of water in the tank, a handful of faintly bizarre fresh limes on the table in the hut, and not a lot of of anything else, but it's a lovely clear night and pretty peaceful up there.

Day 3: Yanyanna to Trezona Campground (~11km)

Not much to say about this stage. It's short, it's fast, it's boring the entire time. Towards the end you'll hit some slightly confusing Heysen Reroute signs that don't make terribly clear what is going on - they follow a new path not shown on the adjacent national parks map, which is kinda unhelpful, but it's just a higher route that stays out the creeks on the way into camp.
Trezona Camp is entirely unremarkable, but once again there's plenty of water in the tank (given how dry the season was prior to Day 5, I suspect National Parks has been topping them up) and some drop loos are better than nothing.
Day 3 Bonus Hike: Trezona to Brachina Gorge (~13km return)
So, I'm a night owl... to get along at all with the hiker's "7PM may as well be midnight" schedule, I need to be tired. 11km of walking gently downhill isn't gonna do it, and a couple of others agree that settling into camp at midday is a bit much, so we strike out up the creek to walk towards Brachina Gorge for something to do.
After 2 or 3 ks the road crosses the creek, and this is the cue to get out and follow it - the creek meanders quite a bit. Most of the time there are options to keep off the road, anyhow, and we make our way over to Brachina East Campsite and the adjacent rock formations, and cruise back without incident.
Do I recommend this side trip? No, not really... creek bashing isn't much better than road bashing, and there's a bunch of road bashing too. But it beats sitting on your bum all afternoon, and we saw some juvenile emus out there so that was cool.

Day 4: Trezona to Aroona Campground (~15km)

Man, that last chapter was a little negative, hey!
Swings and roundabouts... I fucking loved this section. It's just awesome walking... fast, hard-packed singletrack over rolling terrain with a well-graded ascent up a decent bit of a hill, worthwhile views, more of the same on the other side, and then a nice spicy steep bit in the last 2km into Aroona Camp.
View towards the ABC Range from Brachina Lookout
A brilliant day out - technically you can do this section as a day-walk, signposted as the Aroona to Youngoona Hike. At 15km one-way you'll want to have a plan for what you're doing afterwards though.
Only sour note comes on the back of that - Mr Star Picket is back to give you constant reminders of where you're going, every 200 metres for the whole day.
Aroona is a pretty nice campsite, with one weird quirk: We only found one table in the whole place, and it's under a tree, not a shelter. The historic hut has been re-roofed so it makes a pretty good shelter (foreshadowing 👀) but there's not so much as a bench under that roof. God forbid anyone sheltering be comfortable.

Day 5: Aroona to Aroona via a long sit at Aroona (0km)

Day 5 brings 15mm of rain. We got incredibly lucky here - the plan called for two nights at Aroona, with an off-trail ascent of Mt Dib and Mt Dob (or is that Mt Dib and Mt Dab? Or Mt Dob and Mt Dab? Ask 3 maps, get 3 answers!).
Yeah, there was no enthusiasm for doing that in the rain, so we just sat this one out. On all the chairs and benches there aren't. Still, that new roof is pretty good!
When the rain let up in the afternoon, I went for a wander up the hill behind the Aroona Ruins... for no discernible reason there's a track up the hill, then a stile, and then an obviously-informal track marked out with rather frequent rock cairns along the ridge. What's out there?
A view of a rock
Look, it's a pretty good rock, and the view back over the camp from the other side isn't too shabby, either
Aroona Campground from on high

Day 6: Aroona to Angorichina Village (~20km)

And so we reach the end of our merry wander. On paper this last day out along a service track doesn't look very interesting, but it's a very disused service track and makes for surprisingly pleasant walking.
Quick check of the pump at Pigeon Bore finds it in good order and producing clean water... dunno if it's nice water, but it's clean.
Once you get over Taringa Saddle, there's some pretty good views to be had, too.
Some idiot taking a selfie
If you're wondering about the pink ribbon in that last photo, the organisers of the Irrational Runners 200 mile ultra asked us to clean up any they'd left behind - supposedly they'd been collected everywhere except the stretch between Yanyanna and Aroona, but we found at least half a dozen on every other stage, too.
That's really not bad, eh
Somewhere around the stile from which I took these next photos I ran into the only other multi-day hiker I saw over the 6 days - I'm afraid I didn't catch her name, but she was planning to see it through to the southern terminus by the start of July. Good luck, friend!
A hill in the Heysen Range... look, I didn't take very good notes this day
... I don't even know. It's about 90 degrees turn from the last one
About 3.5 k's from the official trailhead at Parachilna Gorge, there's an accidentally-helpful Heysen Trail sign for Wild Dog Creek. This was our cue to abandon the Heysen and head overland... a kilometre or so of easy walking through native pine scrub brought us to a gorge, and we followed the creekbed through to about the spot where many maps mark a spring (we did find a faintly inexplicable puddle that might have been flowing slightly, so perhaps it's still just barely there). Push north from there to the top of the nearby rise and you can see your way clear to Angorichina - from here it's not exactly straightforward (there's many a ditch or gulch to negotiate) but it's not exactly a navigational challenge. This off-track section is lovely - the (apparently unnamed?) gorge is nicer than plenty of signposted tourist spots, and the creek bed is a cruise to walk - fun for the whole family if it wasn't for the whole trespassing thing. It's genuinely a shame that this isn't an official loop walk option for everyone to see.

Other random thoughts

• The official Heysen maps don't extend very far off the trail. Since you'll be carrying your phone anyhow, I suggest supplementing them by buying the Emergency Services Map Book bundle for the Flinders Ranges on Avenza - these are beautiful maps with excellent topo detail and all the local names for the various landmarks and properties. I think the whole bundle ran me something like 20 bucks, and it's a map that will actually be helpful if you get into any kind of pinch.
• Where are you all? It's hiking season, but it's real quiet out there... see you on the trail!

I’m extremely anxious right now and need a second opinion. Sorry for the typos - I can’t think straight…
!! Important context: I’m autistic and have rejection sensitive dysphoria (a condition that’s highly comorbid with neurodivergence and is characterized by an extreme sensitivity to perceived rejection, judgment, or criticism from others), which makes it really hard for me to stand up for myself and maintain boundaries.
So, I love reading. Specifically paper books - I’m collecting my own library and really value my collection. I’m strictly opposed to damaging books, which includes things like ripping out pages, breaking spines, painting/replacing covers, as well as leaving any permanent marks in the books with a pen/marker. I only ever annotate my books with a pencil. I feel distressed when someone damages a book and consider it, in a way, immoral. (Of course, I respect people who do whatever they want to their own books. I believe that what they’re doing is wrong, but I never criticize them, because it’s none of my business).
I specifically love Albert Camus and have almost all of his works in my collection - pencil-annotated by yours truly. I’ve recently convinced my partner - P - to give Camus a try. And brought P my entire collection of his books. I’ve had one conversation with P about book annotating, a while back, when I’ve clearly stated my opinion on writing/underlining in a book with anything but a pencil. And he’s seen me read numerous times, when I used a pencil and pencil only.
I’m currently on a work trip abroad and won’t be back for about 1.5 weeks. He’s back home, with my books. Today, he sent me a picture of a quote he liked from one of the books. Highlighted with a pink marker.
I felt sick to my stomach and actually teared up. The following text conversation ensued (P is, well, P, and M is me):
P: [picture of the page]
M: A marker?! 💔
P: Yes
M: It’s a knife to the heart…
P: it’s [the quote] is for when I meet your parents
M: I’m still alive, you know. Please, wait until my death before using something permanent to write in books that are still mine. I know I’ve left them to you in my will, but it hasn’t come into effect yet. I really love you, but you can’t do that to my books - it’s cruel…
He’s not texted me back after that - it’s been about 3 hours. I forgive him, of course. But I’ve decided to wait until he says something before continuing this conversation. I understand my response sounds pretty dramatic. But I really felt sick and it took me about 40 minutes to calm down. I was a little too emotional/upset at that moment to phrase it better. Now, because he’s not responding, I’m anxious that I really hurt his feelings by my response/upset him. Of course, he’s at work, so he could just be busy (he’s usually in touch throughout workdays too though). But I just can’t convince myself that he’s busy and not purposely ignoring me because he’s upset with me. I’m nauseous from worrying and my head’s spinning. What do I do? Do I wait some more? Do I text him? Do I apologize? Do I just ask if he’s okay? Help…
TL/DR: I’m against writing in books. My partner wrote in a book he borrowed from me. I responded emotionally and he’s not texted me back for a few hours. I’m anxious.

