When I was getting started, an actor I knew gave me some really good advice. While deciding whether or not to take a certain role, consider three factors: the money, the show, and the people. If at least two of those things are good, accept the job. If they’re paying you well and you love the play, you won’t mind putting up with shitty people. If it’s a great show with a cast full of friends, but you’re not getting paid so well, that’s still alright, it’ll be artistically fulfilling. If it’s a bad show but you love the cast and you’re making money, you’ll probably have the time of your life making fun of the playwright backstage and laughing all the way to the bank.
What my friend failed to mention is that as an aspiring actor, you don’t usually get to be that picky. When I got the call from my agent that a production of The Bacchae was urgently seeking a new chorus member, all I could see were dollar signs. My survival job had just fallen through (the family I nannied for was moving upstate, insisting that Manhattan had just gotten “too dangerous” for their toddler), and my savings were only going to cover my rent for another month.
It was raining the day of my audition, and my train got delayed. I showed up panting (I had to run from the subway station) and my hair a disaster. Luckily, in The Bacchae, the chorus is full of… well… Bacchae. Fervent followers of Dionysus, wild women, drunk and running through the countryside. In the climax of the play, they crowd the protagonist in a frenzy, literally ripping him limb from limb.
I’ll never know if it was my frenetic energy from barely making it to the theater on time, or my actual acting, but I got the part. My costume fitting was the next day– they weren’t kidding about urgently needing a replacement. Which thrilled me, because I wasn’t kidding about urgently needing the money. At the fitting, I discovered something my agent failed to mention about the production: this wasn’t just any version of The Bacchae, it was a recreation– an attempt to perform the play in the traditional Greek style. In other words, everyone was wearing masks.
I’ve never been fond of masks. We had to do a few assignments with them in my college acting courses; covering your face can enhance the physicality of your body, something like that. But I never liked wearing them, or seeing other people wearing them. It wouldn’t be fair to call it a full-on fear, but the stiffness, the lack of expression, gives me a weird feeling in my stomach. And wearing one, your field of vision limited, your mouth covered, making it harder to breathe, harder to project your voice– I don’t like it. It’s as simple as that.
But I needed the money. My costume wasn’t ugly, per se, just strange: a long white dress, or maybe toga is a better word, the fabric about the thickness of a burlap sack. My mask, stark white, paper mache, covering my entire face except my eyes, the mouth carved to imitate a grin. No shoes. My hair tucked into a wild black wig– we wore wigs, they explained to me, so the chorus could be identical, indistinguishable. We moved as one, spoke as one, and were meant to look like one. They even made sure to cast women of the same height. In our costumes, it was impossible to tell which of us was which.
It didn’t help that I was an outsider to the rest of the cast, joining the show weeks into rehearsals. Everyone seemed annoyed that they had to teach me the blocking, the inflection of the lines (so my voice didn’t stick out from the other chorus girls), and where to go backstage during scenes with no chorus. A few people tried to be nice to me, but quickly gave up when they realized I knew nothing about Greek theater, or masked theater, or the avant garde. My last show had been a regional production of Cats, for God’s sake. I was totally out of my element.
Things got especially sour when I tried to ask what had happened to the girl I was replacing. Nobody wanted to talk about it. People gasped when I brought it up. The clearest answer I got was a whispered, hesitant, “she fell,” but the person wouldn’t elaborate any further. The cast seemed superstitious, uncomfortable, like talking about her would cause them to suffer her fate: removal from the show. And it was clear that, aside from me, everyone else loved this show. The actor playing Dionysus, the couple of times he deigned to talk to me, just kept gushing about how honored he was to play this role, how electrifying it felt to put his history minor to use, to show people a piece of the world’s theatrical beginnings.
I thought the show was fine. Kinda boring, kinda scary. I don’t think I “get” The Bacchae. In brief, the story is about Dionysus, son of Zeus, disguised as a human. He and his followers (the chorus) show up in a town, but the leader of the town, Pentheus, is upset about it. He doesn’t understand why all these women are acting crazy, and he arrests Dionysus, not believing him to be an actual God. As punishment, Dionysus possesses Pentheus’s own mother with the same madness as his followers, and together, with their bare hands, they rip Pentheus apart. His mom walks back into town holding her son’s head, thinking it to be, in her madness, the head of a lion. When she realizes what she’s done, she is overwhelmed by grief, and futilely attempts to put Pentheus’s mutilated corpse back together. Dionysus returns, basically saying, “well, he said I wasn’t a God, and that’s blasphemous, so he got what was coming to him.” Pentheus’s mother is exiled.
It’s incredibly dark. In the reviews, critics called it daring, challenging, a bloody spectacle, a feminist masterpiece. I don’t really get what part of “a man who’s a God possesses women’s minds, driving them to murder” screams “feminism,” but hey, I’m the girl who commuted to New Jersey every day for four months to do Cats, what do I know?
Here’s something I do know: the other chorus girls did not like me. And they took their jobs seriously. As we waited to enter for each scene, there was dead quiet in the wings. Usually, there’s some light joking, maybe quickly running lines, maybe physical warmups, shaking out your nerves– I tried to do this once. Before our entrance at the top of the show, we all gathered in the stage right wing, all twelve of us, a perfect and identical dozen. It was a dress rehearsal. No audience. I did a few jumping jacks, trying to hype myself up. Another masked girl grabbed my bicep, hard. When I turned, she just shook her head “no.” Just a simple, silent, “no.” We don’t do that here. We stand silently in the wings, focusing on our craft, breathing, waiting for our entrance. I never tried it again.
When you can’t talk to your coworkers, acting becomes a lot less fun. The collaboration element is totally gone. And honestly, the “acting” element was gone for me, too. How am I supposed to find my character or sense of identity in a role when my role is “don’t let your voice stick out, don’t take a wrong step, blend in perfectly with eleven women who dislike you?”
So before the shows, instead of chatting, or doing jumping jacks, I wandered the theater. I’ve always loved theaters; the dramatic architecture, the ornate prosceniums, the stark contrast of backstage, so dark, so dusty. The theater was no Broadway house, but it had a fly system (which we didn’t use, because the Greeks wouldn’t have been able to fly anything in), just over three hundred seats (including a mezzanine– fancy!), and lots of backstage space. I could say more about it, because I spent hours during the run of the show wandering, but it wouldn’t be terribly interesting to anyone who’s not me. Just know, it was a beautiful old theater– and I mean OLD. Built in the 1910s, just before the Great Depression. I used to love imagining how many generations of people had performed on that stage, imagining what they’d think of this show, or what they’d think of me.
About a week into my wandering, on some fifteen-minute break, I was looking at the ladder that led up to the catwalk– a long, thin metal walkway stretching across the stage from above, usually used for hanging lights. I wondered how long it had been since it was used during a show. I wondered if it was even safe. What would the view be like from up there, seeing the entire stage from thirty feet in the air?
I slowly looked up the ladder. I wouldn’t actually climb it. That would be crazy, right? I’m not particularly good with heights. As my eyes lifted, I made eye contact– or rather, mask contact– with someone. A fellow chorus girl, up on the catwalk.
I stopped breathing for a second. What was she doing up there? I started to say something stupid, like, “Why are you up there?” when just as quickly as the face appeared, it vanished. I saw her white robed form retreat down the catwalk, heading for a different ladder, probably. It was weird. Why did she run? Embarrassed to be caught somewhere she shouldn’t be?
I allowed myself to entertain a little fantasy: maybe she was just like me. Maybe she also hated the other chorus girls, and didn’t “get” The Bacchae. Maybe she was exploring the theater for fun on our break, enjoying the old architecture, like I did. I had no idea who she was under the mask, and she had no idea who I was. She probably thought I was one of the normal judgemental girls, and ran off before I could tell on her to the stage manager.
I was filled with unfounded hope. Could I make a friend here? Was it possible? After two and a half weeks of silence from the other girls, it was hard to imagine. How would I find her? How would I let her know it was me– that I had seen her on the catwalk, and we were the same?
After that day, I got much more observant. When the director called for a break, instead of immediately retreating into the depths of backstage, I watched my eleven doppelgangers carefully, tracking who went for water, who went back to the dressing rooms, who ran off towards the vending machines. It was hard to tell everyone apart, but people had to take their masks off to drink water eventually. I memorized faces and tried to keep track of them. I started to get a handle on everyone’s patterns, narrowing down potential adventurers.
It was impossible. Eleven people is too many to observe. But I’m an actor. Memorizing shit is literally my job. By week four, just days from opening, I had three potential girls. I tried to stick close to them during rehearsals, picking one to follow each day, but nobody ever wandered towards the catwalk. Maybe the girl, whoever she was, had been scared away from adventuring when I caught her. I started to lose hope. We were opening soon– I should focus on making my entrances, not making friends.
But then I saw her again.
This time, it was half an hour before the curtain went up for our invited dress rehearsal. The press was there. I was nervous. I knew I had my part down, but when you’re doing a show, no matter how prepared you are, there’s always the lingering fear that you’ll freeze up, forget everything, and ruin everyone’s hard work. It just means that you care. I was surprised that I cared so much. I still didn’t even get the play. I couldn’t let the other girls see me weak. I barely show my real feelings to people I care about, much less mean actresses who look down on me. To get away from it all, I wandered down to another unused part of the stage: the orchestra pit. We did have music in the show, but the Greeks didn’t have orchestra pits. So it was closed off, being used as storage.
I loved it down there. I loved looking through the storage bins, finding props from long-forgotten productions– sometimes I would find something incredible, something I swore was from the day the theater opened, something old and valuable– and usually, I could never find it again. Those bins were a treasure trove. Of all the weird little spaces I found backstage, the pit was my favorite. I felt like a real explorer down there, illuminating my path with my phone flashlight, getting spooked when a mouse ran over my foot (of course the theater had mice, it was more than a hundred years old! And besides, every building has mice in New York City).
That day, I wasn’t there to look around. Just to sit. Just to catch my breath. I tiptoed down the creaky steps, and plopped myself on the ground, surrounded by bins. I inhaled and exhaled, smelling the mildew-y scent of old props on every side of me. And that’s when I heard a noise. Not a mouse noise– I was used to those. Something bigger. I turned my phone flashlight on immediately, calling, “hello?”
And the light landed on a mask, just like mine. Mine which was currently off, because I was doing my breathing exercises. I felt exposed– she could see my face, but I couldn’t see hers. I stood up. “You scared me!”
She didn’t respond. She looked at me for a second, and started to retreat the other way, towards the stairs at the other side of the pit.
“Wait!” I called. “I won’t tell anyone I saw you!”
She stopped for a second. But then she kept walking. I stood and followed. “Please stop. Can I at least know who you are? I don’t fit in with most of the chorus girls–”
I reached for her long white toga. I swear, I had it in my hand, but somehow, she slipped away. I staggered a bit, almost tripped, confused that I hadn’t made contact with her costume. And when I looked back up, I only saw a glimpse of her disappearing up the stairs. I tried to follow, again, but I found that side of the pit’s stairs reached a dead end. I didn’t understand how she’d gotten out. And when I looked back down at my phone, it was time for places. Disappointed and defeated, I rushed away to the other stairs, making my way to the stage right wing to wait for my entrance.
I counted heads immediately when I arrived. Maybe she hadn’t made it back yet. But, alas: twelve. All accounted for. I nudged a girl next to me, subtly. “Who was the last one here besides me?”
