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The Dutch independent investigative journalism platform 'Follow the Money' wrote a article about Patagonia.
"Sustainable clothing brand Patagonia manufactures in the same factories as fast-fashion; textile workers are being exploited"
Clothing brand Patagonia seems to be doing everything right: for its employees, for the people who make the clothes and for the environment. The company’s image – they say they’re in business to save our home planet – is very different from fast-fashion brands like asos, Primark and Nike. But Patagonia’s clothes are manufactured in exactly the same factories and under the same deplorable conditions.
When Yvon Chouinard started creating climbing equipment in his parents’ backyard in Burbank, California, he used steel. Soon he earned a reputation for making the ‘best’ climbing equipment in America. But every time a climber slammed one of those steel pegs into a rock, the gap got a little bigger and eventually unusable. Chouinard realised he was making money by destroying the rocks and therefore also the sport. And so he switched to aluminium blocks, which did not damagethe rocks.
The change was expensive and risky for the young company, but the moral dilemma was reason enough for Chouinard to implement the change. And to be very outspoken about it. It was a success: within a year, 40 per cent of the US climbing community stopped using steel.
Chouinard applied this experience when he started the outdoor brand Patagonia in 1973. He wanted to make only high-quality clothing that would last. And limit the impact on the environment as much as possible. In 1996, the brand switched to 100 per cent organic cotton, only to increasingly replace it with recycled materials. But the responsibility that Chouinard attributed to the company extended further.
In 2002 he decided to give one per cent of sales to environmental organisations every year. In 2011, Patagonia placed a full-page ad in the New York Times calling on consumers to ‘not buy this jacket’ in order to draw attention to the problematic nature of overconsumption in the clothing industry.
In addition, the clothing had to be manufactured fairly: in 2012, the top of the company made paying living wages to everyone who makes Patagonia products a ‘priority’. In 2020, Patagonia launched a campaign encouraging consumers to demand more from clothing brands: ‘Demand recycled. Demand organic. Demand Fair Trade,’ Patagonia urged its viewers.
In 2022, the then 84-year-old Chouinard caused worldwide astonishment, when he gave away 98 per cent of his shares to a newly formed NGO, the Holdfast Collective, which is ‘committed in its fight against the environmental crisis and protecting nature.’ Henceforth, the company’s profits would no longer flow to himself or his children but to the climate. ‘Earth is now our only shareholder,’ Chouinard said. Billionaire gives company away to climate, newspapers like The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Guardian reported*.*
This construction saved the NGO an estimated 700 million dollars that Chouinard would have had to pay in tax if he had sold the company and donated the proceeds to the same NGO. But according to Chouinard, this option allowed him to do something else: protect Patagonia’s values. Because he did not give the voting shares to Holdfast Collective but to a family trust. This allows his family to continue determining the company’s direction.
The company’s turnover – its European headquarters are in Amsterdam − grew by more than 50 per cent that year to about 1.5 billion dollars.
The actions earned Patagonia an image as being the ultimate sustainable frontrunner. In April, Time Magazine named Chouinard one of the world’s 100 most influential people. ‘Patagonia is a company people look up to in awe,’ the magazine wrote.
The complete opposite of Patagonia is a company like Primark. The Irish retail chain is known for selling on-trend low-quality clothes at low prices. Its revenue model is based on mass: high volumes with low margins.
Primark continuously creates new garment collections designed to be worn only a few times, after which they fall apart. The company uses advertising, clearance sales and influencers to urge consumers to keep buying as much as possible.
Media regularly report on the subsequent consequences. One, in particular, is that the people who make the clothes suffer from high production pressure at low cost. ‘Primark supplier accused of locking up factory workers in Myanmar protests,’ The Guardian headline read in 2021. That same year, The Clean Clothes Campaign NGO wrote: ‘Primark uses pandemic to put further pressure on factory workers in manufacturing countries.’
Patagonia and Primark seem like two extremes on the slow versus fast-fashion spectrum. Yet the brands have something in common. Some of their clothing is manufactured in the exact same factory.
PATAGONIA IN AMSTERDAM In 2014, Patagonia moved its European headquarters from Annecy town in the French Alps to Amsterdam. Reflecting on this, current CEO Ryan Gellert told the city marketing website I Amsterdam: ‘We established headquarters here in 2014 because we wanted a place where we could attract and retain pan-European and global talent, [...] and where there was an active community working on sustainability issues. As we searched potential locations across Europe, Amsterdam remained high on our list.’
According to Tax Law Professor Jan van de Streek, tax benefits may also have played a role in the choice of the Netherlands. This is because Patagonia did not register in the Netherlands as a BV but as a cooperative with two US members: Patagonia International Inc and Patagonia Global LLC. ‘Why choose something as strange as a cooperative structure?’ Van de Streek remarks to Follow the Money. ‘Because it is exempt from dividend tax. I think it’s naive to think there’s any other reason for that.’
Responding to questions about this, Patagonia said: ‘Since its inception, Patagonia Europe Coöperatief has paid regular corporate income taxes in all European countries where we do business, including the Netherlands, and has never used the tax efficiencies of a cooperative.’
‘At the suggestion of our advisors', Patagonia chose a cooperative structure ‘because it's the most flexible type of entity that suited our business purpose. However, Patagonia has chosen not to pursue any of the tax advantages available under the cooperative entity type. Patagonia Europe has not paid dividends to its parent company.'