1
It goes against the grain of the heroic spirit to seek out the image of war in a source that can be determined by human action. Still, the multitudinous transformations and disguises which the pure form [Gestalt] of war endures amid the vicissitudes of human time and space offers this spirit a gripping spectacle to behold.
This spectacle reminds us of volcanoes which, although they are at work in very different regions, constantly spew forth the same earthly fire. To have participated in a war means something similar: to have been in the vicinity of such a fire‐spitting mountain; but there is a great difference between Hekla in Iceland and Vesuvius in the Gulf of Naples. One might say that the difference in the landscapes vanishes the closer one approaches the crater's glowing jaws; also at the point where authentic passion breaks through‐above all, in the naked and immediate struggle for life and death‐it becomes a matter of secondary importance in which century, for what ideas, and with what weapons the battle is being fought. But that is not the subject of our essay.
Instead, we will try to assemble a number of facts that distinguish the last war ‐ our war, the greatest and most influential event of our age from other wars whose history has been handed down to us.
2
Perhaps we can best identify the special nature of this great catastrophe by the assertion that in it, the genius of war was penetrated by the spirit of progress. This was not only the case for the fighting among the different countries; it was also true for the civil war that gathered a rich second harvest in many of them. These two phenomena, world war and world revolution, are much more closely interrelated than a first glance would indicate. They are two sides of an event of cosmic significance, whose outbreak and origins are interdependent in numerous respects.
It is likely that many unusual discoveries await our thinking regarding the reality hidden behind the concept "progress" ‐an ambiguous concept glittering in many colors. Undoubtedly the way we are inclined these days to make fun of it comes too cheap. To be sure, we could cite every truly significant nineteenth‐ century thinker in support of our aversion; still, by all our disgust at the dullness and uniformity of the lifeforms at issue, the suspicion arises that their source is of much greater significance. Ultimately, even the process of digestion depends on the powers of a wondrous and inexplicable Life. Certainly, it can today be demonstrated convincingly that progress is, in fact, not really progress. But more important than this conviction, perhaps, is the question of whether the concept's real significance is not of a more mysterious and different sort: one which uses the apparently undisguised mask of reason as a superb place of hiding.
It is precisely the certainty with which progressive movements produce results contradicting their own innermost tendencies which suggests that here, as everywhere in life, what prevails are not so much these tendencies but other, more hidden impulsions. "Spirit" ["Geist"] has often justifiably reveled in contempt for the wooden marionettes of progress; but the fine threads that produce their movements are invisible. If we wish to learn something about the structure of marionettes, there is no more pleasant guide than Flaubert's novel Bouvard and pecuchet. But if we wish to consider the possibilities of this more secret movement - a movement always easier to sense than prove - both Pascal and Hamann offer a wealth of revealing passages.
"Meanwhile, our phantasies, illusions, fallaciae opticae, and fallacies stand under God's realm." We find statements of this sort frequently in Hamann; they reflect a sensibility that strives to incorporate the labors of chemistry into the realm of alchemy. Let us leave aside the question of which spirit's realm rules over the optical illusion of progress: this study is no demonology, but is intended for twentieth‐century readers. Nevertheless, one thing is certain: only a power of cultic origin, only a belief, could conceive of something as audacious as extending the perspective of utility [Zweckmdssigkeit] into the infinite. And who, then, would doubt that progress is the nineteenth century's great popular church‐the only one enjoying real authority and uncritical faith?
3
With a war breaking out in such an atmosphere, the relation of each individual contestant to progress was bound to playa decisive role. And precisely therein lies the authentic, moral factor of our age: even the strongest armies, equipped with the industrial era's latest weapons of annihilation, are no match for its fine, imponderable emanations; for this era can even recruit its troops from the enemy's camp. In order to clarify this situation, let us here introduce the concept of total mobilization: the times are long gone when it sufficed to send a hundred thousand enlisted subjects under reliable leadership into battle ‐ as we find, say, in Voltaire's Candide; and when, if His Majesty lost a battle, the citizen's first duty was to stay quiet. Nonetheless, even in the second half of the nineteenth century, conservative cabinets could still prepare, wage, and win wars which the people's representatives were indifferent towards or even against. To be sure, this presupposed a close relation between crown and army; a relation that had only undergone a superficial change through the new system of universal conscription and which still essentially belonged to the patriarchal world. It was also based on a fixed calculation of armaments and costs, which made war seem like an exceptional, but in no sense limitless, expenditure of available forces and supplies. In this respect, even general mobilization had the character of a partial measure.
These restrictions not only reflect the limited degree of means, but also a specific raison d'etat. The monarch possesses a natural instinct warning him not to trespass the bounds of dynastic power. The melting down of his treasure seems less objectionable than credits approved by an assembly; and for the decisive moment of battle, he would rather reserve his guards than a quota of volunteers. We find this instinct remaining healthy in Prussia deep into the nineteenth century. One example among many is the bitter fight for a three years' conscription: whereas a brief period of service is characteristic for a volunteer army, when dynastic power is at stake, tried and tested troops are more reliable. Frequently, we even come upon ‐ what by today's standards is almost unthinkable ‐ a renunciation of progress and any consummate equipping of the army; but such scruples also have their reasons. Hence hidden in every improvement of firearms ‐ especially the increase in range ‐ is an indirect assault on the conditions of absolute monarchy. Each such improvement promotes firing at individual targets, while the salvo incarnates the force of fixed command. Enthusiasm was still unpleasant to Wilhelm I. It springs from a source that, like Aeolus' windsack, hides not only storms of applause. Authority's true touchstone is not the extent of jubilation it receives, but the wars that have been lost.
Partial mobilization thus corresponds to the essence of monarchy. The latter oversteps its bounds to the extent that it is forced to make the abstract forms of spirit, money, "folk" ‐ in short, the forces of growing national democracy ‐ a part of the preparation for war. Looking back we can now say that complete renunciation of such participation was quite impossible. The manner in which it was incorporated [into political life] represents the real essence of nineteenth‐century statecraft. These particular circumstances explain Bismarck's maxim that politics is the "art of the possible."
We can now pursue the process by which the growing conversion of life into energy, the increasingly fleeting content of all binding ties in deference to mobility, gives an evermore radical character to the act of mobilization which in many states was the exclusive right of the crown, needing no counter‐signature. The events causing this are numerous: with the dissolution of the estates and the curtailing of the nobility's privileges, the concept of a warrior caste also vanishes; the armed defense of the state is no longer exclusively the duty and prerogative of the professional soldier, but the responsibility of everyone who can bear arms. Likewise, because of the huge increase in expenses, it is impossible to cover the costs of waging war on the basis of a fixed war budget; instead, a stretching of all possible credit, even a taxation of the last pfennig saved, is necessary to keep the machinery in motion. In the same way, the image of war as armed combat merges into the more extended image of a gigantic labor process [Arbeitsprozesses]. In addition to the armies that meet on the battlefields, originate the modern armies of commerce and transport, foodstuffs, the manufacture of armaments the army of labor in general. In the final phase, which was already hinted at toward the end of the last war, there is no longer any movement whatsoever‐be it that of the homeworker at her sewing machine without at least indirect use for the battlefield. In this unlimited marshaling of potential energies, which transforms the warring industrial countries into volcanic forges, we perhaps find the most striking sign of the dawn of the age of labor [Arbeitszeitalter]. It makes the World War a historical event superior in significance to the French Revolution. In order to deploy energies of such proportion, fitting one's sword‐arm no longer suffices; for this is a mobilization [Rustung] that requires extension to the deepest marrow, life's finest nerve. Its realization is the task of total mobilization: an act which, as if through a single grasp of the control panel, conveys the extensively branched and densely veined power supply of modern life towards the great current of martial energy.
At the beginning of the World War, the human intellect had not yet anticipated a mobilization of such proportions. Still, its signs were manifest in isolated instances for example, the large employment of volunteers and reservists at the war's start, the ban on exports, the censor's regulations, the changes of currency rates. In the course of the war this process intensified: as examples, we can cite the planned management of raw materials and foodstuffs, the transposition of industrial conditions [Arbeitsverhiiltnisses] to military circumstances, civil‐guard duty, the arming of trade vessels, the unexpected extension of the general staff's authority, the "Hindenburg program," Ludendorff's struggle for the fusion of military and political command.
Nevertheless, despite the spectacle, both grandiose and frightful, of the later "battles of materiel" ["Materialschlachten"], in which the human talent for organization celebrates its bloody triumph, its fullest possibilities have not yet been reached. Even limiting our scope to the technical side of the process, this can only occur when the image of martial operations is prescribed for conditions of peace. We thus see that in the postwar period, many countries tailor new methods of armament to the pattern of total mobilization.
In this regard, we can introduce examples such as the increasing curtailment of "individual liberty," a privilege that, to be sure, has always been questionable. Such an assault takes place in Russia and Italy and then here in Germany; its aim is to deny the existence of anything that is not a function of the state. We can predict a time when all countries with global aspirations must take up the process, in order to sustain the release of new forms of power. France's evaluation of the balance of power from the perspective of energie potentielle belongs in this context, as does the model America has offered ‐ already in peacetime ‐ for cooperation between industry and the army. German war literature raised issues touching on the very essence of armament, forcing the general public to make judgments about matters of war (if somewhat belatedly and in reality anticipating the future). For the first time, the Russian "five‐year plan" presented the world with an attempt to channel the collective energies of a great empire into a single current. Seeing how economic theory turns volte‐face is here instructive. The "planned economy," as one of the final results of democracy, grows beyond itself into a general unfolding of power. We can observe this shift in many events of our age. The great surging forth of the masses thereby reaches a point of crystallization.
Still, not only attack but also defense demands extraordinary efforts, and here the world's compulsions perhaps become even clearer. Just as every life already bears the seeds of its own death, so the emergence of the great masses contains within itself a democracy of death. The era of the well‐aimed shot is already behind us. Giving out the night‐flight bombing order, the squadron leader no longer sees a difference between combatants and civilians, and the deadly gas cloud hovers like an elementary power over everything that lives. But the possibility of such menace is based neither on a partial nor general, but rather a total mobilization. It extends to the child in the cradle, who is threatened like everyone else‐even more so.
We could cite many such examples. It suffices simply to consider our daily life, with its inexorability and merciless discipline, its smoking, glowing districts, the physics and metaphysics of its commerce, its motors, airplanes, and burgeoning cities. With a pleasure‐tinged horror, we sense that here, not a single atom is not in motion‐that we are profoundly inscribed in this raging process. Total Mobilization is far less consummated than it consummates itself; in war and peace, it expresses the secret and inexorable claim to which our life in the age of masses and machines subjects us. It thus turns out that each individual life becomes, ever more unambiguously, the life of a worker; and that, following the wars of knights, kings, and citizens, we now have wars of workers. The first great twentieth‐century conflict has offered us a presentiment of both their rational structure and their mercilessness.
4
We have touched on the technical aspects of Total Mobilization; their perfection can be traced from the first conscriptions of the Convention government during the French Revolution and Scharnhorst's army reorganization(*2) to the dynamic armament program of the World War's last years‐when states transformed themselves into gigantic factories, producing armies on the assembly line that they sent to the battlefield both day and night, where an equally mechanical bloody maw took over the role of consumer. The monotony of such a spectacle‐evoking the precise labor of a turbine fueled with blood‐is indeed painful to the heroic temperament; still, there can be no doubt regarding its symbolic meaning. Here a severe necessity reveals itself: the hard stamp of an age in a martial medium.
[*2. 'Translators' note: Gerhard Johann David von Scharnhorst (1755-1813), Prussian general and creator of the modern Prussian military system. Following Prussia's losses in the Napoleonic wars, he reformed the Prussian military by abolishing its predominantly mercenary character and opting instead for a national force based on universal conscription.]
In any event, Total Mobilization's technical side is not decisive. Its basis ‐ like that of all technology ‐ lies deeper. We shall address it here as the readiness for mobilization. Such readiness was present everywhere: the World War was one of the most popular wars known to history. This was because it took place in an age that excluded a priori all but popular wars. Also, aside from minor wars of colonialism and plunder, the involved nations had enjoyed a relatively long period of peace. At the beginning of our investigation, however, we promised emphatically not to focus on the elementary stratum of human nature that mix of wild and noble passions resting within it, rendering it always open to the battle cry. Rather, we will now try to disentangle the multiple signals announcing and accompanying this particular conflict.
Whenever we confront efforts of such proportions, possessing the special quality of "uselessness" ["Zwecklosigkeit"] ‐ say the erection of mighty constructions like pyramids and cathedrals, or wars that call into play the ultimate mainsprings of life ‐ economic explanations, no matter how illuminating, are not sufficient. This is the reason that the school of historical materialism can only touch the surface of the process. To explain efforts of this sort, we ought rather focus our first suspicions on phenomena of a cultic variety.
In defining progress as the nineteenth century's popular church, we have already suggested the source of the last war's effective appeal to the great masses, whose participation was so indispensable. This appeal alone accounts for the decisive aspect of their Total Mobilization: that aspect with the force of faith. Shirking the war was all the less possible in proportion to the degree of their conviction ‐ hence to proportion to the purity with which the resounding words moving them to action had a progressive content. Granted, these words often had a harsh and lurid color; their effectiveness cannot be doubted. They resemble the bright rags steering the battue prey towards the rifle's scope.
Even a superficial glance, geographically separating the warring parties into victors and vanquished, must acknowledge the advantage of the "progressive" nations. This advantage seems to evoke a deterministic process such as Darwin's theory of survival of the "fittest." Its deterministic quality is particularly apparent in the inability of victorious countries like Russia and Italy to avoid a complete destruction of their political systems. In this light, the war seems to be a sure‐fire touchstone, basing its value judgments on rigorous, intrinsic laws: like an earthquake testing the foundations of every building.
On the other hand, the progressive system's unexpected powers of resistance, even in a situation of great physical weakness, are striking. Hence, in the midst of the French army's suppression of that highly dangerous 1917 mutiny, a second, moral "miracle of the Marne" unfolds, more symptomatic for this war than purely military factors. Likewise, in the United States with its democratic constitution, mobilization could be executed with a rigor that was impossible in Prussia, where the right to vote was based on class. And who can doubt that America, the country lacking "dilapidated castles, basalt columns, and tales of knights, ghosts and brigands," emerged the obvious victor of this war? Its course was already decided not by the degree to which a state was a "military state," but by the degree to which it was capable of Total Mobilization.