She just stared at me for a moment, which came off as very creepy through the blank dead stare of her mask. “How the fuck am I supposed to know? We all look exactly the same.”
I sighed. “Okay. Thanks.” For nothing, I thought bitterly.
The invited dress went well. The press liked it, as I’ve already said. I was distracted the entire time. After that day, I made it a habit to count all the girls when the stage manager called for “places.” If I was right about this girl, she, like me, would be one of the last, if not the last one there. She would be wandering, exploring, getting away from the bullies.
I wish I hadn’t done this. I wish I’d given up when she disappeared on a dead-end staircase. I wish I’d never seen her on the catwalk. Because when I started counting heads, I noticed something impossible. Sometimes, before we went on, I counted thirteen identical masked faces.
It was a chorus of twelve. It was supposed to be twelve. I’d recount. Recount again. Thirteen. A chill went down my spine. We all looked the same. Same masks, same togas, same wigs. Who was the imposter? How could anyone be an imposter? It didn’t make sense. How would they get into the theater? How would they get a costume?
I started counting more often. Between scenes, in the dressing rooms, even on stage during dull moments. It fluctuated. Sometimes I’d count twelve for a whole day, an entire show, and sigh in relief, feeling like some curse was broken. But the next day, at least once, I’d count thirteen.
And it seemed as if one masked pair of eyes was always trained on me. I don’t know how she knew it was me. We looked the same. But she’d stare. It felt scary, but also ridiculous– I couldn’t be sure it was the same person looking every time. I couldn’t be sure it was unlucky number thirteen. But I felt like it was.
I felt a lot of things. I felt like I couldn’t tell anyone. The other girls already didn’t like me– I couldn’t have them thinking I was crazy. And admitting the presence of the thirteenth would mean admitting to my adventures into forbidden backstage areas. I couldn’t lose this job. I was living paycheck to paycheck. I wasn’t eating well, or sleeping well– maybe this was all a hallucination. And somehow, my biggest feeling was that if I told someone about the thirteenth, I’d never see her again.
And I needed to see her again. The obsession had only gotten stronger. I knew, somehow, deep inside, that she was the one I had seen on the catwalk and in the orchestra pit. I no longer wanted to be her friend– I wanted to corner her. To ask who she was, and why she was sneaking in as if she was one of us. I wanted to ask what she wanted from me.
Because she must want something from me, right? Why else would she stare? Why would she appear only to me?
The timing never lined up. The show had opened at this point, and I had a job to do: delighting the audience. I couldn’t skip my entrance to catch number thirteen. The chorus formations would look ridiculous with a missing person. And as much as the other girls hated me, I owed it to them as my costars to make them look good.
Logically, I knew there was only one person the thirteenth could be: Catalina, the actress I’d replaced. She must be jealous of me. Bitter. Maybe she wanted to take my role, like I’d taken hers. It would be insane, but it was all that made sense. She was the only other person who had the costume, who knew the keypad code to get into the theater. She must have recovered from her fall and come to find me.
It was almost like a game. It definitely made the show more interesting for me. Before I realized what was happening, I dreaded performances. I felt stupid, taking on this role in a show I didn’t even understand. But now I had so much to do. I had to plan.
I started showing up early, an hour before my call time. I walked my old spots, thinking I may see her. The other chorus girls were impressed that I was showing up early, thinking it showed some sort of dedication to the show. I think they even started to hate me less. They still detested any attempts at conversation in the wings, but in the dressing room, I started to have a few breakthroughs. In particular, I started a semi-friendship with Erin. Ironically, she had been one of the three women I thought may be the thirteenth, until I realized the thirteenth wasn’t really one of us at all.
She was the only person who I could actually ask about Catalina. “Did she ever say anything about the theater? The building, I mean? Did she have a favorite part of it?”
Erin would laugh at my seemingly random specificity. “We weren’t close, Michelle. I have no idea what she thought about the theater.”
“What did she do on her breaks?”
Erin thought for a second. “I don’t know. I never saw her at the vending machines, or the dressing room. I guess she found some quiet place to run lines.”
That confirmed it, for me. A quiet place like the catwalk. Or the orchestra pit. We were three weeks into our five week run when I came up with a plan to catch Catalina. It wasn’t a great plan, and I had no idea if it would work, but showing up an hour early every day was making me tired and producing zero results. I needed a new strategy. I realized that after seeing her in the pit, I only ever saw the thirteenth when all twelve of us were together.
So I told a white lie. One night after the show, when everyone was changing in the dressing room, I appealed to my fellow chorus girls. “Are you guys busy before the show tomorrow?” I innocently asked. “I’m feeling a little shaky on some of the entrances. If we could all get here just twenty minutes before our call time tomorrow, I’d love to run some stuff with you guys. I’ve been running it on my own, but without the entire team, I don’t always remember where I fit.”
To my surprise and intense joy, everyone agreed. They really did seem to respect me more when I looked like I was taking my role seriously. I could barely sleep that night, I was so excited to see if my plan worked. And hey, if it didn’t, I had two more weeks of shows to think up something else.
It was a Sunday night, our last show of the week. Mondays are often “dark days” in professional theater, meaning there are no shows that day to give the team a rest. I had planned this on purpose– if I failed, I had a dark day to reflect on that failure and try again.
At 5:40, twenty minutes before our call time, all the girls were assembled and in costume. We started running entrances. After ten minutes, I thought my plan had failed. We had run our first three entrances, and I never counted more than twelve heads in the wings. But around 5:55, as we got to our entrances in act two, offstage, I locked eyes with a mask. A thirteenth mask.
I quickly told everyone “I think I got it, you guys, thank you so much for coming early!” Everyone mumbled that it was no problem, that they were happy to help.
The thirteenth mask broke eye contact with me, looking around in confusion– perhaps distress. The girls started to trickle back towards the dressing room. The thirteenth turned and power-walked away. I shoved through the crowd to catch her, not calling out like I had in the past. I knew she didn’t respond to that. I knew I had to catch her now or never. Once we were out of the crowd’s eyeline, I began to run. She ran, too. “You’re not getting away this time!” I yelled, like some kind of cartoon superhero. My adrenaline was pumping, and blood rushed to my ears.
After I yelled, I suddenly became aware of another set of running feet behind me. “Michelle? Where are you going?” It was Erin’s voice.
“Don’t follow me!” I hastily called back, picking up speed. The thirteenth also picked up speed. Though she was running just as fast as I was, she showed no signs of exertion. I couldn’t hear heavy breathing, or heavy feet on the floor. It was like she was gliding. It infuriated me.
Erin didn’t let up. “Michelle, the stage manager is gonna wonder where we are!”
I ignored her. The thirteenth rounded a corner, and I realized where she was going: the catwalk. The ladder.
She ascended the rungs rapidly, like a spider. I clamored up much less gracefully. Erin’s voice had a heavy tinge of concern. “Michelle, what are you doing?! It’s not safe up there!”
“Then don’t follow me!” I yelled back, exasperated. “This is between me and her!” Despite my vocal warning, I heard Erin climbing behind me.
Once on the metal rail, I looked both ways, terrified she’d escaped me again. But her white toga was just a few feet away, retreating into darkness. I lunged at her. The entire catwalk shook. The thirteenth and I both grabbed the railing to steady ourselves. We met eyes. Or rather, we met masks.
“You have nowhere to go.” I stated.
I heard Erin reaching the top of the ladder behind me. “Michelle, come down, please. You’re scaring me.”
“I can’t. I finally have her.” I took a step towards the thirteenth. She took an equal and opposite step back. “Take the mask off.” I beckoned her. “I know it’s you, Catalina.”
I felt the rail shake slightly as Erin got on it. “What are you talking about, Michelle?!”
“She’s been sneaking in, Erin! She’s been standing in the wings with us before we enter! For weeks!” I took another step towards the thirteenth. In my peripheral vision, I could see how high we were above the stage. Thirty feet. You could die, falling from that height.
“It’s not Catalina. It can’t be. Stop this.” Erin called. Finally, frustrated, I turned towards her.
“Who else could it be?!”
Erin had taken her mask off. Her face was streaked with terror. “Catalina died, Michelle. She fell off this catwalk, directly onto her face, and she died. Please come down with me. I don’t know who you’re talking to, and I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but it isn’t worth it.”
“What are you talking about? I’m talking to–”
I turned back, and she was gone. Vanished like a bad dream. “I swear to God, Erin.” I started to say. “She was right in front of me. I chased her here–”
I turned back to Erin. The thirteenth was behind her.
It made no sense. Nobody can move that fast. Nobody can be in front of me one second and behind me the next. It was inhuman. I stopped speaking. I stopped breathing. It sucks to learn that in a fight-or-flight situation, my answer is to freeze.
Erin must’ve seen how my face changed. “Michelle?” She asked quietly. “What’s wrong?”
Behind her, the thirteenth raised a hand to her mask. Her hands were impossibly pale. How had I never noticed that before? She gripped the mask in her hand. Time stretched. It must’ve only been a second, because Erin didn’t move. But it felt like years of my life passed me by as the thirteenth, inch by inch, raised her mask from her face. Or– raised her mask.
Because there was no face.
Under the mask, pale and gruesome, was a bloody flat edge. Broken, disgusting, it was impossible to make out eyes, or a nose, or a mouth. Inside a somewhat face-shaped frame of stark-white skin, all I could see was flesh, red and raw, squished in on itself. Like someone had fallen from a very high height. And landed on their face.
By the time I finally began to react, it was too late. The thirteenth– or, Catalina– or, the ghost, or– whatever the fuck that thing was. It moved its hands from the mask to Erin’s shoulders. And it pushed. And she screamed, agonizingly loud, as she flew over the side of the railing. And she screamed for the second or so she was in the air. I was screaming, too. And after the crunch of her body hitting the wooden floor of the stage, everyone else screamed, cast and crew alike.
I stared down at her limp form from thirty feet up. Her legs were twisted the wrong way. A pool of blood began to seep out of her. When I looked up again, I expected the thirteenth to be gone, but it wasn’t. With no eyes, it was also looking down at Erin. At what it had done.
And then, slowly, it turned towards me. On all fours, backwards, I scrambled away from it on the catwalk, terrified, not wanting to be next. The thirteenth’s shoulders shook rapidly, like a person laughing. But it made no sound. It never made a sound. Not going up the stairs of the orchestra pit. Not when it pushed Erin. And not as it climbed back down the ladder, rung by rung. I found myself alone on the catwalk.
Erin survived, somehow, paralyzed from the waist down. Apparently she fell on her legs, which, when you’re falling from thirty feet up, is a good thing. If she’d gone down head first, there was no chance. The show had to close, of course. When they lost Catalina a few weeks into rehearsal, she was replaceable. But with me refusing to go on, and Erin in the hospital, there was nothing to be done. I haven’t seen Erin since that day. I feel too guilty. But I was never arrested, so I guess she told the authorities that I didn’t push her. I don’t know what she told them. I don’t know what I would’ve told them, had they asked me.
I don’t do stage plays anymore. The family I used to nanny for gave me a star-studded recommendation, and now I make my living taking care of a five-year-old and a two-year-old for another filthy-rich family. I still act, but I only audition for film work.
I don’t even see plays these days. I won’t set foot in a theater. If the thirteenth had vanished off that catwalk, maybe things would be different. Maybe I could chalk it up to an extreme hallucination, some terrifying creature my mind brewed up to cope with the stress of the show and paying rent. Maybe I could even forget its bloody mess of viscera in the vague shape of a face.
But I saw it go down that ladder. Rung by fucking rung. And I know it’s still out there.
Erin was unlucky. Erin was a victim of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. And if I step inside a theater again, some way, somehow, I know the thirteenth will get me on another catwalk.
This time, I’ll be the one going over the railing.
And I’ve never once landed on my feet.