‘No difference’

That factory is called Regal Image and is located in Sri Lanka. To be precise, in the Free Trade Zone of Katunayake, less than two kilometres from the international airport. The industrial estate is guarded 24/7 by Sri Lankan police. Access is only possible with a special pass.
In the factory hall, there are long tables with pieces of white fabric on them. An employee walks past with sea-green paint and a stencil forming the letters ‘asics’. Further along, a machine prints a grey logo on a purple tank top for Decathlon.
‘So far, we don’t really notice any difference between working with Patagonia and working with Primark or Decathlon,’ says Kevin Fernando. Fernando is the manager at the factory, which dyes, prints or embroiders logos and prints on fabrics. Regal Image was recently approved as a supplier to Patagonia, a process that took nine months. Fernando shows the designs for the 2024 summer collection. Light blue fabric features ‘Patagonia’ in pink letters, and a rainbow is printed on orange fabric.
‘Like most clothing companies, we do not make our products, nor do we own any of the factories that do,’ Patagonia writes on its website about the decision to outsource the manufacturing process. ‘We design, test, market and sell Patagonia gear. These are our areas of strength. We pay other companies [...] to produce fabrics and do the actual cutting and sewing.’

‘No control over working conditions’

Patagonia promises to only partner with factories that are ‘like-minded’ and who share their ‘philosophy.’ Patagonia has found sixty-one suitable factories: two in the US, one in Portugal and the remainder in 12 different low-wage countries. The bulk of the products are made in Vietnam and Sri Lanka.
At least two-thirds of the factories that manufacture Patagonia clothing also work for clothing brands that, according to the consumer website Good on You, have little or no sustainability policies in place (Patagonia itself is touted by Good on You as sustainable). This is evident from an analysis by Follow the Money based on data from Open Supply Hub, which aims to make supply chains in the clothing industry more transparent.
One day people make clothing for Patagonia, and the next day, they make items for brands such as GAP, Levi Strauss, Calvin Klein, Hugo Boss, Tommy Hilfiger, Nike, Amer Sports, Asics, US department store chain Target, e-commerce platform Amazon, supermarket Aldi and fast-fashion icons ASOS, Boohoo, H&M and Zara.
‘How is this possible?’ visual culture professor Anneke Smelik responds. Smelik researches sustainable fashion at Radboud University. ‘I know Patagonia as the most sustainable brand out there. I expected them to manufacture in small factories close to home. This means they have absolutely no control over working conditions.’
PATAGONIA IN SRI LANKA Patagonia works with 14 factories in Sri Lanka that are part of (or partner with) two companies: MAS Holdings and the Hirdaramani Group.
MAS Holdings was founded in 1987 by three brothers: Mahesh, Ajay and Sharad Amalean. The company began manufacturing lingerie and later expanded to sportswear, swimwear and T-shirts. With factories in 17 countries and roughly 2.4 billion dollars in turnover by 2022, MAS is Sri Lanka’s largest clothing manufacturer. The Amalean brothers are among the wealthiest men in the country.
The company emphatically presents itself as a sustainable clothing manufacturer. For instance, the company promises to emit 25 per cent less CO2 by 2025 than in 2019, and CEO Suren Fernando expects the group to earn half its revenue from sustainable products by then.
In May 2023, MAS received a Presidential Environment Award from President Ranil Wickremesinghe for the company’s commitment to the environment. The company describes the welfare of its employees as ‘its top priority’. On the subject of paying a living wage, the company makes no promises.
In the early 1900s, Parmanand Hirdaramani, then 16 years old, started a clothing shop in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo. Today, his great-grandson Aroon Hirdaramani runs the Hirdaramani Group, which has grown into an international clothing conglomerate with factories in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Vietnam and a turnover of around 900 million US dollars.
Hirdaramani also presents itself as a sustainable producer. The company’s website states: ‘At Hirdaramani, we do the right thing. We have always done that. It’s about making good decisions today that benefit everyone in the long run.’
Since 2019, all Hirdaramani factories in Sri Lanka have been producing climate neutrally. For 2025, the company has set several targets on material use, water use, waste and leadership. Paying a living or higher wage is not a target.
In 2016, Aroon Hirdaramani and his wife Mona surfaced in the Pandora Papers. It emerged that Hirdaramani owned two investment companies in the British Virgin Islands. The reason for this is unclear. The fact is that companies based there do not have to pay tax on income, profits, dividends and interest, among other things.