Germany, however, was destined to lose the war, even if it had won the battle of the Marne and submarine warfare. For despite all the care with which it undertook partial mobilization, large areas of its strength escaped Total Mobilization; for the same reason, corresponding to the inner nature of its armament, it was certainly capable of obtaining, sustaining, and above all exploiting partial success ‐ but never a total success. To affix such success to our weapons would have required preparing for another Cannae, one no less significant than that to which Schlieffen devoted his life's work.
But before carrying this argument forward, let us consider some disparate points, in the hope of further showing the link between progress and Total Mobilization.
5
One fact is clearly illuminating for those seeking to understand the word progress in its gaudy timbre: in an age that publicly executed, under horrific torture, a Ravaillac or even a Damienst as progeny of hell, the assassination of royalty would damage a more powerful social stratum ‐ one more deeply etched in belief ‐ than in the century following Louis XVI's execution. It turns out that in the hierarchy of progress, the prince belongs to a not especially favored species.
Let us imagine, for a moment, the grotesque situation in which a major advertising executive had to prepare the propaganda for a modern war. With two possibilities available for sparking the first wave of excitement ‐ namely, the Sarajevo assassination or the violation of Belgian neutrality‐there can be no doubt which would promise the greater impact. The superficial cause of the World War ‐ no matter how adventitious it might seem ‐ is inhabited by a symbolic meaning: in the case of the Sarajevo culprits and their victim, the heir to the Habsburg crown, national and dynastic principles collided ‐ the modern "right of national self‐ determination" with the principle of legitimacy painstakingly restored at the Congress of Vienna [1815] through statecraft of the old style.
Now certainly, being untimely in the right sense ‐ setting in motion a powerful effect in a spirit that desires to preserve a legacy ‐ is praiseworthy. But this requires faith. It is clear, however, that the Central Powers' ideology was neither timely, nor untimely, nor beyond time. Rather, the mood was simultaneously timely and untimely, resulting in nothing but a mixture of false romanticism and inadequate liberalism. Hence the observer could not help but notice a predilection for outmoded trappings, for a late romantic style, for Wagner's operas in particular. Words evoking the fidelity of the Nibelungs, hopes pinned on the success of Islam's call to holy war, are examples. Obviously, technical questions and questions of government were involved here ‐ the mobilization of substance but not the substance itself. But the ruling classes' inadequate relationship both to the masses and to profounder forces revealed itself precisely in blunders of this sort.
Hence even the famous, unintentionally brilliant reference to a "scrap of paper" suffers from having been uttered 150 years too late ‐ and then from principles that might have suited Prussian Romanticism, but at heart were not Prussian. Frederick the Great might have spoken thus, poking fun at yellowed, musty parchment in the manner of an enlightened despotism. But Bethmann‐Hollweg must have known that in our time a piece of paper, say one with a constitution written on it, has a meaning similar to that of a consecrated wafer for the Catholic Church ‐ and that tearing up treaties certainly suits absolutism, but liberalism's strength lies in their exegesis. Study the exchange of notes preceding America's entry into the war and you will come upon a principle of "freedom of the seas"; this offers a good example of the extent to which, in such an age, one's own interests are given the rank of a humanitarian postulate ‐ of an issue with universal implications for humanity. German social democracy, one of the bulwarks of German progress, grasped the dialectical aspect of its mission when it equated the war's meaning with the destruction of the czar's anti‐progressive regime.
But what does that signify as compared to the possibilities for mobilizing the masses at the West's disposal? Who would deny that "civilisation" is more profoundly attached to progress than is "Kultur"; that its language is spoken in the large cities, and that it has means and concepts at its command to which Kultur is either hostile or indifferent? Kultur cannot be used for propaganda. An approach that tries exploiting it in this way is itself estranged from it ‐ just as we find the serving up of great German spirits' heads on millions of paper stamps and bills to be pointless, or even sad.
We have, however, no desire to complain about the inevitable. We wish only to establish that Germany was incapable of convincingly taking on the spirit of the age, whatever its nature. Germany was also incapable of proposing, to itself or to the world, a valid principle superior to that spirit. Rather, we find it searching ‐ sometimes in romantic‐idealistic, sometimes in rational‐materialistic spheres ‐for those signs and images that the fighting individual strives to affix to his standards. But the validity lying within these spheres belongs partly to the past and partly to a milieu alien to German genius; it is not sufficient to assure utmost devotion to the advance of men and machines ‐ something that a fearful battle against a world demands.
In this light we must struggle all the more to recognize how our elemental substance, the deep, primordial strength of the Volk, remains untouched by such a search. With admiration, we watch how German youth, at the beginning of this crusade of reason to which the world's nations are called under the spell of such an obvious, transparent dogma, raise the battle cry: glowing, enraptured, hungering after death in a way virtually unique in our history.
If one of these youths had been asked his motive for taking the field, the answer, certainly, would have been less clear. He would hardly have spoken of the struggle against barbarism and reaction or for civilization, the freeing of Belgium or freedom of the seas; but perhaps he would have offered the response, "for Germany" ‐ that phrase, with which the volunteer regiments went on the attack.
And yet, this smoldering fire, burning for an enigmatic and invisible Germany, was sufficient for an effort that left nations trembling to the marrow. What if it had possessed direction, awareness, and form [Gestalt]?
6
As a mode of organizational thinking, Total Mobilization is merely an intimation of that higher mobilization that the age is discharging upon us. Characteristic of this latter type of mobilization is an inner lawfulness, to which human laws must correspond in order to be effective.
Nothing illustrates this claim better than the fact that during war forces can emerge that are directed against war itself. Nonetheless, these forces are more closely related to the powers at work in the war than it might seem. Total Mobilization shifts its sphere of operations, but not its meaning, when it begins to set in motion, instead of the armies of war, the masses in a civil war. The conflict now invades spheres that are off limits to the commands of military mobilization. It is as if the forces that could not be marshaled for the war now demanded their role in the bloody engagement. Hence the more unified and profound the war's capacity to summon, from the outset, all possible forces for its cause, the surer and more imperturbable will be its course.
We have seen that in Germany, the spirit of progress could only be mobilized incompletely. To take just one among thousands of examples, the case of Barbusse shows us that in France, for instance, the situation was far more propitious. In reality an outspoken opponent of war, Barbusse could only stay true to his ideas by readily affirming this one: to his mind, it reflected a struggle of progress, civilisation, humanity, and even peace, against a principle opposed to all these factors. "War must be killed off in Germany's belly."
No matter how complicated this dialectic appears, its outcome is inexorable. A person with the least apparent inclination for military conflict still finds himself incapable of refusing the rifle offered by the state, since the possibility of an alternative is not present to his consciousness. Let us observe him as he racks his brains, standing guard in the wasteland of endless trenches, abandoning the trenches as well as anyone when the time comes, in order to advance through the horrific curtain of fire of the war of materiel. But what, in fact, is amazing about this? Barbusse is a warrior like any other: a warrior for humanity, able to forgo machine‐gun fire and gas attacks, and even the guillotine, as little as the Christian church can forgo its worldly sword. To be sure, in order to achieve such a degree of mobilization, a Barbusse would need to live in France.
The German Barbusses found themselves in a more difficult position. Only isolated intellects moved early to neutral territory, deciding to wage open sabotage against the war effort. The great majority tried cooperating with the deployment. We have already touched on the case of German social democracy. Let us disregard the fact that, despite its internationalist dogma, the movement's ranks were filled with German workers, hence could be moved to heroism. No ‐ in its very ideology, it shifted towards a revision that later led to the charge of "the betrayal of Marxism." We can get a rough idea of the procedure's details in the speeches delivered during this critical period by Ludwig Frank, the Social Democratic leader and Reichstag deputy, who, as a forty‐year‐old volunteer, fell from a shot to the head at Noissoncourt in September 1914. "We comrades without a fatherland still know that, even as stepchildren, we are children of Germany, and that we must fight for our fatherland against reaction. If a war breaks out, the Social Democratic soldiers will also conscientiously fulfill their duty" (August 29, 1914). This extremely informative passage contains in a nutshell the forms of war and revolution that fate holds in readiness.
For those who wish to study this dialectic in detail, the practices of the newspapers and journals during the war years offer a wealth of examples. Hence Maximilian Harden ‐ the editor of Die Zukunft and perhaps the best known journalist of the Wilhelminian period ‐ began adjusting his public activity to the goals of the central command. We note, only insofar as it is symptomatic, that he knew how to play upon the war's radicalism as well as he would later play upon that of the Revolution. And thus, Simplicissimus," an organ that had directed its weapons of nihilistic wit against all social ties, and thus also against the army, now took on a chauvinistic tone. It is clear, moreover, that the journal's quality diminishes as its patriotic tenor rises ‐ that is, as it abandons the field of its strength.
Perhaps the inner conflict at issue here is most apparent in the case of Rathenau; it endows this figure‐for anyone struggling to do him justice‐with the force of tragedy. To a considerable extent, Rathenau had mobilized for the war, playing a role in organizing the great armament and focusing‐even close to the German collapse‐on the possibility of a "mass insurrection." How is it possible that soon after, he could offer the well‐known observation that world history would have lost its meaning had the Reich's representatives entered the capital as victors through the Brandenburg Gate? Here we see very clearly how the spirit of mobilization can dominate an individual's technical capacities, yet fail to penetrate his essence
7
With our last fighters still lying before the enemy, the secret army and secret general staff commanding German progress greeted the collapse with exultation. It resembled the exultation at a victorious battle. It was the closest ally of the Western armies soon to cross the Rhine, their Trojan horse. The reigning authorities acknowledged the new spirit by the low level of protest with which they hastily vacated their posts. Between player and opponent, there was no essential difference.
This is also the reason that in Germany, the political transformation [following the military collapse] took on relatively harmless form. Thus, even during the crucial days of decision, the Empire's Social Democratic minister could play with the idea of leaving the crown intact. And what would that have signified, other than maintaining a facade? For a long time, the building had been so encumbered with "progressive" mortgages, that no more doubt was possible as to the true owner's nature.
But there is another reason why the change could take place less violently in Germany than, say, Russia ‐ besides the fact that the authorities themselves prepared the way for it. We have seen that a large portion of the "progressive forces" had already been occupied with directing the war. The energy squandered during the war was then no longer available for the internal conflict. To express it in more personal terms: it makes a difference if former ministers take the helm or a revolutionary aristocracy, educated in Siberian exile.
Germany lost the war by winning a stronger place in the Western sphere‐civilization, peace, and freedom in Barbusse's sense. But how could we expect anything different, since we ourselves had sworn allegiance to such values; at no price would we have dared extend the war beyond that "wall wrapped around Europe." This would have required different ideas and different allies, a deeper disclosure of one's own values. An incitement of substance could have even taken place with and through progressivist optimism‐ as Russia's case suggests.
8
When we contemplate the world that has emerged from the catastrophe ‐what unity of effect, what incredibly rigorous historical consistency! Really, if all the spiritual and physical structures of a non‐civilizational variety extending from the nineteenth century's end to our own age had been assembled in a small space and fired on with all the world's weapons‐the success could not have been more resounding.
The Kremlin's old chimes now play the Internationale. In Constantinople, schoolchildren use the Latin script instead of the Koran's old arabesques. In Naples and Palermo, Fascist police regulate the pace of southern life as if directing modern traffic. In the world's remotest, even legendary lands, houses of parliament are being ceremoniously dedicated. The abstractness, hence the horror, of all human circumstances is increasing inexorably. Patriotism is being diluted through a new nationalism, strongly fused with elements of conscious awareness. In Fascism, Bolshevism, Americanism, Zionism, in the movements of colored peoples, progress has made advances that until recently would have seemed unthinkable; it proceeds, as it were, head over heels, following the circular course of an artificial dialectic in order to continue its movement on a very simple plane. Disregarding its much diminished allowances for freedom and sociability, it is starting to rule nations in ways not very different from those of an absolute regime. In many cases the humanitarian mask has almost been stripped away, replaced by a half‐grotesque, half‐ barbaric fetishism of the machine, a naive cult of technique; this occurs particularly where there is no direct, productive relation to those dynamic energies for whose destructive, triumphal course long‐range artillery and bomb‐loaded fighter squadrons represent only the martial expression. Simultaneously, esteem for quantity [Massen] is increasing: quantity of assent, quantity of public opinion has become the decisive factor in politics. Socialism and nationalism in particular are the two great millstones between which progress pulverizes what is left of the old world, and eventually itself. For a period of more than a hundred years, the masses, blinded by the optical illusion of the franchise, were tossed around like a ball by the "right" and "left." It always seemed that one side offered refuge from the other's claims. Today everywhere the reality of each side's identity is becoming more and more apparent; even the dream of freedom is disappearing as if under a pincers' iron grasp. The movements of the uniformly molded masses, trapped in the snare set by the world‐spirit, comprise a great and fearful spectacle. Each of these movements leads to a sharper, more merciless grasp: forms of compulsion stronger than torture are at work here; they are so strong, that human beings welcome them joyfully. Behind every exit, marked with the symbols of happiness, lurk pain and death. Happy is he alone who steps armed into these spaces.
9
Today, through the cracks and seams of Babel's tower, we can already see a glacier‐world; this sight makes the bravest spirits tremble. Before long, the age of progress will seem as puzzling as the mysteries of an Egyptian dynasty. In that era, however, the world celebrated one of those triumphs that endow victory, for a moment, with the aura of eternity. More menacing than Hannibal, with all too mighty fists, somber armies had knocked on the gates of its great cities and fortified channels.
In the crater's depths, the last war possessed a meaning no arithmetic can master. The volunteer sensed it in his exultation, the German demon's voice bursting forth mightily, the exhaustion of the old values being united with an unconscious longing for a new life. Who would have imagined that these sons of a materialistic generation could have greeted death with such ardor? In this way a life rich in excess and ignorant of the beggar's thrift declares itself. And just as the actual result of an upright life is nothing but the gain of one's own deeper character, for us the results of this war can be nothing but the gain of a deeper Germany. This is confirmed by the agitation around us which is the mark of the new race: one that cannot be satisfied by any of this world's ideas nor any image of the past. A fruitful anarchy reigns here, which is born from the elements of earth and fire, and which hides within itself the seeds of a new form of domination. Here a new form of armament stands revealed, one which strives to forge its weapons from purer and harder metals that prove impervious to all resistance.
The German conducted the war with a, for him, all too reasonable ambition of being a good European. Since Europe thus made war on Europe ‐ who else but Europe could be the victor? Nevertheless, this Europe, whose area extends in planetary proportions, has become extremely thin, extremely varnished: its spatial gains correspond to a loss in the force of conviction. New powers will emerge from it.
Deep beneath the regions in which the dialectic of war aims is still meaningful, the German encounters a stronger force: he encounters himself. In this way, the war was at the same time about him: above all, the means of his own self‐realization. And for this reason, the new form of armament, in which we have already for some time been implicated, must be a mobilization of the German ‐ nothing else.