My baby was born 05/03 at 33 weeks. So he’s still in the NICU. I’m exclusively pumping for that reason. I’m averaging about 46oz a day, and because the NICU told me to stop bringing in milk (they have more than he will ever drink while there) I’ve been freezing all of it. Im averaging 11, 4oz bags of milk a day. I have no more freezer space.
Im hoping he will be home by his due date but that’s still over 10 days away. 10 days x 11 bags a day is 110 more bags that I have no room to store. But I don’t want to just throw it away???
I know once he’s home I probably won’t pump as much/he will feed at the boob …. But I literally have no where else to put this, today I had to decide between cooking 3lbs of chicken or making a whole box of waffles!
What would you do? Ask a friend to borrow some space? Choose milk over eating? Or get the freezer? Other ideas?

For context a lot of people at my school will just go talk to her to get out of class. I am not one of them. I almost got the chance to but then chickened out because I'm scared of going down in flames right before my summer break. I have a lot going on right now I and I think it could be beneficial for me to talk to someone. But I am scared that I'm taking it from someone who needs it more than me.:/ But I think at this point I am the someone who needs it more, and people are taking it away from me. But then again it might just be the counselor herself.. our school has a pretty low budget. I'm scared she'll make me feel worse. Because seriously if there is a worse than this I don't think I can take it.
Can I get an opinion please? Is it even worth my time to go to her? Am I worth her time?? How do I even approach her? She never opens her door.:( Do you think she'll even be able to do anything? Or will she make it worse?
By the way, my "lot" that is going on is one of my favorite people died about a week ago and it's taken a lot out of me. Similar thing happened at the beginning of the year. I loved both of these people very much and was just offered to read something that I wrote at his funeral, I'd love to but I couldn't read it when it was just him. Nevermind my family, a lot of them are dickheads. I also recently broke up with my boyfriend. I was thinking about us a little while ago and then realized something he did could be considered sexual assault. My best friend just told me I talk to much when I asked them If I could vent a little.. I am meant to be going to a music festival with them soon. Tickets were 200$ so I'm going with them anyways. I don't like anyone from our shitty school. Maybe one person but I can't tell if he likes me anymore. I have no clue what I'm going to do with my life. I have no idea who I am.
Soo yeah.. happy pride, men's mental health awareness, and indigenous history month!! Any feedback on my post would be greatly appreciated:)<3

I am building my hens a “daytime run”. They have a smaller run that surrounds their coop and is very secure, and the coop is locked at night. The daytime run will be pallets screwed together on our hill. It needs to have a layer of wire on the sides and top (I have a leghorn who will hop fences and need them to stay 100% separated from the dogs). Would it be okay to have all of it be welded wire? Or would I need chicken wire on the sides to keep their heads in?

Sooo I've been playing with my partner, and he was party leader and we got to Act4 and he got a mount. I can't do it, it still says I have to complete Donan's favour. So I tried logging back in on my own to progress to Act4 in my world, as I was only on Act2, I think, but now it shows that I'm on Act4 as well, and so the Donan's favour mission was technically in the past .. so I can't return to it
has anyone encountered this and fixed it? we're playing on PS5 and I've tried restarting, logging out and in again like 10 times. Tried making me the party leader, etc, nothingggg works

A note before RC’s article below: If you are ever fearful, uncertain, and/or doubtful about GameStop’s ability to overcome the parasitic criminal shorts, JUST REMEMBER: THIS is the man we’ve entrusted with BILLIONS of dollars. Read it, read it again, and then watch the FUD completely evaporate
Link to original article: https://archive.is/eYGpg
By Ryan Cohen May 4, 2020
Everything I know — from empathy to the principles of making money — I learned by following in the footsteps of my late father, Ted Cohen. We spoke for hours every day. He was, and always will be, my best friend, advisor and biggest advocate. A successful glassware importer with an impeccable work ethic, my father never missed a day on the job. If he were here today, he’d be worried about the millions of unemployed and struggling businesses across the country. The warehouse workers, drivers, construction workers and small-business owners — those are the people he respected most. Looking back on his life and influence, the following five principles he showed me were critical to my success building Chewy.com and investing.
Watch your expenses
Disciplined capital allocation is one of the most important skills for running a successful business. Thanks to my father, I had the privilege of learning this firsthand. He kept track of every expense —his power bills, daily gasoline prices that impacted transportation costs, the individual prices of hundreds of glassware products that he sold. My father also kept tabs on Chewy’s metrics. He memorized the key performance indicators in both of our businesses.
At Chewy, we had maniacal discipline when it came to how we spent money. The company-wide culture of frugality came from his example. Free cash flow was our unwavering governor of growth. We grew Chewy from $200 million in sales in 2013 to $3.5 billion in 2018 while spending only $130 million in capital, all of which went into opening distribution centers across the country and acquiring new customers.
Delight your customers
My father always repeated this quote from his own father: “If you take a carload of this (pointing to a pallet of glassware) you’ll make more money. But if you take a carload of that (pointing to a different pallet), you’ll make less money, but you’ll keep the customer. So, take a carload of that.”
When we started Chewy in 2011, selling pet food online wasn’t a novel idea. The field was crowded with competitors, including Amazon. But our mission was to delight customers in a more personal way. We believed combining the experience of the neighborhood pet store with the convenience of shopping online was a key differentiator. The focus was fast shipping, competitive pricing and providing customers with a hyper-specialized experience. My father showed me how building lifelong relationships with customers was far more valuable than optimizing for short-term profits.
Be the person others want to follow
My father led by example, but not in a deliberate way. It’s who he was. He never patronized anyone. He admired the blue-collar worker. I watched him roll up his sleeves and help his employees move shipments of glassware from trucks into the warehouse, then put his suit jacket back on, shirt drenched in sweat, and do administrative work. I’ve never seen anyone work harder.
I was fortunate to find employees at Chewy who worked relentlessly to grow the company from a three-person operation to a household brand with more than 10,000 employees. We didn’t disrupt the pet industry by accident. Our team made huge sacrifices. We opened our first fulfillment center in early 2014, and everything from the warehouse management system to the Wi-Fi would constantly break down. The team worked 16-hour days for weeks until our supply chain was humming. Everyone from the fulfillment staff to the directors and executives were committed to Chewy’s success. You don’t get that level of dedication by leading through fear. My father always said, “You catch more bees with honey than with vinegar.”
Take the long view
My father was never looking to make a quick buck. He had no interest in material possessions. Every year, through thick and thin, he invested his savings into the stock market. He believed the real money was made through time in the market, not timing the market. When I was 13, he gave me a chart comparing real estate to stock market returns since the 1920s. Real estate annualized returns were around 4 percent, and the stock market was around 9 percent. It didn’t take long for me to figure out which I preferred. I’ve been investing ever since. My father never invested in any fancy funds or paid management fees. He bought blue chip companies and held them forever. His 20-year annualized stock returns were over 10 percent. He never borrowed money or paid interest.
As we scaled Chewy, many advised us to slow down and raise prices. We disagreed. Key to our success was obsessing over customers and market leadership. Over the long term, customers and profits intersect.
Trust yourself
Entrepreneurs don’t operate with a handbook. My father taught me how to be independent and trust my own moral compass. He encouraged me to separate myself from the herd and think critically. When I told him I had no desire to go to college, he shrugged. Whether he agreed with my decisions or not, he supported me unconditionally. Letting me make my own decisions sowed the seeds for me to become an entrepreneur. The confidence to never compromise my vision of building Chewy into the largest pet retailer came from knowing if I failed, he would always love me.
For 45 years, he was the first employee to open his office and last one to leave. He showed me how perseverance and discipline ultimately pay off. Not only was his work ethic unmatched, so was his commitment to family. He gave me unconditional love and showed me how to be a father. Above all, he taught me that the best decisions come from heart, instincts and empathy.
Dad, I will forever be grateful.
Ryan Cohen is the founder and former CEO of Chewy.com, a company he started when he was 25 years old. In 2017, Cohen made history when he sold Chewy to PetSmart for $3.35 billion in the largest ecommerce deal in history. In 2019, Chewy went public at a valuation of $8.7 billion.

First of all sorry fort he long and conveoluted post, there is probably a simpler way to explain the issue, but I haven’t been able to think of oneAfter getting a very surface level introduction to Revit a while ago I recently got back into it as part of an internship, and having looked intto it a bit further I'm completely blown away both by what it can offer as well as the sheer amount of instructory content available. I would like to learn it properly, but haven't got the faintest idea of where to start.
The thing is I know what I would like to end up with that beinf firstly and most importantly a way to create structurally sound and correct buildings, down to the last necessary detail, from floor to roof constructtions or certain joints or whatever else you need, not just as abstract represenations that sort of get the dimensions right, that I've seen now in several videos, but the actually correct details. Or how you would deal with complex construction situations such as complex or constrained terrain, including stuff like half submerged basements or car parks, corretly using site plans or renovation situations where you have to deal with different phases of what should be added and what should be demolished, all not just correctly represented in 3d but also with the end result of a norm correct set of plans and the correct workflow to "do all of that".
And the other other part I'm interested in the workflow regarding the onceptual stage of a project, so correctly using body models to get a useable representation of your structure in a way that makes sense fo a realy projects that will have to deal with constraints , tthe dimensions of which have to fit including the ceilings, floors, roofs and what have you and how to corretly transfer that model into your more detailed planning stage and last but not least I want to make use of all of Revits fancy tools, that let you create the wildest, complex structures with relative ease and make everything look amazing, to create those fancy structures but also use those tools how you would use them in a real project.
Now I've seen plenty of channels, but most content seems to deal with the dry basics, completely isolated projects, or the competely insane fancy stuff, or just isolated explanations of one single issue, including for example the balkan architect, whos explanations a re great but his content still feels quite scattered, like bits and pieces that are kind of useful on their own but don't really have any real structure, to get a brief explanation of a certain topic in isolations but overall I don't think that's what I'm looking for and some of his methods seem a bit questionable? maybe his payed courses, but those look like they are probably too expensive for what they are.