Sixteen-hour workdays

Eligibility to manufacture Patagonia products requires a supplier to meet a list of sustainability criteria. Those criteria are set out in a code of conduct for suppliers. For example, child labour, forced labour, or physical, sexual or verbal harassment are not allowed. All national laws must be respected. Suppliers must respect workers’ right to freedom of association, may not force workers to work overtime and must ensure healthy working conditions. Working weeks of more than 60 hours or more than six days in a row is not acceptable to Patagonia.
Patagonia checks whether a factory complies with these standards through independent auditor visits at least once a year, says the brand after being questioned by Follow the Money. Checks are also carried out by the Fair Labor Association (FLA) and FairTrade: two NGOs that provide Patagonia’s manufacturing process and clothing with a sustainability label.
A part of those audits is public. Since 2016, the FLA has publishedassessments of seven Patagonia factories, including three in Vietnam, three in Sri Lanka and one in China. During those inspections, auditors found dozens of violations, varying greatly in severity.
For instance, almost 2000 employees at a factory in Vietnam were paid less for their overtime than what they should have received and employees’ ages were not recorded (thus child labour cannot be ruled out). Another check found out that applicants had to provide their menstrual date. Employees told the interviewers they were not allowed to become pregnant in the first six months of their employment. Less serious violations dealt with issues such as working without protective equipment, blocked emergency exits, or a lack of policies on harassment or discrimination.
One problem crops up in every report. Textile workers in factories manufacturing clothes for Patagonia work far longer hours than legally permitted: up to 17 hours a day and more than 80 hours a week, well beyond what is permissible according to Patagonia’s code of conduct.
‘Long working hours with insufficient breaks often lead to health problems,’ the Clean Clothes Campaign recently wrote about this issue. ‘Managers pressure employees to work 10- to 12-hour and sometimes even 16- to 18-hour days. The number of hours increases as the deadline approaches. Those who protest are simply fired. Moreover, workers depend on overtime to supplement their low wages.’
At the Regal Image factory in Sri Lanka, manager Fernando assures that his employees work a maximum of five days a week and 10 hours a day. But during the tour, a line manager starts talking about the duration of his shift: from eight in the morning to a quarter to 10 in the evening – almost 14 hours. ‘It’s busy,’ says Fernando, casually.
‘This is what the fast-fashion model does,’ says Smelik. ‘Brands want their products to be in store within a few weeks. So when a factory receives an order from such a brand, the production targets and overtime skyrocket.’

‘They talk to us like we are animals’