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70x L&F creampacas- made these in 2021, been using them as daily drivers for about 2 years. No issues with housings or stems, just fell out of love with long poles. Lubed with g205 + deskey films, 67g tx springs. 95$ shipped OBO
69x L&F hyperglide reds- Had a friend use a break in machine for 500k actuations, ngl couldn't feel a diff but sounded a bit better Lubed with g205 + deskey films, 67g tx springs. 70$ shipped OBO
76x L&F Durock linears- Smokey housing, purple stem, not sure what the exact switch is, but feels like 65g stems? 40$ shipped OBO
71x cherry blues- 15$ shipped or free bundled
Local to 92780, local or bundles will be heavily prioritized. Thank you!

Timestamp
Looking to clear out some stock that I no longer use, shoot offers!
70x L&F creampacas- made these in 2021, been using them as daily drivers for about 2 years. No issues with housings or stems, just fell out of love with long poles. Lubed with g205 + deskey films, 67g tx springs. 95$ shipped OBO
69x L&F hyperglide reds- Had a friend use a break in machine for 500k actuations, ngl couldn't feel a diff but sounded a bit better Lubed with g205 + deskey films, 67g tx springs. 70$ shipped OBO
76x L&F Durock linears- Smokey housing, purple stem, not sure what the exact switch is, but feels like 65g stems? 40$ shipped OBO
71x cherry blues- 15$ shipped or free bundled
Also can trade if anyone has a i5-12600k(f) or nzxt kraken 120 AIO cooler
Local to 92780, local or bundles will be heavily prioritized. Thank you!