Imagine walking into a burning building, and everyone laughs and tells you the fire’s all in your head. When no one believes you, are you going to stay to burn up with them? Every passenger in that crowd waiting to embark on the luxury cruise was already dead—they just didn’t know it yet! I stared through the windows of the terminal at the magnificent Seastar, at the broken glass and spatters of blood that only I could see… and then I fled.
Without warning a single soul.
What would have been the point? My name is Cassandra—I see death six days before it happens, and can feel it if I shake a cold hand—but no matter what I do, I can never, ever prevent it.
My flight took me as far as the escalators before a flash of purple brought me screeching to a halt. Lily Tsuki? No—it wasn’t the purple-haired musician who’d given me with cruise gift card. But suddenly I remembered how I’d been looking forward to hearing her performance aboard this very vessel…
Oh God…
It was one thing to turn my back on doomed strangers. Terrible as it sounds, it’s a bit like reading about a catastrophe in the news. Quite another thing to abandon somebody I knew! Could I really leave her to become one of the bodies putrefying in the belly of the Seastar? Every time I ordered a drink at my favorite bar, I’d remember I hadn’t even tried to save her!
“Fuck!” I cried, fumbling for my phone. “Oh, fuck me sideways… how much time…?”
Ninety minutes.
Ninety minutes to get on board, find the musician, and… what? Convince her to disembark?
How?
And yet my feet were already turning toward the gangplank—because as it turns out, I would rather plunge headlong into a ship full of the rotting dead than face an empty piano bench and the guilt that no amount of alcohol would ever drown. But to have any chance at persuading Lily, I’d need to know how the passengers died. This meant that in addition to finding a purple-haired needle in a Titanic-sized haystack, a horrifying task loomed ahead of me. I was going to have to do something I had not done in a very long time—plunge directly into my vision. Walk into its very maw and face whatever gruesome horrors lurked at the source of that nauseating odor.
I was going to have to find the bodies…
… and whatever killed them.
Boarding
The stench was so overpowering after crossing the gangplank that I dropped to my knees and dry heaved. The flow of passengers moved around me past the concierge desk. I must have looked exceptionally sick, because a pretty girl in a suit skirt approached, asking if I needed assistance. She reached out a hand to help me up—cold!
I staggered away from her and inside. Then—because I felt I might throw up—quickly found my way out to the promenade deck and the blessed breeze.
Lifeboats hung overhead. Beyond the rail, the sea sparkled in the afternoon sun. Cushioned loungers lined the deck. None were in use, presumably because the pool, patio, spa, and other amenities on the upper decks had much more attractive areas for lounging. I leaned against the rail and gulped the air, listening to the waves splash against the side of the boat, noting blood spatters further down—but nothing signifying the cause of the blood. Just vague signs of violence.
After circling the entire promenade deck and spotting only the occasional bloody spatters, I gritted my teeth, pulled my shirt collar up over my nose, and plunged into the nearest door.
The Seastar’s interior had the atmosphere of a luxury hotel. People milled about the restaurant and shopping area, buzzing with excitement, talking about cabaret shows and fine dining, while perky crew members answered questions, all perfectly oblivious to the putrid sweet rotting stench. I’d most likely find Lily Tsuki at the piano lounge, but since I didn’t yet have any plausible explanation for what had happened to the passengers, I continued wandering, entering a bustling café overlooking the ship’s grand staircase. Stepping over an enormous blood stain on the carpet, I passed the counter, nauseated by the fancy pastries behind their glass cases, peering among the tables and chairs. Paused when I spotted an eyeball in a teacup. No trace of how it got there. No body with an empty socket. Just the eyeball, swirling in a congealed bloody jelly at the bottom of the cup…
I scurried away, snatching a cloth napkin to cover my nose.
The interior darkened as I ascended the central staircase. No electricity, I noted as I clutched the railing. Why would the power be cut? A storm?
But storms don’t scoop out eyeballs with a dessert spoon….
Coming onto deck 6, I peered down a long, dim corridor lined with passenger cabins. To passengers coming and going, the hall was illuminated by electric lighting—but since I was seeing the ship six days in the future, the narrow hallway vanished into blackness. With no way to enter the cabins, and nothing much to see here or in the other dimmed halls of the passenger decks, I ascended until I reached the pool.
Pool Deck
Deck 9 opened to wide panoramic windows, dining, a spa, and of course the pool. I emerged outdoors with relief, removing the napkin from my nose as the sea breeze gave some respite from the odor.
Around me, people partied in bikinis and beachwear and suits, sipping all manner of drinks around the sky-blue swimming pool. A young woman stretched on a blood-spattered lounger, oblivious to the gore beneath her tanned figure. A few bodies floated among the swimmers, bloated and discolored. My vision shimmered briefly as a teen boy swam right through one of the bodies, splashing as if it were not there. My heart lurched when I realized that it was his own, albeit dressed in different clothes—
“Oof!” I grunted as a small figure bashed into me, her arm grazing mine.
“Sorry!” cried a little girl in a pink swimsuit, bolting by as her mother yelled at her to watch out for people.
I tried not to think of how cold the little girl’s arm felt. Counted the bodies: eight in the pool. One by the towel bin, head caved in. I made a circuit of the pool, occasionally brushing against people—cold, cold, cold.
No survivors, it seemed.
But why?
That was when I spotted a shirtless old man sitting at a table under an umbrella. I froze, goosebumps prickling along my skin. Unlike the floaters, there was no obvious reason for his death. His back was to me, the bare skin of his shoulders gray and blotchy. In his hand he held a broken drinking glass. He was positioned in repose… so what killed him?
My heart quickened as I moved round to the front of him.
His mouth hung open, shards of glass and a mangled tongue lolling out, crimson trailing down his shirt front. The source of the chewed glass was obvious—the cup in his hand was broken, its jagged edges bloody.
He’d died choking on the glass.
“What the fuck is happening here?” I whispered.
Forward Stairwell
The jogging track and the sundeck—decks 10 and 11—offered a stunning bird’s eye of the pool and ocean, but I did not stop to take this in as I circled to the bow, opting to take the forward stairs down, rather than central.
The stench hit me like a cloud.
I had to stop as I descended into the dim stairwell, clinging to the railing, doubled over, gagging. It was so so bad. My eyes watered. My stomach bucked. And it was dark. Thank God for my phone’s flashlight. I fumbled it on and, napkin firmly over my nose, plunged down into the depths… The phone’s thin illumination flashed along the carpeted stairwell and the hall of the first of the passenger decks. I kept descending. Paused at an unidentifiable slick red mound. I was examining it under my light when a crewmember jogged up to me and asked, “Lose something, miss?” “Just my marbles,” I muttered, shooing the crew member away and inadvertently brushing his hand. Cold. I turned my attention back to the mound.
A slimy pile of intestines on the stairwell… trailing down to a disemboweled body.
Intestines… eyeballs… eating broken glass… nothing about this makes sense! I swiveled the beam to check further downward.
That was when I found the source of the odor.
My path down was obstructed by a mass of bodies. The ones underneath seemed to have been trampled, but the ones on top… I squeezed my watering eyes and retched against the wall. Some of the bodies bore horrible mutilations—fingers bent and twisted, joints out of alignment, faces smashed in and jaws torn open. Many more appeared to have been crushed in the press of bodies. Best guess, there was a wave of panicked people rushing upstairs from below, colliding with a wave of others fleeing down from above.
Why this staircase? What was near this part of the ship?
The cabaret lounge, I realized. No electricity. No elevators. This was the nearest stairwell to the auditorium.
Closer. I was inching closer to uncovering the fates of the passengers. And yet, I still had no idea what the passengers were fleeing from. Who were the attackers? Or… I thought of the eyeball. The glass chewed and swallowed.
An icy pinprick at the base of my skull whispered the question I didn’t want to ask…
Why? Why did some of the passengers go mad, and do it to themselves?
Piano Bar
I took the long way round to the cabaret theatre, going all the way back up the stairs and coming down on the central staircase, only to detour on hearing the notes of a piano. I found myself in a cozy lounge and spotted a purple-haired figure at the keys. And just in time—the ship was due to depart in less than half an hour!
“Lily!” I rushed over.
The musician’s face lit. “Oh it’s you, friend! You made it!”
“You’ve got to get off the ship!”
“Off the—”
“I know it seems crazy but you’ve got to! Everyone on board is going to die—I’ve seen it because I’m psycho!” I heard it a second later and smacked my forehead. “I mean—psychic! PSYCHIC!! I can see the future.” At her scrunched eyebrows, I burst, “Look I know how I sound, but I’ve been able to see things since I was a little girl, and I am telling you that this ship is going to go dark! The engines will cut out! People are going to flee and trample each other on that forward staircase…” Launching into a rapid-fire recounting, I was just getting to the eyeball in the teacup when she interrupted:
“You’re afraid of some sort of terrorist attack?”
“No, no! No! It’s almost like… a kind of madness, a contagion, that spreads through the ship—”
“A zombie apocalypse?”
“Not zombies…”
“Poltergeists? Possession?” She played a riff from a horror movie. “Should we call an exorcist?”
“We should leave!” I checked my phone. “Quickly!—"
“What an odd duck you are! I can’t imagine any sort of catastrophe as big as you’re saying. You know this ship has tons of safety protocols. And even if I did believe some disaster were drawing near—do you really think I could abandon crowds and crew?” She looked at me over her glasses, shimmering purple lips curving in a smile. “Listen friend, if this were the Titanic and I was the only one who could see the iceberg, I’d stay to steer us right, not run off leaving everyone to die!”
Icy fingers raked along my spine. Even if she wasn’t taking me seriously, she was right—I did have a moral obligation to save people. An obligation I’d been trying to fulfill ever since I was a little girl, until the attempt killed my brother, and even after, I kept trying for years and years…. until at last I realized that there is no way to change anything. That is why I call myself Cassandra. For the Greek prophet doomed to predict the future but never be believed. Try and prevent what I’ve foreseen? You might as well try and pluck the stars from the sky!
Every hand I’d touched was cold. Everyone on board would die.
My fists balled, fingernails digging so hard into my palms they bled. “You really have no idea what you’re asking of me…”
“Oh, I’m not telling you to stay. I’m just explaining why I have to. Besides, I’m under contract.” She winked and focused on her playing as guests entered and sat at nearby tables.
She had no idea! None whatsoever! If I thought there was even a sliver of a hope, I wouldn’t abandon people! Oh, if this happy-go-lucky musician understood the futility!!
But she will, came another, darker thought. She will know the full depth of the horror coming…
“No,” I whispered.
“Huh?” She shouted, “Wait—friend, where are you going?”
But I was not listening. The cabaret theatre—was the answer there? The reason for the crush of bodies in the forward stairwell? I rushed past the cafe with the eyeball in the teacup, through the grand doors into the cabaret hall—
—but the cabaret hall was surprisingly quiet, save for a light touch of classical music. A few passengers mingled here or there, unnoticing of the cadavers draped on chairs and tables. The stage itself was pristine, the wood smooth and polished in the fading orange light through the windows. Apparently, the origin of the panicked flight up the forward stairwell was not this grand entertainment venue—nothing here supported that theory.
Nonetheless, I gave the place a thorough search until my phone’s battery ran low, and then I returned to the grand staircase.
In one direction lay passenger cabins. In the other, the gangplank back to the port terminal and safety.
“It’s not too late to be a coward, Cass,” I said. “Run from the ship, run from the empty piano bench at the bar, find a different, cheaper hole in the wall to crawl into like—like the cockroach you are…”
Always the survivor, eh…?
Or… or, I could try just one more time. “‘Hope,’” my brother always said, “is the thing with feathers.”
And look what happened to him! flashed through my mind. My heart slammed against my ribcage. I’d just die too, unless I left in the next—how many minutes? I checked my phone, but it was dead. Like I would be if I stayed.
A horn sounded the Seastar’s departure. A distant cheer rose up from the upper decks and balconies. I felt a brief panicky impulse to run back out on deck and throw myself off the ship… but in truth, my fate had already been decided before the ship’s horn blew. I hadn’t been paying attention earlier, but I’d been rubbing and rubbing my hands, and finally realized they were cold. Probably had been since I’d boarded. I shuffled leaden feet toward the passenger cabins, guided by my phone’s light to the brass number plate for 4044—my cabin. Reached for the knob and stopped.
That smell—dread squeezed my intestines like a wet rag.
Smoke. Burnt meat.
I wrinkled my nose and opened the door.
Orange rays shone through the window, the sunset so vivid it almost gave the illusion that the room was on fire. The walls and ceiling were charred. The edges of the mattress and sheets a smoldered ruin. But the worst damage was the small sofa by the coffee table. Broken bottles scattered round. And there on the sofa—
My fingers went limp on the door handle as I stared into melted sockets of a body charred beyond recognition. A dark line encircled its wrist. The blackened remnants of a charm bracelet.
My bracelet.
While the man on the pool deck swallowed glass, I would succumb to the insanity here, dousing myself in alcohol and flame—
—immolating myself.
[Part 1]

The moment I read it, my barriers had toppled over. I denied it from being real, from having any real effect on me. There was no way this was true, it had to be some dream playing tricks on me. It’s too soon to be feeling this way. I haven’t even fully recovered from the last one and yet here I am, begging for this sense of wholeness again. My mind had already wandered in the realm of interest and possibilities. Curious as to what they had written to me. But I lost that curiosity as I read what they wrote. Instead, I became infatuated.
Is this what it feels like to have a crush again? Every pounding heartbeat crashing against the inside of my chest. My mind racing of thoughts and fantasies of love and blissful awes of what could be. All I can do is picture their face - their symmetrical, aesthetically pleasing profile. Reminiscing the banter, the light teases and jabs at one another. So light hearted, so soft, so - real. I even daydreamed about dancing with them to a slow song, with fancy attire under the dim lights of the dance floor. And the jazz swaying smoothly in the airwaves along with our steps. Never once have I felt this way in any other. Perhaps it’s just the residual feelings, overflowing from the last. Or is it something new?
Why am I afraid? Maybe it is too soon. Hopeless romantic? Maybe I have to stop being OBSESSED with this idea of them. I just know I Shouldn’t be jumping into anything anytime soon. I believe the universe is testing me. But goddamit Somebody help me. This codependency, that I reluctantly admit to, is worse than I had let on throughout my life. I rather not drive them away this time. Working on myself can only go so far. And so, I have decided to crush these feelings if I have to.