[F4A(playing both genders]) The Beginning of the Apocalypse
Are you a versatile roleplayer with a passion for storytelling? I'm on the hunt for a dedicated partner who can meet the following requirements:
❗️MUST:❗️ - Be able to play multiple characters when the storyline demands it. This rp will require multiple characters ! - Thrive in creating drama, action, romance, and more to keep the plot engaging. - Deliver at least two decent paragraphs of advanced literary quality for each response. - Understand that life gets busy; I may go offline for a week or two due to work and studies, so don’t worry if I go I’ll be back.
Idea I’m craving to do ❗️
There are a group of 6 collage students (age range 19-22) who have gone away for spring break to the lake house. The lake house is about a 20 minute boat ride away from the local small town. While on spring break the virus begins to break out in major cities as anarchy arises. But being in the middle of nowhere they don’t know.
This story will entail the beginning of the apocalypse and how they learn to survive. Some may perish in trying to save others and friends may turn to enemies.
I want this to be exciting and I do have some ideas locked away in my mind. I don’t want to discuss my little drama ideas as I do enjoy reading a good surprise. Let’s just say a love triangle may turn into a blood bath.
If you’re interested in playing 3 characters in this let me know. Even 1 main and 4 shared characters I don’t mind.
I am advanced literate!
Dm me :)

[F4A(playing both genders]) The Beginning of the Apocalypse
Are you a versatile roleplayer with a passion for storytelling? I'm on the hunt for a dedicated partner who can meet the following requirements:
❗️MUST:❗️ - Be able to play multiple characters when the storyline demands it. This rp will require multiple characters ! - Thrive in creating drama, action, romance, and more to keep the plot engaging. - Deliver at least two decent paragraphs of advanced literary quality for each response. - Understand that life gets busy; I may go offline for a week or two due to work and studies, so don’t worry if I go I’ll be back.
Idea I’m craving to do ❗️
There are a group of 6 collage students (age range 19-22) who have gone away for spring break to the lake house. The lake house is about a 20 minute boat ride away from the local small town. While on spring break the virus begins to break out in major cities as anarchy arises. But being in the middle of nowhere they don’t know.
This story will entail the beginning of the apocalypse and how they learn to survive. Some may perish in trying to save others and friends may turn to enemies.
I want this to be exciting and I do have some ideas locked away in my mind. I don’t want to discuss my little drama ideas as I do enjoy reading a good surprise. Let’s just say a love triangle may turn into a blood bath.
If you’re interested in playing 3 characters in this let me know. Even 1 main and 4 shared characters I don’t mind.
I am advanced literate!
Dm me :)

Trigger Warning: Loss of a Child. I only mention it, there are no graphic details of any sort.
Hello everyone, this is my first time posting here and even posting on reddit in general. So please bare with me, I'm sure I will make a few mistakes. I am on mobile, if that matters. I'm going to try and make this not horribly long, but there is so much information that I could ramble on for days. I imagine this will end up being longer than I want it to be anyways. If you stick around for the whole thing, thank you so much for listening.
For context: my partner and I have been together for 10 years, have known each other for 15 years, and we are high school sweethearts. We both recently turned 30 this year. We have 3 kids (6, 4, and 4 months.)
Now on to the focus of this post. While I appreciate everyone's opinion and it is more than welcomed, I'm here to ask upon the waywards here. Whether you are in the process of your healing or have made leaps and bounds, I would much love to hear your insight. Those of you who have acted out due to a hidden deep pain. I need your help. I need guidance on how to support and hear my partner's pain while also holding space and navigating my own. R has been difficult, but the progress is there. Again, please know I'm not specifically asking waywards only, I'm totally okay with anyone who wants to comment. I just would like some insight from the WPs here.
My partner cheated on me with a handful of his friends but only in the form of purchasing explicit photos from them. Most of them were coworkers that we were friends with, and were integrated into our lives all at some point. Things never got physical, things never got emotional. He has been very firm about how there were no romantic feelings in it at all, it was strictly just pictures and some flirty exchanges. The thrill of it gave him the dopamine he was looking for, and he did this periodically over the course of a year. I caught him by going through his phone one day while he was sleeping, and I found his secret snapchat. My gut had been screaming for months that something was wrong but I had ignored it thinking it was my own anxiety that I needed to work on. I confronted him immediately, and since then it has taken a lot of work to get on the page that we are.
We were and still kind of are, at a stand still when it comes to certain topics. I feel he isn't entirely ready to fully shoulder his shame, and has tried to rug sweep this several times. We have gone back and forth from this being a raw productive conversation to him telling me it wasn't that big of a deal. He compartmentalized this by believing he was treating it the same as porn. It was simply a transaction. He has not sat down and given me a full timeline, everything I have I pieced together by myself by cross referencing messages, emails, and account log ins. He trickled truth me because he was afraid of hurting me. I was 8 months pregnant when i found out. He didn't want the stress to effect our baby. The first few times we attempted to address this went badly, but he finally came to me and told me it was so hard to talk about what he did because he is so ashamed. That his anger isn't towards me but towards himself because he allowed himself to disconnect from me and our family. He had been dissociated mostly up until this point, so when I called him out, it was like reality sucker punched him square in the face.
Throughout this, I have been struggling to understand and what I want most is to understand. This man has loved me since 8th grade and while he hasn't always made the smartest decisions, we have always been two against the world. For this man to be so out of touch with himself that he would make the conscious choice to cheat on me after the death of our son... I KNOW in my heart that he had acted out of nothing but pure pain. Hurt people, hurt people. This man has been hurting for so long and I want to be able to support him. So instead of pain shopping... I behavior shopped if that makes sense?
I went through every text message between he and I through the year he cheated. From before it started, when it started, cross referencing on days he cheated, literally EVERYTHING. I was so desperate for some kind of insight into what was going on in his head. I was able to build a road map and timeline of his behavior. He, in his own way, has been trying to tell me for months that something was wrong. The shame coded in his words, and the hidden pain taking its toll. The day he made the secret account was a day that we argued so heavily that he sent me a wall of text. This wall of text was his moment of shutting down. It was the moment he disconnected.
While none of this is an excuse to cheat, my partner is also human. He made an awful choice, but it was one made during an incredibly dark mindset. He was struggling with previous traumas we have faced in our relationship, and when he was faced with the death of our son, he absolutely shattered. Instead of dealing with these feelings, he shoved them so far out of sight he would act like they weren't there. He held a well kept mask that he wouldn't break for anyone. If he acknowledged the pain, he would have had to face it. So he ran from it...
Waywards, what kind of support did you wish you had? What help made you feel comfortable enough to share those vulnerable feelings? How can I encourage him throughout his grieving process? He is beyond remorseful. He is so ashamed. There is nothing he wants more than me and his family. He knows he let me down. He knows I'm hurting deeply. What can he do? What can I do? What can WE do? This wasn't him cheating for fun, he didn't cheat because he was unfulfilled. He cheated because he was hurt. What were your experiences? What went on in your head during your affairs? Did you or do you truly love your BS? Was this your wake up call to get yourself together? How deeply do you feel your remorse? Did your AP's truly mean nothing?
There is a scene in Rick & Morty where Mr. PBH comes in and starts talking about his life. His monologue resonated with me because it felt like something my partner would say, if he was able to articulate his feelings. So with that, I'll leave with the quote from this scene.
" I guess things went downhill from there. Started isolating myself from Amy. Used to tell her everything I was feeling, but then I guess I stopped, 'cause I wanted her to love who she thought I was, not who I felt myself becoming. Ever think about how horrified the people we love would be if they found out who we truly are? So we just dig ourselves deeper into our lies every day, ultimately hurting the only people brave enough to love us. Wish I didn't do that. Wish I was brave enough to love them back. I don't know. Maybe you should try it. We don't have as much time as we think."
Signed; A very heart broken BS desperate to understand my WP

I sometimes invite my friends to watch scary movies during late hours (12 AM - 5 AM). Watching these movies late makes the movies a lot more terrifying and imo more fun to watch. Tonight, I invited my friends over again for the second time at 12 AM to come watch horror movies. I called my girlfriend to let her know about what was happening. Immediately, she is incredibly frustrated with me and tells me that she doesn't "understand why anybody would do that". She tells me that anybody with responsibilities would not do that normally. I work on the weekends and have all my weekdays off. It is a Sunday night which is perfect for me as I have nothing going on the next day and summer classes have not started yet. I have tried explaining all of this to her, but arguing with her only results in her breaking down in tears which eventually forces me to swallow my pride, apologize, and adjust myself to her way of thinking.
I am trying to understand her point of view but can't understand why she is frustrated with me simply because I have two friends coming over. From my perspective, I do not understand anything wrong with what I am doing. If I wish to stay up until 5-6 AM watching movies then is there really an issue to that that she should be concerned about? especially since I am on a break between semesters and have little to no responsibilities that are due immediately first thing in the morning. She worries that this will become a habit but I am confident that I have enough self-control to not stay up until 5 AM every night. I had morning classes the entire spring semester yet I showed up to every class.
Some things that I need to bring up for everybody to fully understand the situation:

1. Admittedly, I don't reply to her very well during these periods when I am hanging out with my friends. I am the type of person who likes to live in the moment, and I usually put my phone away when I am doing any sort of activity. She has discussed with me previously that this is something that frustrates her, and I do try to get better at responding to her, but it is difficult when our conversations only consist of single-word messages that eventually lead to dry conversations that consist of just wyd's and nothing wbu's.
2. We do facetime very often, or if not during the day, we would facetime each other before falling asleep, meaning that we usually fall asleep on call together. We have a mutual friend who has caused toxicity in their relationship because they would refuse to go to sleep without their significant other calling them before going to bed, causing that person to completely drop everything they're doing to coo the other person to sleep. We have talked about not wanting to be that kind of couple, yet it seems like we are becoming exactly the same kind of couple that they are since she gets frustrated with me whenever I don't call her when she goes to bed.
3. I have mentioned to her many times before that I want a relationship where we are both our own separate people. I do not want either of us to be represented by each other, but instead as our own person. I will admit that I can be a little clingy at times but I do appreciate each of our individuality.
4. We are not necessarily a very toxic couple. The majority of the time, we have very good moments together. But sometimes she will get frustrated with me for not calling her at night even after spending the whole day together. I argue with her that we already spent so much time together and now I want to spend time playing games with friends, but she says that it shouldn't matter how much time we spend together, and that I should still be prioritizing her even after all that.
5. She has incredibly strict parents. It is almost tradition for her mother's side to be strict. One of her aunts still has a curfew despite her age due to her living with her strict mother. My girlfriend says that she is not like her parents yet she still has a very skewed way of thinking. She says stuff that she would blame on her parent's strictness but it almost seems as if it is her own thoughts. She has her own curfew at 12:00 AM even at 21 years old. This is honestly the main factor that I haven't considered as much but I don't personally understand why this would have to be taken out on me.

Can anybody please help me understand where I am wrong as a boyfriend? Are there any perspectives that I don't understand? What would you think/do if you were in her position?

I spend a good amount of time thinking/reading/planning prepping. Sometimes /collapse and prepping in general can be depressing/overwhelming and I know I don't want to prep to survive, but to thrive in at least some capacities, whether that is personal indulgences or helping rebuild or whatever it may be.
For some reason, today I got a bug to write a short story. It's the first thing I've written since university eng211 so it's not a masterpiece, but it helped me conceptualize a life after our current normal. If anyone else does this, please share your prepping-adjacent stories, I'd love to read them!
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A song for the end of the world
When the end came, it was quiet. Quiter than anyone had heard before. The ringing of phones, the hum of conditioned air, sounds of blenders and ice makers and washing machines, all quieted in an instant.
She was ready for the end. Had been for some time. There were photo albums neatly organized with seed packets where loved ones belonged. Water storage drums and filter material and enough pipe fittings to maintain the system. Aged basmati rice was protected from moths in mylar bags, no longer aging for no air could penetrate their silvery sheathes. She had stacked box after box of freeze-dried meat and dairy, though the meat was tough and the dairy was lacking in fats, as fat does not store well before turning rancid. She even had green coffee beans, having bought a bag from a roastery that had gone out of business before they could be turned to finished product. It was enough, she thought. And it was enough. To survive, anyways.
The quiet, however, proved more distressing than one would have predicted. There were still voices of course, lifted up at times in song, and rarely these were even accompanied by a poorly played instrument if she was lucky enough to have company. But she knew not how to play, and the instruments slowly deteriorated with no new strings to replace those which had snapped. There was no new cork to bridge the gaps in connections between necks and bodies of woodwinds.
It was the silence that had brought her on this journey, one she had made easily, and regularly, and unthinkingly, on many occasions before the end. When there was still gasoline, a trip of ten miles was a trip of ten minutes. Hardly enough time to need plans or provisions. Now, it was at least 4 hours, as the pavement had worn to patches and brush overgrown the lawns. A full day of walking round trip, and that was if she was not stopped along the way.
But she had successfully made it here, to a squat line of buildings with metal roofs and metal doors and metal walls. The buildings were encircled by a tall metal fence, with a metal gate far too heavy to lift on one’s own. The fence was a challenge, one that had stopped unmotivated looters looking for an easy cache, and anyways no one keeps food in a storage unit.
Before the end, she had noticed a break in the fence, along the southern side where a home stood. But before, the home had a picket fence covering the break, enabling only small animals to cross. Now, the wood had rotted, and the hole was just large enough for her. She pulled a few boards from either side; they came away easily as time had loosened their hold to their posts. Climbing through, she left her cart in the yard of the home, as it could not bend to accommodate the dimensions of the hole. She walked to her unit armed only with a key and a precious can of WD-40, the only one she had that was still pressurized.
When she arrived to her unit, unit 474 to be precise, it was to her relief she noted that the lock had been cut and the unit opened before her arrival. The WD-40 was safe for another day. It was looters probably, but thankfully looters with some sense of morality as her door had been lowered back into position.
She heaved the door up, with considerable effort, and only to halfway, as the tracks had rusted and the springs had lost their bounce. The inside was much as she had left it, no doubt a disappointment to the looters that her main interests were Chinese art and European dishware. Nothing of value now.
The unit was large, a bit of embarrassment to her before, that she needed so much space for paintings of birds and bamboo, for crystal goblets with gold rims, for lace curtains yellowed from the sun. The 10 foot by 30 foot space was well organized, with plastic shelves lining the walls and a stack of Persian rugs at the far end. The treasure she sought was at the rear, on the bottom shelf, in boxes that had held wine bottles in their former life. She pulled the first box out to the floor, gently so as to not disturb its contents.
A fire of excitement raced through her veins, for her treasure was here and intact and unbroken. She lifted the first binder, far older than she, covered with leather, structured of wood, and bound with string. She inhaled deeply as the dust of years of storage erupted into the air when she opened the binder. Laid bare to her hungry eyes were the names of virtuosos and their long unheard performances. She would have to be judicious now, some would have to be left behind.
There were Christmas albums, many with the same tunes played in different keys by different instruments. Many were popular songs of the day, the day being the early 20th century. Some were arias sung by large women in Italy, others were tongue-in-cheek melodies by skinny men in Memphis. She rearranged the binders, telling herself she could carry no more than 6, as shellac is heavy and the wheels of her cart were dry rotted and weak. She put back the ones that didn’t make the cut, and told them softly that she would return for them as well. She wasn’t sure she could keep this promise.
She walked back to the break in the fence, thrice, carrying each time two binders, placing each gently in the cart. On the third trip she slung a ratty blanket over her shoulder, a ruse to hide the records and a reasonable excuse to be foraging if stopped. She pulled down her metal door, using all her weight to overcome the debris in the tracks. She did not replace the lock, as she thought it would only bring added scrutiny to her unit if hers was the only one secured.
The journey was half over, and the sun was still shining high in the sky, though not directly overhead. With any luck, she would make it home before dark; but if not, she had chosen today as the full moon would provide enough light to guide her home. She pulled the cart through the yard of the home next to the storage facility, down the street which had four lanes in either direction. Enough of the street remained to roll the cart, if one didn’t mind winding around the potholes.
After about three hours of meandering down the roadway, she was forced to turn to a lesser avenue, one which could not be easily managed. At times her cart could be pushed out of the potholes, but other times she had to alleviate its load; moving all her prized binders to the ground, lifting up the rotted wheels, moving them to more stable ground, then repacking each binder in its place. A few times, she saw another human, walking briskly, or sauntering, or looking a bit lost. Each time she greeted them with a smile, and a wave, and her friendliness worked to put them off, as no one had capacity for new friends with new mouths and new needs. Her ragged cart and dirty blanket and affable greeting signaled to all that she was in need. Her plan was undoubtedly working.
As the sun grew low in the sky, the clouds tinged with technicolor fuchsias and warm salmons, she rounded the corner to her own street. She whistled loudly, a specific tone and tune, and 6 cats sprang forth from the overgrowth to greet her. She had cared for them as kittens and trained them to behave gently and sang to them in the quietude. She talked to them excitedly, bragging of her treasure, promising each one in turn that she would play something lovely for them.
Her cart has held her load, the wheels still slightly inflated. The sun had shone all day, the clouds had kept their distance. The people she had passed had not accosted her, and none seemed in great need of her assistance either. It was a perfect day, she thought. Likely the most perfect day since the end begun.
When she arrived at her home, she raced to a large piece of wooden furniture, some three foot tall and four foot wide, standing with delicate legs on clawed feet. Covered by a tablecloth, for many years she had used it as a place to display various items, an Indian brass oil decanter, a Japanese statuette of a Shinto goddess, an old book with pleasant illustrations. These she threw off, rather unceremoniously in fact, and with them the tablecloth as well. For this chest held a secret, and needed no power to move.
She lifted the top of the chest, and opened the cabinet doors, and wound a crank on its side. She took her cherished binders from the cart, and opened to the sleeve holding a recording from 1923. Gingerly, she removed it from its carrier and placed it upon the green felt pad in the center of the Victrola. She turned a few knobs, and the felt pad started spinning. She had been taught how to use this as a child, by her father, who died long before the end. She waited till the spinning reached its apex and lifted the needled arm to the edge of the record.
A grainy, tinny, not entirely clear sound filled her house, and her ears, and her soul.
“Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne?”
And she cried tears of sadness and of joy, and she knew she was alive.