Hello!
I wanted to come and ask your guys opinions on what would be a good "jack of all trades" camera so to speak for a beginner like myself.
I am not looking to become a pro or pursue it as anything more than a fun hobby where to take some photos and make some short films for my own enjoyment. That being said, I'd still like to have a relative professional quality of picture. The camera being future-proofed is what I am trying to aim for
I bought a Canon EOSm with the intention of installing Magic Lantern on it, but quickly realized that using a hacked OS as a beginner was a frankly terrible idea and I got in over my head. I have since uninstalled magic lantern from my EOSm, but I find myself never using it as I do not enjoy the interface as well as having found it to be pretty bad in even regular indoors lighting. The only good shots I seem to be able to get out of it are on intensely sunny days. Bur if I'm being honest, it's mainly because I hate it's entirely touch based interface haha.
So, I guess the question I am asking is that I would like to purchase a camera that I will not have to replace in the foreseeable future, but my knowledge of cameras is too little to know what is good and what is bunk. I have found myself not knowing what to look for and getting very focused on "the camera needs to record 4k" which while useful may not be as big of a deal as I think it is (I honestly don't know haha)
Some context I will give is that I am generally more swayed towards making videos than just taking photos, so I guess that is something to keep in mind. But aside from that, I'm willing and hoping to be told some stuff I don't know from people who know more than me.
Edit: I forgot to mention my budget. Id like to be in the $800 - $1500 range, as that seems to be were a lot of "prosumer" grade cameras are which is what I'm looking for. Nothing too fancy, but above the most rudimentary in functions.

Hello! I asked this question in a different Muslim forum, however I didn’t exactly get the audience I was looking for.
I run Dungeons & Dragons games from time to time, and I’m putting together a new story, set in future of Earth (& other places around the solar system!). One of my potential players is a progressive Muslim woman, and while I thought of asking her these questions directly, I kind of wanted to do my own research first.
So that’s what this is! Research!
I’m imagining a far future for our species, where we’ve begun to settle on Mars and a handful of other places. There would be people mining on Mercury, science base on Titan, And more. About 10 worlds or so with anywhere from billions of humans to only a couple hundred. They would be fancy new technology, among them even intelligent machines. Don’t worry, on a whole they aren’t misanthropic 😅 I even had the idea for some religious robots:
But this got me wondering about where the major world religions would be in a couple hundred, maybe even 1000 years. A lot of religions, especially the most conservative branches, tend to view our present moment as nearing the end times.
Now my perspective on this is limited, because I’m not a Muslim. My background is formally Christian, presently atheist. I’ve got a good angle with how to envision a progressive future Christianity, (Basically “Revelations was about Rome and Nero, not about the future!”) But I know so much less about the Islamic apocalypse, and I know nothing about what Progressive Muslims think of it.
So given that this is a forum for progressive Muslims, I wanted to ask what you think of this? Do you think humans will explore and settle around our solar system? Or do you think the world will end before then?
If the former, then what do you think of prophecy?
And if the latter, what do you think of Star Trek?
I really hope these questions don’t come off as disrespectful, and I apologize if I’m coming at this with an ignorant point of view. I’m willing to listen. If I want to run a good game for my friend, and for myself, I’m going to need to learn. Thank you!
Best wishes, John

Hey folks...
Looking for some ideas to host a family gathering in July at a restaurant. There will be about 20 of us and the age of the crowd is 50-93. Nothing too fancy and would like some room to get up and move about the table to visit.
Any ideas?

Based on this title, you guys will probably hate me for this and downvote me to oblivion. But it is a discussion that needs be talked about.
Growing up I used to love this film as it shows a "normal" dude "supposedly" fighting corruption. But once you dig deeper it gets pretty scary.
Part 1: the behind context
The film's narrative poses the brahmin as the citizen ideal and the non-brahmin as its lawless all-pervasive "other". Source from Jstor Academic research. It is no surprise only Mr. "Rules Ramanujan" follows the rules while the "others" are portrayed as scumbags in the film. We see this throughout the film.
Such as portraying the low caste people as drunkards, scammers up to no good, and rowdies.
Part 2: Shankar is a sellout and misses the point
The film points fingers and doesn't put blame at the broken corporate system and instead blames the working class people. Ex. Instead of getting mad at the shareholders or corporation for giving low quality food supplies, Anniyan instead attacks a line leader from the food area. Although this "Chokkalingam" guy is partly at fault, the larger blame should go on the corporates for exploiting this system.
Obviously they won't do that here, because those shareholders would lobby against this movie and the movie would lose funding from them and hurt the overall films earnings. Remember blame the game not the player.
Going from this point, the same example can be said about the Bike Factory scene, why portray a bunch of "laborers" as the "evil devil" instead of calling out the CEO, Executives, and shareholders of the company for cutting quality and cheapening the product of the bike parts.
Finally the same could be said about the scene where his sister gets electrocuted, why blame the worker instead of the "firm" that probably underpaid him and didn't give proper training. Yes, he was drunk, so he does take some blame,
But its pretty obvious most of the hate and murders are misguided.
Part 3: Poor Portrayal of Non-Veg Food
In the movie, there are a few scenes where the protagonist's alter ego, Anniyan, exhibits aversion towards non-vegetarian food. Ex. The Portrayal of Meat and Chicken as impure during Kumbibakham or when getting beat up by the laborers, Ambi says don't beat me, I am vegetarian.
In certain cultural contexts, vegetarianism has been associated with specific caste groups. The caste system historically categorized people into different social groups, each with its own prescribed occupation and dietary practices. Within this system, some upper caste groups, such as Brahmins, are often associated with vegetarianism which links them to "purity" while claiming meat eaters as "impure".
Part 4: Kumbhipakam Scene Continued...
The use of the term "Kumbhipakam" in the context of punishment may resonate with certain Hindu beliefs which can be tied to notions of karma and retribution. This scene does reinforce the idea that certain castes are more deserving of punishment or inherently associated with negative actions or behaviors. which perpetuate casteist undertones
Part 5: Brahmins more likely to live outside their own state and country, Shankar misses the point again with his portrayals of foreign countries.
The film also talks about India being less developed and not as developed as fast as Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq7LbkGzP1Y
But lets be honest, most of the Tamil immigrants in most of the Western Countries like America are mostly "Brahmin and upper caste. What have they done to help develop the country while talking shit.
Shankar also tends to portray America as a blissful country with a lot opportunities in Sivaji the Boss and Jeans. This another sign of him showing that TN should decrease reservations and because of these "reservations" Brahmins are leaving this state in mass to go abroad because they get "fair "opportunity" while we all know the real reason why they left.
Lets also not forget they have also brought castesim to America and other countries abroad, this has been all over the news if we do a simple search on reddit or google. EX.Cisco case in California America. This was done by an Iyengar, which this movie surprisingly "praises" as good people
Part 6: Conclusion
I know you guys may hate me for this one, but Engaging in discussions and promoting awareness about the potential impact of such scenes is crucial for addressing casteist undertones and fostering a more inclusive and equitable society.
Extra: Part 7: The Casteist Iyengaaru Veetu Azhage Song
A song literally based on a caste was in this film. Enough said. we get the point. Shame on Harris for this one.

The Defense Mechanisms Episode, Part I

So, the way that the Defense Mechanism are often presented rather exemplifies one of the things that often annoy me about enneagram literature, which is that you often just get shown a table or list of traits listed under each type without any real definition of what it is, elaboration on how it’s meant, or an explanation of the how and why or how it’s connected to everything else.
Maybe it’s a Ti vs Te thing?
In any case, just having a term thrown at you isn’t really helpful unless your goal is to win an argument by accusing the other person of doing it. Being able to recite what term goes with what number only gets you so far.
I would figure that the goal is to eventually be able to spot those mechanisms operating in yourself for greater self-awareness and whatnot, and for that I’d reckon that one needs a substantial, tangible idea of what’s meant by it so you can begin to connect and map your intellectual understanding of the process to your actual lived experience of your thoughts and emotions.
It’s one thing to read a description of a rose and another to see/smell/hear what goes with the words, and yet another to have the linkage of the two, spot the theoretical symmetries there should be in the petals in the actual flower and know what it means and how it connects to its history and makeup.
IDK, but as they say: If you’re complaining you’re just part of the problems and: If it doesn’t exist yet, you have to create it yourself.
So, you might be familiar with those listings of one defense mechanism per type, and have heard that it goes back to Naranjo – once in a while you could come across an author that has one of the swapped out or a longer, also unelaborated list.
In truth Naranjo didn’t actually assign a 1:1 correspondence but discussed multiple ones for each type (though they are often ultimately related in nature), and of course in the exty years since his day, numerous other authors have had a go at it & had arguments about it & whatnot (Lukovich, Condon, Rohr etc.) but often its just psychobabble words being thrown around and looks to an outsider like a theological argument of a religion they don’t believe in.
So, uh, let’s start with the basics.
What is a (Psychological) Defense Mechanism?
The basic idea goes back to Freud, who probably came up with it by observation, just from noticing seeming distortions or knots in the thinking of his clients.
In life, we can’t always get what we want, and we are sometimes confronted with facts that we don’t like.
What does a toddler do in such cases? They throw a tantrum.
Why do they throw a tantrum? Because they are experiencing distress. They want the thing and they can’t have it, or, they’re upset about what they’ve been told. They don’t like it. It’s experienced as aversive and dysphoric. Do Not Want.
Why is an adult different?
Because an adult has a more mature ego, a pattern according to which to filter, sort, interpret & deal with their experience, to reconcile both their animal drives and social expectations/ideals with a reality that sometimes won’t give them that and hence triggers distress.
You can’t cry, kick and scream every time you don’t get what you want – it doesn’t help you get it, and it will probably get you scolded.
Having a way to make sense of or cushion the negative experience, to mitigate the distress, is crucial to being able to cope with adversity, mitigate distress, regulate the self and act in some self-directed goal-oriented manner as an emergent independent entity rather than just reacting to whatever stimulus comes along.
This is why defense mechanisms are a part of the ego (means of self-organization) and characteristic of which ‘flavor’ of ego you have: They are a part of the mechanism of how it is maintained, how you don’t mechanically do or accept whatever someone else tells you but have some mechanism for rejecting some suggestions, ideas and criticisms but act as an independent entity with consistent behavior.
So one takeaway here is that using a defense mechanism doesn’t immediately mean you’re in denial about or refusing to face something or “refusing reality” – what is reality even, or ‘right and wrong’? How would you know it when you see it? ‘Self deception’? Based on which “truth”?
Some things are relatively clear like the earth being round but many don’t have a correct answer like which opinion is correct on some complex argument.
Resisting something doesn’t mean that it’s secretly true and you’re just in denial. If I go to you & say ‘youre a fucking idiot’ you are not going to like that regardless of your actual idiocy because it’s a hostile action & humans are wired to dislike this. It’s an attack on your feelings & self-image.
Even if you shrug it off totally, that is because some process happened to dismiss it & protect you from feeling pain.
A small child would be hurt if you’re randomly mean to them; You, an adult, can dismiss it because you have defenses. They are a part of self-control – particularly when you consider that they don’t just ”defend” against outside imput but also unwanted thoughts & feelings from within.
Maybe you want to throw a tantrum and hit me if I say youre an idiot & point & laugh at you, but, punching me might bring consequences you don’t want, or it doesn’t fit your self-image.
So you must diffuse this urge to punch somehow, or else Mommy is gonna punish you for being mean to your siblings.
Another, third function that defense mechanisms can serve (besides defending against unpleasant input and controlling yourself) is to justify yourself to others. If your tell your mom you should get the toy instead of your sibling because you want to she probably won’t accept it. So you need to come up with a reason. Your parents are already using rteasons to tell you why you should do what they tell you to do, so eventually the child copies them, taking in those justifications and beginning to form their own superego.
You might internalize that fairness is important so when your sister had her turn with the toy you will insist that its now your turn, because of fairness.
Again it’s important not to look at this as deliberate trickery or “secret true intentions”, but rather the nuts & bolts of the machinery that produce your very real, very sincere subjective experience.
In the “fairness” example with the toy, the child isn’t deliberately using fairness as a pretext to get the toy, they really believe in fairness. (though claiming to believe in fairness when you dont and justifying this to yourself might be another, different strategy)
But let's assume the genuine belief for now: The black box machine of the ego takes ‘wanting the toy’ and ‘social belief in fairness’ as imputs and produces the subjective experience of believing in / arguing about fairness.
Causes (when you look at a person like a complex machine of biology) are different from intentions. (the personal experience of feelings & wants)
You evolved to crave sweet food because it is full of energy, but you don’t think “Oh, sugary food, gotta get that energy!” you eat it cause its tasty & makes you feel good.
You explicitly aren’t consciously calculating about the energy, or you would stop wanting sweets when you consumed enough calories for the day.
Under the hood in your body there is a regulatory network going on, signals between your brain & liver etc. but that’s a blind process with no conscious will ‘keeping track’.
Thinking of subconscious mechanisms as ‘secret intentions’ is not only incorrect, it lacks validity as, if its by definition a secret intention from yourself, anyone could claim that you ‘secretly want’ anything as long as they could come up with a semi plausible ‘just so story’ for your behavior.
It also leads to a startling lack of empathy or invalidation of ppl’s subjective struggles & suffering of the ‘the wife totally wants to be beaten’ variety.
So it’s better to think of it as consistent patterns of emotions and reactions that have a cause in the “machinery” of your mind. Your conscious experience is what’s on the desktop & the defense mechanisms are like the guts of the computer.
However, while keeping in mind not to see it as an invalidation of your subjective experience, it is of great usefulness to know how the machine works under the hood, however, because what your ego & its defense mechanisms certainly are doing is dismissing or filtering out unwelcome information and possibly suppressing, deprioritizing or distinctly coloring aspects of inner or outer reality -
and this goes doubly if you don’t realize they are operating and don’t even know that you rejected an idea.
It creates “unknown unknowns”, things you don’t know you filtered out. For example someone might argue based on ‘fairness’ but be unaware how their own wants might be influencing them.
Also, the interpretation of the world that your ego is creating may be more or less sustainable, more or less congruent.
For example, if you believe that you are totally fine & okay after the death of a loved one but are constantly confronted with things that remind you of them, which triggers an emotion of grief, you have to expend energy to filter out the grief, trying hard not to think of it is still focussing it & might still ‘reinforce it’ so it doesn’t lead to the desired outcome.
The incongruence you experience between ‘Im ok’ and the experience of grief is going to cause more distress in the long-term than it averts.
Or you might believe you’re always right & never wrong, but then what do you do if stuff explodes in your face or people do not validate that self-image? You can rationalize it away but you have to expend energy to do it, and you won’t really get what you want if that involved the other people liking you.
In both cases, you move closer to being like the toddler rather than the 'mature adult' in the first example (less able to deal with distress, get what you want & so on), though it might be due to too much or too rigid interpretation of what you see rather than its absence this time. Either way an overly rigid, low congruence ego doesn't do its job very well.
So I hope that by now it’s clear that it’s a bit nonsensical when you see ppl try and type themselves by saying which defense mechanism they “relate to”, as there is a very good chance they don’t know it’s happening. It’s rather part of what you want to learn from finding your type so you know what to look for.
Some people might know already – if they’re very introspective, previously did work in therapy, had others point it out, learned from bitter experience etc.
This information is observable, how else would the people who came up with it have figured it out?
But as Dunning Krüger is a thing, it’s very dangerous to start out assuming right out the gate that you’re in the more enlightened 20%. You might be, its totally possible, but don’t bet on it.
Find your type by other means and then you’ll see how much of it you were already aware of or not.
After all, even if you are very aware of your inner processes themselves, you could be wrong about what psychobabble word it best maps to.
The Role Of The Primary Defense Mechanisms
Another thing to realize is the difference between any ol’ defense mechanism or psychological process, and the ones that have a special role in maintaining your ego.
We all use lots & lots of them cause our brains are roughly similar. Even for the most unique person it’s a pink fatty jelly thing with lotsa wrinkles, right?
6s aren’t the only ones who project things, that is, explain other’s actions through disowned thoughts & motivations that we have labelled as not-self. Condon talks a lot about how for many types it’s related to the lines of connection. (which are, after all, qualities & parts of the human experience that can be blocked or labelled not-self)
4s aren’t the only ones who introject things – 6s for example tend to have strong mental impressions of powerful figures in their life.
3s aren’t the only ones that identify with things or try to keep congruency with a desirable self-image.
But it has a special role for them.
Take projection.
Most people can be liable to projection when they’re wondering about the intentions or motives of someone they don’t understand. It baffles you, & you want an explanation, and in trying to come up with one you more easily think of explanations that, in some way, seem “natural” to you.
Now what’s so special about 6? They are very concerned with people’s intentions.
It’s one of the main features of their attention pattern: What are they thinking?
You can tell a song was probably written by a 6 (or someone with a strong 6 component) if they’re telling the love interest what they are probably thinking. Or the authority figure or ex they’re mad at.
Are they gonna take advantage of you? Are they going to abandon you? Very salient information if you wish to be prepared for whatever might happen.
So it’s rather easy for projection to sneak in if you’re thinking about other people’s intentions all the time. Tempting, too, since it ‘defends’ you both from the chaos/uncertainty of not knowing what the person can do, and by relieving the distress of self-doubt. (“I’m not aggro, they’re aggro!”)
And hey, sometimes it actually works! They are a human just like you, so they might well have inner mechanics similar to yours! But not always.
So it makes a difference is you know what you’re doing. Without self-awareness you might take that perception as fact: This is definitely totally 100% their motivation. They can’t fool you!
Or you might be aware that it’s a perception: “This might be their motivation, or maybe I am thinking it for a reason that comes from me. Let’s look closer & see which one it is.”
The “Obvious Temptation”
In the literature you often see the types explained in 2 ways, one beginning from the weakness or deficiency – that you start with your fear & then compensate with your desire to make up for it, framing all as being just illusory cope for our wretchedness etc. whereas others (incidentally, often frustration types) start from the inspiring vision of the ‘essential aspect’ and so on & how you lose you way chasing after that ideal.
But in the end it’s sort of a chicken & egg situation because whether you start from coping for weakness or the corruption of a strength, there is going to be a self-sustaining loop.
Because, if you ever find yourself strapped for copium you are likely going to end up going for a method that is easy for you to do, leaning on what strengths you have (not a strength as in anything exceptional, but just the best one you have)
Conversely, if you start relying on a skill for psychological “survival” that’s one heck of a motivation to practice.
So did our baby 7 get good at seeing silver linings or talking their way out of tricky situations as a way to soften the blow on harsh situations, or are they more tempted to explain away their problems because they are so good at seeing multiple options or talking their way out of difficult situations?
Is there even a hard objective distinction between a genuine silver lining and a fake one?
There are probably similar emotions involved, its the same basic mechanism – it’s all the same strategy that sometimes works & sometimes doesn’t, uncomfortable as it may be that ppl we find admirable and ppl that we really really disapprove of may actually be functioning on fairly similar basic premises.
This isn’t to say that the existence of a grey zone is an excuse not to be honest with oneself when you know in your heart the primary motivation behind what you’re currently doing is to make the ouch go away, but rather to illustrate that it isn’t always obvious.
It’s not so simple as to say “ah, those 2s don’t actually care about helping ppl it’s all just an evil trick”, “Those 1s don’t actually care about justice its all hypocrisy” or indeed “those 5s don’t actually care about understanding the world its just for cope”. In a way, it would be easier if that was that case cause then it’s all black & white.
I don’t think it’s all just cope, if only because doing those things actually does simply feel intrinsically satisfying.
The types are also programs of ‘this feels rewarding, this makes me feel good about myself, this other thing makes me feel not so good’ which also comes down to survival reasons at the causal level but as we said before, causes and subjective intentions are different.
I would still want all the nerd facts even if I had zero problems or insecurities whatsoever to “defend from”, if not for any noble high-minded talk of values then simply because reading & theorizing is fun and other things aren’t.
But the temptation is naturally there, that, if I’m going to be preoccupied with or analyzing stuff anyways, that it might serve as a nifty convenient excuse to be conveniently preoccupied, focussed on something else or have a “buffer” of mental distancing going on when I feel like avoiding a challenging situation.
I’m not tempted to use the flavor of cope that a 2 or 9 might not because I’m too good & pure & wholesome for it but simply cause I lack the necessary skills and/or temperament to get away with it. Anticipate what they need & what their feelings are? How? Just don’t think about it too much and enjoy this ice cream? Easier said than done. Look on the bright side? Ah, but every silver lining is but evidence of a dark cloud.
And analogous for the other types.
Confused Intuitions
Which brings us to another great reason why learning to spot your defense mechanisms at work is really useful. It’s a way to “clean your lens”.
Remember when they thought there were canals on Mars because the astronomer had actually seen the shadows of the blood vessels in his own eyeball?
That’s what happens if you can’t separate what comes from you & what comes from someone else.
Note that the issue is not that the blood vessels exist, but that the guy thought that they are on Mars.
Seeing the blood vessels could have been a worthwhile observation in & of itself – they are not simply in the way, they are info about the human eye.
The human eye isn’t “bad” but if we don’t account for it being there, we won’t get an accurate picture of Mars.
In the end there is no way to completely do away with subjectivity because any perception involves interpreting and labelling. But if you look around you there are obviously people who are more discerning than others and being in that category sure sounds like the preferable, more dignified option.
Your go-to defense mechanisms are potentially interfering with your greatest strength, the most practiced parts of your discerment that you tend to trust. So they lead you to be wrong in an area that matters to you & get in the way of you using your intuition/strength to its greatest effect because there’s all this icky bias gunk on your “lens”.
Or well, it presently acts as icky bias gunk but it could instead be valuable insight about yourself, important information that could help you make well-informed decisions that feel congruent and make you happy.
For example, say you’re a 2. You’re pretty confident in & proud of your ability to know others’ feelings & what will make them happy. It’s important to you. But what if some repressed desire or fear of yours is interfering with what, and rather than really seeing ‘whats best for them’ you’re seeing what you want to be best for them so that they will need you.
If you act like it’s the person’s real need, the worst case is that they could end up thinking you’re a self-absorbed narc who doesn’t care about their feelings. Not what you want at all, right? Whereas if you learn to realize when it’s your own repressed desire at work you not only get a better understanding of other’s feelings that isn’t clouded by bias, you also learn what your desire is. You can now do something with that information. There is probably a better way to grant the desire than to tell them what you want their feelings to be.
Of course, the elephant in the room, and the reason why people don’t just do it if it’s so great, is that the reason you yeeted that desire out of consciousness to begin with is that it once provoked distress and/or felt incongruent with your conscious self.
In the above example with the 2, the person might be afraid that it’s ‘bad’ or ‘selfish’, or that it will expose them to being powerless (cause the request to have the desire granted might be denied)
There was some pain, threat or incongruence involved that now hangs as an ‘or else’ over the prospect of admitting that fact into consciousness.
You might be afraid that, if you admit the feeling or desire, it will mean something about yourself, or that it means you’ll have to act on it and do something that is contrary to what you consciously want or aspire to (maybe that one fear’s a competency triad thing?)
But actually that’s not true! Acknowledging it doesn’t mean you have to change how you think about it, that you have to act based on it, or that you’re “bad”, it’s just a feeling.
You can acknowledge it & be aware of it without doing something.
You might decide to do something in the light of all the information (for example, maybe you can think of a way to grant a desire without compromising your values?), but before you eve consider that, let it sink in that no one’s gonna make you.
Indeed, just acknowledging the feeling, letting it be heard, may lead it to resolve & dissipate.
Although, if this leads you to realize that there is something that’s repeatedly touching you off and causing the distressing emotion to reappear, you might want to feature that in into calculations as to which courses of actions are realistically sustainable or conducive to happiness.
Even if you choose that your feelings don’t matter on this account you’ll at least make an informed decision & not be blindsided by it. And maybe there’s some comfort/outlet you can find.
It’s against my principles to ring the bell for humiliation o’clock without going first, so I’ll confess that there’s times that I probed & introspected & felt into something & like Did Techniques (thanks to the person who recommended that Gedlin Focussing thing), and the result I got is that… [tw: barf cringe blegh] sometimes… somewhere… there’s a teeny tiny part of me… that kinda sorta wants to cry and whine and get held & comforted and have somebody come in and sweep aaall those pressing, overwhelming problems away & take care of it for me.
Consciously I don’t want this – at all.
It’s not in the least compatible with my values, will & life-plans.
If ppl ask me if they can help with it I tell them no.
I would vehemently reject it, protest against it, even fear it.
Even fear it to an irrational degree. Which is silly & distressing on its own, but it’s a silly distress that I apparently allow into consciousness no problem because it’s not a threat.
Because it’s quite congruent with my belief/understanding that the problem in question isn’t something anyone can help me with. It’s up to me and I’ve arranged it so that it’s up to me because I’d rather it’s up to me than any of the alternatives.
But ‘snot like my inner mammal gets that. It doesn’t understand the logical reasons – of course not, its like a tiny mammal. Might as well imagine one of those tiny Lemurs with big googly eyes 🥺
It’s pre-verbal. That’s probably the no-bullshit way to say it. Monke no speak English.
Also, is the sky gonna fall if I go hug a plushie, or a family member? Or if I maybe casually mention this to a living soul?
Nope.
I have this option available, right? That’s something to be grateful for, not everyone has those.
It is gonna solve the problem? The one that I’ve intellectually ruled unsolvable? No.
But it might just solve the feeling, cause my inner mammal is really quite dumb & doesn’t understand the intellectual complexities of the problem anyway… It just feels houded, right? But you know what it does understand?
Hugs.
Also, none of yall know where I live so its not like you can come after me. xDDD
Sooo… in the interest of self-awareness and self-transparency, it might be worth asking yourself...
​