I loved you before. I love you now. And I’ll love you again.
I can’t save you. Can’t warn you of what’s coming. It’s October 2023, and I’m with you in the bathroom, checking your back for a bruise. It hurts so badly that you swear there has to be one.
“Did you sleep on it wrong?” I ask, even though I’ve already seen what’s waiting in our future.
I’m with you in our favorite restaurant. It’s July 2008, and it’s raining hard. You can’t look at me. I’m angry, too—furious that I can’t understand you or make you understand me. I know we’re moments away from breaking up. I also know we’re going to reconnect before the year is over, then start again in the spring. Even though I know these things, I can’t tell you any of them. I have to follow the path time has laid out for us.
It’s why I hated the Project for so long. Our forced evolution, where once we were beings who perceived the world in 3.5 dimensions, now we chosen few see it in 4. No more viewing time moving in one direction. Now we see it as it really is… happening all at once. I know why we did it and why I helped. The world is dying, and the coming ecological collapse is all but certain. So, we tried to send our knowledge back and warn our younger, careless selves. Only we can’t.
Those of us who are enhanced can see all of time, yet we still can’t change it. So, I can’t tell you about this 4-dimensional thing I’ve become because I haven’t become it yet. And by the time I do, you’re already gone.
I’m with you in the hospital. It’s December 2011, and I’m exhausted and in pain, but our baby boy is finally here. He’s all tiny hands and feet, with a smile like mine but brown eyes like his father’s.
“He’s so handsome… you sure he’s mine?” you whisper in my ear. You’re kidding, and I want to laugh, but I just kiss you instead.
Four months later, we’re moving into our first house. The driveway is crumbling, and the tree out front is dead, but the house is beautiful. Light blue vinyl siding, a white front door, with three beds and two baths, but most importantly, it’s ours.
I’m defending my dissertation now. It’s May 2008, and you said you’d be here, but you aren’t. I hope you’ll show up before I finish, despite knowing you won’t. We talk on the phone when I’m done, though I can barely say more than ten words to you. You haven’t decided if you really want to let me in. You’re still so young, and so am I.
It’s January 2006. I’m at a house party with people I mostly don’t know. Strangers keep introducing themselves, then poke and prod, trying to find out if I’m really that girl genius from California. Eventually, I sneak away to the back porch to be alone. You’re already there… waiting for me, even though you don’t know it. This is our first meeting, out there in the cold, both of us trying to hide from the party.
You stumble over your words, apologizing for your awkwardness. Your sheepishness doesn’t match your looks. Tall, brown skin, and muscular. You’ve only been out of the military a few months. And I can tell right away you’re brilliant.
I don’t know you yet, but I will. Three years later, you’ll tell me about your family and why you don’t see them. A year before that, you’ll push me away, fearing I’ll hurt you like they did.
Our son is a man now and tall like you. It’s April 2041, and he’s a part of the Project. They think that maybe the next generation of 4D candidates will have more control over their past actions, but only as far back as the moment they were first enhanced. Still, he keeps trying, hoping to succeed where I and so many others failed. He wants to save you. He also wants to save me. He can’t tell me yet, but I know he’ll become one of the next-gen 4D candidates. Yet he isn’t one now, so he can’t say anything... can’t alter his path.
It’s June 2024, and your birthday’s days away. You won’t make it. You’re so thin, so fragile, and the cancer has spread too far. I’m by your bed, hoping you’ll get better by some miracle, even though I already know you’ll be gone within the hour.
“The Project?” you ask weakly. “You’ll be able to move your mind into the future?”
“If it works, we’ll be able to move anywhere along our personal timelines. So, I could go forward and find better treatments for you.”
You smile. “Some things can’t be fixed, baby.”
You haven’t been enhanced. You aren’t 4D like me, but you know your end is almost here. You take my hands into yours and squeeze them tightly.
“You said all of time already exists, right?” you ask, breathing harder now. “That the past, present, and future are here all at once, and we just can’t perceive them?”
I nod, and you continue. “Then, when you finish the Project, you’ll see me. You’ll see... I loved you before… I love you now… and I’ll love you again.”
It’s February 2064. I’m dying, and my son is weeping at my bedside.
“I thought I could figure it out. I thought I could save you,” he says tearfully.
I take his beautiful face in my hands. “You did. The moment you were born, you saved me, just like the moment I met your father. And all those points in time, they’re all here… and they always will be.”
He wipes his tears, and together, we say the words his father once said.
I loved you before. I love you now. And I’ll love you again.
It’s January 2006, and again, I’m meeting you for the first time. I can’t save you. Can’t change our path through time. But I’ll never lose you either… I just have to know when to look.

We planted three seedlings three years ago and all three are doing very well (SW facing back yard, halfway up a long somewhat steep hill with decent drainage). They are currently about 2 1/2' tall or so each.
I know that best way to care for madrone is simply to leave it alone for the most part, which has been working splendidly. However, I would like to keep it pruned of excessively wacky growth so we won't have to worry over much about limb breakage in the future (for instance, we have one crazy shoot this spring that has sprung out 1' directly horizontal and then twisted straight up another couple inches!)
Any advice on how to best shape the tree so as to keep it healthy, sturdy and limb-break free in the future?

We are 5 episodes into the new season and I am having so much fun. However, one of my favorite YouTubers for Doctor Who content brought up a good point in one of their most recent videos: there aren't enough episodes. I kind of drew this plan up that would've put together a longer season. The first step is to completely drop the 60th Anniversary from RTD2. Push Series 13 from the Whittaker era to Spring-Summer 2022, extend to the normal 10 episodes like normal so Flux can be fleshed out and Chibnall can tell the story as he wanted. Then have The Power of the Doctor be released in November of 2023 as the final episode of the Whittaker era and serve as the 60th Anniversary, because it is a great love letter to the show's history. Throw in a New Year's Special at the beginning of the year to make the break from Series 13 to the 60th easier. The special ends with Jodie Whittaker regenerating into Ncuti Gatwa, the Fourteenth Doctor. The version of the 60th we got doesn't happen, no David Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor. To celebrate New Who during the 60th, add Tennant as one of the Guardians of the Edge.
After this launch the new era of Doctor Who starring Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson in the fall of 2024; this gives plenty of time for filming and production so the crew isn't rushed. Seasons 1 and 2 of the new era would be filmed back to back with a sizeable break afterward before starting production on Season 3. As far as the episodes go, the resources and time that would've went to the 60th we got would go to making Season One a 12 episode season. The new order of episodes and stories would be as followed...

1. The Star Beast
   1. This episode's plot would fundamentally stay the same, except the family we meet is the Sunday family, and Gatwa's 14th Doctor runs into Ruby and her bandmates. After the Meep's ship crashes, the Doctor and Ruby part ways.
   2. The Doctor goes to investigate and eventually stumbles onto Ruby who finds the Meep the same way Rose Noble would have. Ensure shenanigans in the Sunday house involving the Meep, Cherry, and Carla.
   3. Much of the episode stays the same. Reintroduce UNIT for a new audience with Shirley's character, the time that was used for Donna's memory storyline would be used to introduce this new Doctor to the fans and the new viewers, as well as establishing that Ruby is a foundling. DON'T show the woman leaving Ruby at the church yet
   4. The episode wouldn't end with Donna's memories coming back and saving the ship, would end with the Doctor saving it in Doctor-y fashion to show off his new skills and charisma
   5. Add a Susan Twist cameo by having her be the news reporter from the BBC that gets taken away by UNIT
   6. Episode ends with Ruby walking into the TARDIS, with the Mrs. Flood stuff, and the "I'm the Doctor!" from Ruby Road
2. Space Babies
   1. I actually really like this episode and I am not changing anything except the ending. The Doctor doesn't give Ruby the key yet, the duo don't go back to the Sunday's apartment, but showcase the snow and the Doctor scanning her in the TARDIS because of the snow while Ruby says goodbye to the babies
3. Rogue
   1. Next up is one of our historicals for the season. At time of post, we don't know much about the plot, but if any crazy plot stuff happens in this episode, cut it. Typical historical stuff, plus apparently bird people and Jonathan Groff
4. BOOM
   1. Moffat is here
   2. Don't change this episode I fucking adore it
5. The Giggle/Celestial Gameplay
   1. Probably the biggest change to RTD2 so far
   2. Stretch this story to be a massive two-parter so as to reintroduce Kate Stewart and Mel, as well as give Neil Patrick Harris more time as the Toymaker because oh my god he was amazing
   3. This is a big swing but have the bigeneration still take place, just without David Tennant, instead Gatwa bigenerates into two Ncuti Gatwas as the cliffhanger. The two Ncuti's and Ruby enter the Toymaker's domain once again for Part 2 while UNIT tries to rescue them. The third game they play is instead a game of hide and seek where the Toymaker hides Ruby and the Doctors have to save Ruby before the time runs out or they all die.
   4. Doctors succeed (yay) and the Toymaker is trapped in the box and sealed in salt. At this point, the Gatwa that split from the Doctor absorbs back into him, no harm no foul. But the precedent has been set that the Toymaker is very powerful and "ripped the Doctor's soul in half."
   5. In the trailer for the Season One we are getting now, the Doctor is sitting with Carla about keeping Ruby safe. That happens at the end of this episode before him and Ruby take off again
6. Dot and Bubble
   1. Leave as be, this episode was amazing
7. The Devil's Chord
   1. Leave as be, this episode was AMAZING
   2. After the chaos of this episode, Ruby asks to go home to spend some time off with her family
8. The Church on Ruby Road
   1. The Doctor takes Ruby home for Christmas, only to discover the Goblins and such. The Doctor catches up with Ruby, shenanigans ensue as we got, the musical number. The conversation when the two are tied up is different now, with them catching up and the Doctor questioning all of the fantastical monsters the two have faced (Toymaker, Maestro, Goblins, Boogeyman)
   2. The episode has the scenes with Mrs. Flood, as usual with the fourth wall break
   3. Episode ends with Ruby rejoining the Doctor
9. 73 Yards
   1. This episode has been my favorite of the season, change NOTHING
10. The Legend of Ruby Sunday/Empire of Death
    1. At this point every element needed for the finale to happen as RTD has written (which we get in a couple of weeks) is here, so I guess we shall see how it goes...
11. Moffat's Christmas 2024 Special

These changes make for a longer first season with Ncuti Gatwa, more regular episodes of Doctor Who, and I think a better jumping on point for new fans. Share your thoughts, I would love to hear them :)

Original post : https://www.reddit.com/AmItheAsshole/s/ph0ln6I44a
Original BLUF: I told my fiancé his best friend can’t come to our wedding. She pretends I don’t exist & he does nothing to address it.
The comments on my original post opened my eyes and made me realize that despite this being the healthiest relationship I’ve been in, it doesn’t mean it’s actually healthy. We’ve had a couple conversations surrounding this issue, which mostly consisted of me saying it bothered me & him saying he I was the only one who cared.
A couple things helped me realize my breaking point-

1. I asked him if he would be okay with our daughters future partner treating them like this, to which he got flustered, shut down, and said he didn’t want to talk about it. (I left it alone)
   
2. He said he didn’t want to end his friendship or do anything to jeopardize it because “what if we break up.” This made me realize he would not protect me as his wife, since he didn’t as his girlfriend.
   