1. Is this really the best way to do this, or is it a justification for doing it your way?
2. Is that the other person’s feeling, or is it your desire?
3. Is this what you really feel, or what you think a smart/sucessful/dominant/[insert desirable trait] person would feel in your place?
4. Is that a deep insight about your life, or does what just happened actually have nothing to do with you personally?
5. Do you really not want or care about this thing, or are you scared of what might happen if you did? Is it really settled what is going to happen, or are you avoiding action?
6. Is that really the other person’s intention, or is it your fear of what their intention could be?
7. Is that a real solution, or are you explaining the problem away?
8. Does it really not hurt, or are you blocking out the pain?
9. Are you really fine & content with things as they are, or are you giving up?

Sometimes the answer will, in fact, be the first half!
Don’t fall for masochistic ontology. The truth may hurt but not everything that would hurt if it were true is the truth.
Constantly assuming the worst of yourself isn’t gonna help either. Indeed that’s probably some kinda misfiring defense itself, punish yourself first before others have the chance to keep a sense of control, maybe?
Rather, when you catch yourself doing the thing, use your defense powers for good & frame it in a way you can live with. Like you might see it as feedback or information, as a sign to know to improve yourself, as an invitation to apply self-compassion.
Maybe it helps to think of it as an ‘inner child’ or ‘inner animal’ or some such concept.
Would you be mad at a child or a pet for wanting something silly, or avoiding something painful?
No, you’d direct them towards a healthier outlet wouldn’t you?
Or at least, if it’s really not feasible, you’d comfort them about it.
So yeah.
(So the ‘preliminal explanations’ turned into an essay. But, I did promise “what the individual mechanisms actually mean”, “how to actually spot them” and “putting together the Best Of from the authors”, and that I plan to deliver in Part II without any further ramblings. But first I have to ‘recharge my imagination battery’, as a wise sponge once put it, that is, get some sleep.)

I just completed my first modded playthrough of Icewind Dale EE and I thought I give a review and my thoughts about the stuff that the New Light mods add to the game for those people who think about playing with these mods as well.
I have played through Icewind Dale about 4 or 5 times. Its a game that stuck with me from my teenage days. I hold it quite dearly and replay it about every 3 years. I love the atmosphere, the locations, the battles. And I also love the Baldur's Gate series with all its banters and great companions. So I hoped that with the NPCs from this mods I would get an interesting party together that would comment on the specific situations and revelations throughout the game, that the NPCs would have interesting backstories and strong personalities and I have to say: That is exactly what I got.
I was also looking forward to the quest mods. Especially the rediscovery of Kuldahar because I always felt that the vanilla game could have made Kuldahar much more interesting. It is one of the most cozy and beautiful places that I have ever experienced in a video game but it was also flawed in a way. There could have been more quests there, or more interesting NPCs. So I hoped that the quest mods would give me that and I installed them all.
Naturally I could only take 5 companions with me so I had to choose which one I would want. I settled for L'anna, Dusky, Minerva, Karihi and Nella (from Kulyoks NPC mod). Having one character from a different modder turned out not to be a problem, because there is a crossbanter mod available that worked flawlessly and it never felt as if Nella wasn't part of the team.
That means I cannot comment on T'viy, Urchin, Oak-Maw, Tipps, Orra, Dandjelion, Hommet or Ina, because I haven't played with them.
I will no go over the different companions that I played with one by one and give my thoughts and ratings.
L'anna: She is an elven paladin that has a story connection to the Severed Hand and the Mythal magic that I found very interesting. She started out slowly and a little bit on the uninteresting side and while it definitely got much better once I reached the Severed Hand, I could not shake the feeling that she was the most bland of the NPCs. I liked her and I learned a lot about elven culture and tales from her, which was very interesting, but she didn't have a personality that stood out from the others. Her voice acting also wasn't the greatest and I had to replace her portrait with another one more to my liking, but all in all she was a good companion to have. Strong as well with pretty good unique class skills. It felt like she had very little banter with the rest of the group though and thus felt a little bit isolated from them.
Rating: 5/10 Pretty good companion but the most uninteresting of the ones I took with me.
Karihi: She is a fire Genasi and a specialist fire mage so to speak. She gets unique fire spells at certain levels that were very strong and flavorful and she gets a bonus to fire damage. Also a staff that can do a range attack from the start which was extremely good for the early game. I have to say that she was pretty much a perfect companion in every regard. Portrait, voice acting, backstory or class skills. It left nothing to be desired and she just flawlessly fit into the setting. Of course having a dedicated fire mage is a great thing to have in the frozen north where many enemies are vulnerable to fire. And she became extremely strong very quickly. I found Items for her, that raised her bonus to fire damage even further up to i think almost 100% at later levels, making her spells like Fireball do ridiculous damage to large clusters of enemies. Also there was gear that raised her casting level and lowered the cast time like the Robe of Vecna does in BG2. That made her an absolute monster of a damage dealer and made some fights trivial. Is she OP with the right gear that you will find during the game? Yes, she is. Is it gamebreaking? No. Should you use Karihi in your party because her presentation, her writing and her gameplay is incredibly great. Absolutely.
10/10 Would recommend for everyone to try her out. I haven't romanced her so I don't know how it goes but as a friend and companion I loved her the most of my companions, second only to...
Minerva: Minerva is a Gnome Artificier. That means she is a fightethief with no ability to backstab, but instead with unique traps, the ability to craft very powerful potions and later a stationary autocannon and even a Modron. Minerva is probably the most likeable companion I have ever had in any party. She is cheerful, positive, funny but she never goes over the top and has serious moments to. Her personality is great and she is a joy to have around. Just as with Karihi, everything is perfect here. Voice actress does a phenomenal job, her portrait fits her perfectly and her skills are interesting and strong. Her backstory also feels realistic and fitting and I want to visit Lantan with her now. She uses throwing knifes and is very good at it. Its a bit tedious at first when you have to craft her special knifes that can do friendly fire if your micromanagement slips a litte but once she gets a returning throwing dagger she is just simply fun in combat. She also comments on getting a returnable throwing dagger and how convenient that is for her when you ask her how she is doing in a player initiated dialogue. How great is that?
10/10 Companion. I would have loved to romance her but I saw to late that the romance required 14 Intelligence to trigger. When I EE Keepered my Intelligence up during the Vale of Shadows its seems to have been to late and the romance didn't trigger properly. Real shame. You should definitely take her with you if you want a ranged damage dealer with fun skills that will be the positive heart of the party. Minerva is great.
Dusky: He is a Half-Orc Cleric/Thief. His portrait is abysmal. You need to swap it out to a better one at the very start of you playthrough or it will ruin that character for you. I gave him Dandjelions Portrait because I thought that it fit but you can use any Half-Orc portrait that you like. Everything else about him was pretty good. He has some intersting stories from his past and his personality is very likeable. If you play a male character he will try to initiate a romance at some point. If you are not into that stuff you can turn him down and he will be a good friend for the rest of the game. He will ask you to have drinks in an inn several times where he will then initiate a dialogue. I found that to be great idea and it really enhanced the atmosphere. Nothing like having an ale together in the Kuldahar Root Cellar after a return from a deadly dungeon and have a chat. As for effectiveness I really didn't have a good role for him because I already had Minerva to take care of traps and locks. His priest spell progression is slow because he is a multiclass and so he mostly stayed back with a sling in hand and supported with heals and defensive magic. His stats are great but with only 1 APR i wanted to keep him from the frontlines. Later he became a lifesaver when I had him scout ahead under the effects of Sanctuary and made him disable traps and trigger ambushes prematurely. He was a good secondary cleric and his pickpocket skills were needed to get the three rings from Orrick, Arundel and Oswald at the start. I liked his realistic, down to earth character and he had quite a lot of banter while never going on the boring side. His voice actor did a good job as well.
7/10
So that is it for the companions. I didn't include Nella, because she is from a different modder. I can quickly say that I liked her really much and I found her connection to Arundel too interesting to not take her.
Now onto the quest mods. I am a bit torn here because my Nr.1 criteria was that those quests would fit in with the rest of the worldbuilding and atmosphere. I hoped that those mods would enhance the experience of the game while not changing how the game feels too much. Some of them succeeded in this, some of them didn't.
Tale of our Lady Dreamless: This is a pretty short quest that actually fit in flawlessly with the rest of the game. I has a few small, but extremely beautiful maps, an encounter with one of the barbarians before we meet more of them in Heart of Winter and a quick but fitting resolution. I can say nothing bad about this mod and would absolutely recommend it.
8/10
Below and Below Inn: I was really looking forward to this mod I have to say. A new cozy Inn in the Icewind Dale that I could visit and spend some time in? Yes please, But unfortunately I was really not a fan of this when I played it. That is because it really doesn't fit with the rest of the setting. The Inn is not in Kuldahar but somewhere between Dorn's Deep and the Hand of the Seldarine on the Map. Umm what? To my knowledge that means it is in the middle of nowhere in one of the most deserted places in the Icewind Dale. What would an Inn do there? There should have been no customers at all, but instead it is an Inn that has stuff like a piano and luxurious furniture in it. There are Noblemen and Noblewomen, Merchants and other people there. It just didn't make any sense to me and pulled me off of my immersion. No one mentioned why there would be rich people like this in the middle of the wilderness of the North, nobody mentioned the blocked passes to the Ten Towns. Icewind Dale is such a great game because after you leave Easthaven you are cut off from Civilisation. The people of Kuldahar are on their own, living in a desolate and dangerous area and no help is coming to them apart from you adventurer party. Below and Below Inn destroyed that Image for me. It felt like it belonged in a different area of the Icewind Dale or even further south and felt really out of place. There wasn't even snow at the entrance now that I think of it but green Grass. I would not install it again. Minus points for having a cook that does not want to throw me out of his kitchen. This goes against every RPG rule in existance and really made me question my view of the world!
2/10
Terror of the Skineater: Another short quest that made good use of the haunted forest maps from Icewind Dale 2. You are approached by a mage that tells you of that a creature that slaughters people from his village roams around in a nearby forest and wants you to kill it. (Although he never mention what and where this village is, what kinda put me off) What I liked was that it was a pretty short and interesting quest that even had a connection to a Character that we meet in Icewind Dale 2 and gives a little more backstory to that Character. 7/10 Good mod. You get a very powerful spear from it that dominates the early game if you do this quest early.
Night of the Blinking Dead: If you want to fight through yet another of the BG2 Beholder lairs this mod is for you. I really didn't. The attempt of recreating the comedy with the speaking Spectator Beholder kinda worked, but it was not enough for me to recommend this mod. It didn't fit in in my opinion. At least its also pretty short.
3/10
Snowytoes Hamlet: This mods adds a Halfling Village to the map where you can get some gear and some quests. It really wasn't bad. My biggest criticism for it was that it made you backtrack to already cleared dungeons like Kresselacks Tomb or the Temple of the forgotten God. I didn't like this. Those are locations that should be visited once and not a second time. It felt a little bit devaluation going there again and bringing some halfling boys back home from there. Also the existance of another Village in a supposedly wild and uninhabited part of Faerun was not something that I particularly needed. Its an okay mod though.
5/10
The Rediscovery of Kuldahar: Finally the mod that I was looking forward to the most. As I said earlier I always felt that more could have been done with Kuldahar. I always bothered me that all the villagers there all have the same exact dialogue. That there are very few interesing NPCs. Kuldahar didn't change as you progressed though the different chapters of the game was also something that I would have liked to see changed. Why didn't Mother Egenia show up in the temple of Illmater after I rescued her from Dragon's eye? It would have been so nice to have her back, be able to talk to her there, maybe buy better equipment from her. Where are the other villagers that were held captive in Dragon's Eye? Only Sheemish appears in Kuldahar afterwards. Big missed opportunity not having some of the other people show up, making Kuldahar seem more inhabited again, maybe have them give some small rewards or even quests when you talk to them after their rescue. The Root Cellar is the coolest and most cozy Inn that I can think of but after the Lysan story there is nothing more to do there and the guest there all have the same dialogue. So I hoped that this mod would adress all that. And unfortunately it didn't. It added some caves to the original maps where you could get two smaller quests. The one where I had to hunt a Chimera was okay, the one where I had to prepare a get together for two women (one apparently a Noblewoman in Kuldahar?) was not and I had to look for that candle that I needed to complete this quest way too long. The mod also adds a completely new section of Kuldahar that is really well designed and had a lot of potential. But the people you meet there were a little bit disappointing to me. There is a Xvart merchant there that sells you flies and eyes and chicken feet and stuff like that. In my opinion, he absolutely didn't fit into the setting. The Mushroom Café was interesting but ultimately lacked any importance and there was not reason to go there more than once. More could have been done with it. The Throne of Bhaal prophecy Stone Face that gave forshadowing about the events of Icewind Dale 2 was good, but the other stuff not so much. You get some Quests that make you search for pages of a Spellbook for a Mage (Isn't Orrick supposed to be the only mage in Kuldahar), or get a Telescope for a Stargazer that you can either steal from Oswald or get a different one later, for which this guy will reward you with a Star Atlas that raises Saving Throws and Lore. But you have to wait a whole Month until he finishes it and by that time you have either rested 90 times i a row or pretty much completed the game already. Ultimately this area of Kuldahar, while beautiful to look at, didn't give me the feeling of it being a natural extension of the existing Kuldahar. While it wasn't bad it was just simply not what I expected so it left me disappointed. There is one thing about this mod that redeems it for me though. An that is the upper Kuldahar section. Remeber Lysan telling the barkeeper of the Root Cellar that she uses to go to upper Kuldahar from time to time? In the Vanilla game we never get to see upper Kuldahar but with this mod we can. And we can see why Lysan went there and what she did. Don't want to spoil it for anybody what you find there but this part of this mod was 100% perfect. This is what I wanted to see. An extension that build upon content from the original game and built onto it. For the upper Kuldahar addition alone I would recommend to install this mod. That was exactly what I hoped the Rediscovery of Kuldahar would do and it felt like straight out of the base game.
6/10 I would have been 3/10 without the upper Kuldahar section but this part really pulled it on to a higher rating alone. The rest was just not what I expected and some people might enjoy it more than me, because it really isn't bad.
Items and others: The last mod on my list and I cannot say too much about it. This mod adds a ton of items, some of them craftable. I do not know exactly which ones of the items I found came from this mod, which ones maybe came from the NPC mods and which ones were in the base game, so its hard for me to judge. The Item crafting was very fun and gave some appropriately powerful items. A shame that you have to play Heart of Winter and Trials of the Luremaster before you defeat Belhifet in order to get every item crafted though as it never made sense to me to play the games it that order. For me it was always defeat Belhifet, than export my characters to HoW and close out with TotLM. Overall I felt pretty much overequipped during my entire playthrough. Some items appeared way to often, like the Hands of Takkok (the gauntlets of Ogre strenght) which I found about 5 times. Or the cloak of displacement which appeard about as often. Not sure it is the fault of this mod though so its hard for me to judge. I mostly enjoyed the item variety that came with it. Its maybe a bit too much as I was closing in on having a million gold pieces at the end of the game.
So thats it. A lot to read through but hopefully you found my thoughts about these mods helpful.
I want to put out a big thank you to the creators because you really gave me a fresh playthrough, extremely well written companions that enhanced my gaming experience a lot and made me want to play with the other companions that I couldn't take along too.
Not everything was exactly to my liking, but you can't please anyone. And most of the stuff you created was extremely well done and thought out.