The final straw was when I expressed how much it bothered me that he wanted me to blow this off since we, as in me & the best friend, only see each other 4-6 times a year & he said (directly quoted because this is burned into my brain) : “I know the way she treats you is garbage, but you’re allowing one person to dictate our relationship.”
“It could be worse. She could be more active. There are worse ways to meddle, people text and lie, and all that to break relationships up.”
The first line broke my heart and told me all I needed to know. I have to truck through a couple more months of pre-planned & paid for social engagements, but I closed the curtain on any chance of healing this relationship the moment those words left his mouth.
Thank you everyone for the advice, common sense, knocking me upside my head, and similar related experiences & outcomes.
I’m gonna go to therapy & redefine what a healthy, balanced, and communicative re

Hi everyone, looking for some advice wether it’s worth fixing my current car or just buying a new one (my budget is 6000 aud, and have found a Nissan micra that I like with 120,000km on the clock). I’m currently driving a 08 subway forester with approximately 250,000 km on the clock. At the start of the year I had to completely fix the front control arm and get new sway bar links and other things done that added up to about 1000. I am now having to get the back fixed, including 2 rear tires, new rear break pads, break fluid flush, control arm bushes and rear sway bar links which I have been quoted 2000 for. This quote was from a dealer so I am aware it will likely work out cheaper than this, but just wanted to see what others would do in this situation. Thankyou!

Hi everyone, looking for some advice wether it’s worth fixing my current car or just buying a new one (my budget is 6000 aud, and have found a Nissan micra that I like with 120,000km on the clock). I’m currently driving a 08 subway forester with approximately 250,000 km on the clock. At the start of the year I had to completely fix the front control arm and get new sway bar links and other things done that added up to about 1000. I am now having to get the back fixed, including 2 rear tires, new rear break pads, break fluid flush, control arm bushes and rear sway bar links which I have been quoted 2000 for. This quote was from a dealer so I am aware it will likely work out cheaper than this, but just wanted to see what others would do in this situation. Thankyou!

I broke up with my ex at the start of March but we called it quits on May 1st. I was happy at first but I think it was just one of those things where you're like "I'm gonna super motivated" and you are but a week later you crash. well, I realized what I ruined. I lost a boy who loved me and forgave me and put up with me. But we both had problems just mine were significantly more. I wanted to come on here and talk about what I did in detail, talk about what he did, and then how I'm gonna change and cope.
I lied to him, the main thing was he wanted me to tell him when I was with my friends which wasn't an issue. But when I was with my friends he would sometimes go radio silent and he said that when I was with them I was meaner. I was meaner but it was circumstantial, he called me about these switch joy-cons breaking which cost 80 dollars to replace but the thing that upset me was I got them 4 months ago at the time. It was early and I was happy he called me but when he said they needed to be replaced I got irritated. So when I told him I was with friends he wouldn't call me or hardly text me and he barely responded and that was upsetting for me. so I stopped telling him when I was with friends. One day we argued and I wanted some support from friends around me so I had a sleepover but didn't tell him. The next day my grandmother asked me right in front of him, how was the sleepover and I left the room. He left the house and was texting me about all the cars going by and we were fighting. I was in distress. He and I talked afterward and made up. Later on, I lied to him about a job we got paid for. We helped my grandparents move some furniture out of the cabin we had and he helped. He was already upset by the fact that we didn't hang out for 2 weeks and the day he came over we spent some of it helping my family. (my family is old and have broken their hand and arm before plus bad knees so they needed the help). while moving stuff my pap accidentally dropped the couch on his thumb. His thumb got bloody and the skin broke. It wasn't terrible but took 3 weeks to heal. When we went home he told me that I had volunteered him to help. But I told him before we went out that he could go home but I wasn't going to let them do this on their own. He also told me that he didn't want to spend our first day back together working for free. That upset me. A week later my gram gave me 30 dollars (15 for each of us) and told me it was up to me how much I gave him. I felt weird giving him the money because he said about not wanting to work for free, but a week prior he made a joke about how I asked my dad for money. I thought he was making a joke about him asking my dad for money but he was actually mocking me. It was really bad and it upset me a lot. I also at the time felt like he didn't deserve the money because of what he said but that was an asshole move from me. I put the 30 dollars in my car for gas because I drive him to school and have to go out of the way to get him. I'm in the wrong for this he did the work, so he should have gotten the money but I was too upset and mad to even think right. I don't think this way anymore. He did a job, He is getting paid for that job. It's literally a worker's law. He wouldn't have cared about using the money for gas if I just explained that to him. He said he asked me if we ever got paid for the work before this happened but I don't remember him asking me, but he says I told him we didn't, so I lied to him again. But I don't remember this at all, at the same time though my gram took a week or 2 to pay us so if I did tell him no I think it's because we weren't paid yet? I'm not sure don't quote me on it. No matter what I should have paid him it was only right.
We have communication issues. I felt like I hadn't been able to talk to him a lot and he felt like he couldn't talk to me about certain things. It was because we were worried about how the other person would respond or react. I can't speak for him but I can speak for myself. I felt like I couldn't talk to him because he told me to stop talking about a lot of things. He told me to stop talking about this music artist I really like and she was all I would talk about for a bit there but I would still talk about everything else. But she was something I was so excited about because she was making a new album. He didn't care for her music but he said me talking about her so much ruined it for him and now he doesn't like her. I asked him later that if I liked an artist he liked as much as her would he act the same way and he said no. I told him that was really unfair. he didn't understand how it was unfair. Just because I like her and you didn't doesn't mean you tell me to stop talking about something I really like. But if he also likes the artist suddenly it's totally ok and I can talk as much as I want. When he told me to stop talking about something I loved I started thinking that if I talked about other things as much as I did her hed tell me to stop so I stopped talking about the things I liked. It started upsetting him and he has apologized but it was hard for me to talk again because I knew he still had those feelings.
He didn't like my family and it killed me inside. He didn't know what to think of my dad, he liked my brother and liked my mom's side of the family but thought my entire dad's side were assholes. Which to be honest my great-grandmother has old opinions and can be rude but I give her a pass because she's old (80). But I do explain to her she can't say stuff about people's weight and how people "don't want to work" when actually no one around us is hiring. My grandmother though is a bitch, she thinks she can say all this stuff with no consequence and she acts like the victim when you tell her to knock it off. I don't even like my grandmother at times but she's the only person in my family that can play my mom. my parents are divorced. It just sucks though. He wouldn't go out to see any of my family except for my mom's side because he didn't like being around my grandmother. He thinks my best friends are assholes too but I think they need to talk because they both say the same things about one another and it is so awkward.
I should have stood up for him at every chance but sometimes I did agree with my family but now I don't agree. I was just too stressed to think. I was either too mad or too sad.
One day I got really mad at him. I wanted him to go meet this lady that his mom and stepdad were talking to about hiring him. She liked him and told him she would hire him and he was so happy when he told me that all he had to do was sign papers but when he came back the second time he was upset and mad. The lady said that she was gonna cut his pay if his grades were bad and he would be doing everything for minimum wage. I felt terrible but how my family saw it its a job. And I saw it the same way my dad did. I should have never made him meet her. I just wanted him to look good for making a presentation of himself. Later that night I texted him how I felt like his mother and how I always took care of him, I felt like he wanted everything handed to him. I was so mad it's unreal. I feel awful. I don't feel like his mother. I'm supposed to take care of my partner when he's sick. I was just so mad I wasn't thinking straight at all. We took a two-week break after this.
One issue that I had with him was he would yell at me. He would get mad and almost go straight to yelling. the day I broke up with him he yelled at me for 20 minutes and I just couldn't. He got out of my car but when I came back I broke up with him. I wish I didn't do it but it felt needed. I wish he told me he knew he was yelling and just needed time so that we both could have stopped and thought everything through but I broke things off. He's forgiven me so many times and I've forgiven him so many times too. I hope he can forgive me again and we can reconnect.
Imm going to graduate high school, find a good-paying job, and go to college for that career. While doing that I'm going to learn how to be better by watching YouTube videos about psychology and keep posting. I'm going to journal because I feel better when I do. I'm going to start expiring soon and I started a higher dose of my antidepressant medication. It has helped my anxiety a lot but my depression has been getting bad. I want to journal about my days so I can remember them better. I'm going to reach out when I need to. Thank you for reading.

I struggle bad with mental health. from a young age, I spent hours a day in the school counselor’s office, talking about feelings that often felt too big for my body. I struggled with finding a will and reason to live. That struggle never went away.
I find myself to be a very empathetic person. I feel everything and i feel it deeply, intensely, and entirely. When things are slightly off path, to most people it would be a semi upsetting situation that they then navigate around. To me, it’s ground shattering. Earth breaking. Everything is too much to handle.
It gets worse in winter. During the summer and spring, the only thing that keeps me sane is my garden. For some reason, it’s the only place in the world in which mishaps don’t break me. I feel calm and in touch. When winter comes, my life seemingly falls apart. I feel I have nothing to live and work for, and each winter is an uphill battle with my eyes set on one thing- when I can be in my garden again.
This past winter was impossible. I struggled so much more with self harm than i ever have in my life and my mental health hit an all time low. There wasn’t a day suicide wasn’t on my mind. I would cross the street haphazardly, without looking, waiting and hoping for someone to hit me. I wouldn’t eat for long stretches of time, I wouldn’t put my seatbelt on, I lost all value of and for my life.
I don’t think I can make it through that again. I don’t want to go through it again.