I'd like to find somebody thoughtful, someone who isn't superficial. Somebody who appreciates the rich vastness of our shared multicultural past, and freely follows her curiosity in exploring it. Somebody who is trying her best to adhere to the guidance of her inner moral compass, and isn't so easily fooled by the distractions and illusions of the world.
One such illusion, that must immediately be mentioned (this is important, because it's led to a break for me, in the past): religion. Religion is man-made, and not of any higher authority. The Bible and the Quran all permit slavery—in addition to countless other horrid and divisive ideas—while claiming to be eternal wisdom, and that is indefensible. I still like to believe in the idea of some permeating higher morality, that imbues us with our general sense for justice, fairness, and empathy...but, I know that without outright proof, even my holding of such a notion can be deemed a flight of fancy, a residual remnant of a system so entrenched. However, it seems to me that life is often more than just what's on the surface. Um, but now, then—back to the person I wish to know...
I'd also love it if she were artistic. Singing, sketching, painting, writing, composing, creating. Someone who is trying to nurture their talents and passions. I know it can be difficult...
As for me, well... I adore music. Mostly voices from the past (the 1960s would have to be my favorite), because I find them to be humbler and more from the heart, at least in popular music. I’ll just give an example of something I’ve looked into, and this is nowhere near representative of my wider taste, but if you go back to early 1920s country music... (Here's an aside: a lot of what people think of as "country" today is a long cry from what the genre is actually like, historically. If you are into folk music—Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan—it is indelibly linked to "country", and if you'd like a popular example of a song that originated within the genre, look no further than the universally recognized "You Are My Sunshine", from 1939!)
Anyway. If you go back to that early period, where undiscovered niches of music were still sought out and first put to tape... a lot of those artists had no idea about anything to do with recording—no ego, no attempt to sound "cool". What came through instead was a bare expression of the life that had been lived—the inner beauty of their own personhood, and I love hearing that. It's so honest. A vulnerable and piercing expression.
So if you're into history or the beautiful music of decades (and centuries) past, if you have any aspirations for creating as a method of changing the world for the better, if you'd like to play games and watch movies together, if you'd like an accountability partner—or all of the above...please message me. I don't mind the chat function, either—in fact, it's probably easier. Also, to get this out of the way: this is what I look like.
I love beautiful things. Nature, music that tugs at your heartstrings or is so honest you're enraptured, experiences that heal. More specifically, here are some of my current interests:

• music (singing/playing an instrument/the Beach Boys are my favorite group—I also love Maybelle Carter, Cass Elliot, Pink Floyd, Lana Del Rey, The Cranberries, Sixpence None The Richer, loads of video game music, The Smiths, The Beatles, The Who, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Harry Nilsson, Joni Mitchell, The Righteous Brothers, Judy Garland, Sam Cooke, Frank Churchill, Marty O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori... Here’s a brief go at the Beatles’ “Julia”.) And, if you liked that—a more recent one…
• drawing—here are a few I've done.
• video games (any era from Atari—I like exploring the history and evolution—to the Switch and PS4) [Currently playing, or starting: The Binding of Isaac, Catherine]
• Disney, especially the Golden Age and Renaissance—Pinocchio (my favorite movie ever), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Aladdin, The Lion King, Tarzan. I love how handmade the early films look. And yet, how no expense was spared in creating these most precious and moving works of art.
• films/series/books I've enjoyed lately: The Sound of Magic, The Little Prince, Matilda, Love Hard, The Fundamentals of Caring, This Beautiful Fantastic, Donnie Darko, Alamut by Vladimir Bartol (this book was a key inspiration for the first Assassin's Creed), The Trial of the Chicago 7, Medici: The Magnificent, Pollyanna by Eleanor Porter, Judy

To close... I suppose I should say I've been afflicted with long-COVID for over two years. It'd be very nice to keep each other company, especially if we share any of the interests up above—we could watch favorite films, have shared listening sessions on Spotify, and it'd be a godsend to find somebody up to play on PS4 and Switch! Donkey Kong Country 2 and 3 on the secret hard modes, maybe? Or sculpting our own world from scratch in Minecraft? Or maybe we could act out Ocarina of Time's storyline using all the options available on Smash Ultimate!
I'd really like to know an intelligent person with a unique identity...who puts forth effort—though at the same time, no pressure on reaching out. If you are this type of person, but can currently only muster up a few words because, hey! Life is tough, and grueling, and we don't always have a ready-made letter in us to flip out of our pockets—don't be scared away by my tower of words. I absolutely know, firsthand, what it's like to want to communicate, yet not currently have the energy or the mindpower for it. Life can really sink you... I promise I will not judge. Please send me a chat message, if you're at all interested in chatting.

I'm going to get 10 chicks （one day old），I'm well prepared almost，I got medicated feeds，heat lump，chicken coop And such. And I really don't want to take chances to lose any of them. So I do want to get my chicks vaccinated for preventing the untreatable Marek's disease，the contagious Fowl pox and so on. I ordered my chicks from TSC，can I go to petco to get my chicks vaccinated？I really want to get some resources where can I get my chicks vaccinated. If you are a person who insists no vaccine is the best option，please move on to next post，I appreciate it.

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Okay, I don't really "rant" much but this sort of thing really gets under my skin. There is a friend I help out now and again with her groceries. Like I take her out and the drive her home with them. She makes decent money, but doesn't live close to any supermarkets and has no car. So a few weeks ago I am out with her keeping her company while she shops with her two kids and her two braindead canine shitbags. She is putting things in the buggy like sirloin tip roasts, skinless boneless chicken breast, deboned salmon and haddock fillets, fresh broccoli, organic carrots, etc, you get the idea. I know you all already see where this is going.
I know exactly what these things are for because I help her get them now and again as mentioned. So the cart is full and now we're onto her kid's grocery budget. She will get as close to $50 without going over, ever. Her kids get frozen fish sticks, tinned veggies, baloney, bread, no-name mac and cheese, and some no name cereal. She treats them once a month to a small pizza. They each get two slices, the kids. She laments that she wishes she could give them more but can only afford to get these sort of treats for her kids once a month because you know, cost of living or some shit. This last time she looks at me and says, and I quote, "You're lucky you don't have young kids now(my own daughter is in her thirties) because everything is so expensive now.". I had to walk away at that moment. I'm kind of an asshole and I wanted to say something but her kids were there.
She will spend $250+(typically more) a week for her dogs and not complain about the cost of living, but pinches pennies when shopping for her kids. She strictly sticks to that fifty bucks a week for them, the dogs average is 250, but sometimes 275, 290, 300, you get the idea. It's not abuse so I can't report hert to CPS because technically they are being fed and their nutrition is kind of sort of being met. I'm going to look into it tho.
She also has to tell everybody how she makes all of these amazing meals for two shitbags, animals that have no discernment at all and will eat their own waste and other animal waste.
I often wonder how many other owners are like this. You only see social media posts about those leeches but never anything about kids, or how she is making them something special.
Their father was a great dad, but he's passed and now they have this dog maniac for a mom. I wasn't sure if I was going to post this or not, but I was so pissed and I keep thinking about it, and the only way to get it out of mind is to vent. There is so much more but I didn't want to stretch this out. I may or may not reply to all the comments, so my apologies if I don't respond to you. I will be reading them all. I want to know if other people feel the same way.