The office of Stand Up Lanka, a union led by Ashila Niroshine Dandeniya, is located just outside the Free-Trade Zone. She started working in a MAS factory, part of MAS Holdings that is a supplier to Patagonia, in 2003. Her colleagues elected her to represent them as a member of the factory’s employees council. But when she addressed the matter of wages, she was fired. She challenged her dismissal, got compensation, and discovered that there were laws in place to protect people like her.
Now, almost 20 years later, she knows Sri Lankan labour law like the back of her hand. Her office is a hexagon with five windows, all open. Textile workers from nearby factories approach her via these windows to greet her or ask for help.
When a transman walks past, she says, ‘He applied to MAS Shadowline [one of Patagonia’s suppliers, ed] a month ago. They said they didn’t want him because he is transgender. He can’t get work anywhere. And he cannot go back to his village because he is Muslim. His family will shoot him.’
When about six women wearing yellow MAS polos come and ask for a food parcel, Dandeniya shakes her head. ‘We don’t have enough. Since the country’s economic crisis, some families barely eat two meals a day. How am I supposed to choose who can eat and who can’t?’
That evening, she introduces Priya (31). Priya has been working for MAS Shadowline for almost two years, sewing the side seams on leggings or T-shirts. She makes many clothes for yoga brand Lululemon and for Lacoste (famous through the crocodile logo), but sometimes also for Patagonia.
‘The worst part is the scolding,’ she says in her home a few streets away: a room of about 12 square metres. It contains a double bed, a small kitchenette and a wardrobe. Despite the fan on the wall, it is sweltering hot inside. She shares a toilet and a shower with others.
‘My supervisor’s manager is a terrible man. He touches everyone in a bad way, and if you say you don’t want that, you have a problem. He yells at me if I have to go to the bank or the doctor. “Then who will do the work? Who will meet the target?” And he’s not the only one. They talk to us like we are animals.’
When asked about her production targets, she breathes a deep sigh. ‘The other day, Lululemon placed a huge order, and now everyone is stressed. On the first day, we had to make seventy items per hour, but on the second day, it was suddenly a hundred. Otherwise, we won’t make the delivery date.’ During the working day, she does not drink water so that she does not waste time going to the toilet. Despite this, she seldom meets the target. And that means: no bonus.
Without that bonus, Priya earns 32,000 rupees a month (97 euros). Her room costs 7,000 rupees (21 euros), and a meal 300 rupees (1 euro). She has no money left for other things.
‘Since the crisis, we are increasingly hearing stories from our members of textile workers using drugs,’ says Dandeniya. ‘Also in MAS factories that Patagonia works with. They use it to work faster. Sometimes also against the hunger.’
Chamila Thushari, union leader of Dabindu Collective, confirms the story. ‘They use Ice (Crystal Meth) or Babul.’ She points to her collar and to the sole of her shoe. ‘This is how they smuggle it in. The management knows this happens but allows it. All they care about is production targets are being met.’
An employee of a third union, GTZ-GSEU, confirms that drug use among textile workers in the Free Trade Zone is a problem.
Patagonia says these claims are ‘new’ to them and ‘serious’, but says, without evidence, it cannot comment.

A living wage

That Patagonia, known for being sustainable, has its clothes manufactured in the same factories as other much less sustainable brands is seen as an advantage by the company. ‘Patagonia has a powerful brand voice, but we are a quite small player in the apparel sector. Therefore, we are always looking for ways to scale our impact and to elevate the industry standards across the board, bringing other apparel retailers along on the journey with us. So, continuing to engage in shared production facilities is crucial to this work.’
Patagonia wants all people who make clothes to earn a decent wage. In 2015, the company promised that within 10 years, all employees in its supply chain would be earning a living wage that would be enough to live on. That is, enough for food, water, housing, education, healthcare, transport and other essential needs.
With 18 months to go, only 40 per cent of its factories pay a living wage, according to Patagonia. They would not reveal the factories concerned. Suppliers reportedly ‘have the right to maintain their factories’ wage data confidential’.
Patagonia wants all people who make clothes to earn a decent wage. In 2015, the company promised that within 10 years, all employees in its supply chain would be earning a living wage that would be enough to live on. That is, enough for food, water, housing, education, healthcare, transport and other essential needs.
With 18 months to go, only 40 per cent of its factories pay a living wage, according to Patagonia. They would not reveal the factories concerned. Suppliers reportedly ‘have the right to maintain their factories’ wage data confidential’.
To determine a living wage, Patagonia uses the Anker Research Institute’s calculation method. According to that method, you can live decently in urban Sri Lanka if you earn a minimum of 83,231 Sri Lankan rupees (263 euro) a month. Priya’s salary does not even cover half that. And at the recently approved Regal Image print factory, the basic wage is even lower: 21,000 rupees (66 euro), says Fernando.
Thulsi Narayanasamy is frustrated by Patagonia’s approach to sustainability. She is director of advocacy at the Worker Rights Consortium, an independent non-profit organization that monitors and investigates labor conditions in the global apparel and textile industry. ‘Patagonia spends millions on green initiatives. Why can’t they pay the people who make their clothes properly?’
Patagonia says it ‘has no authority over how much textile workers get paid, as they are in no way, shape or form the employer of these workers.’ Narayanasamy, however, is convinced Patagonia can pay a living wage, if the brand would want to. ‘They could bring production in-house or pay more to suppliers that’s ringfenced for wages high enough to achieve a living income. It’s so well established that brand’s pricing practices directly impact wage levels, it’s a fallacy to deny this.’
‘I think we should ask ourselves: why don't clothing brands have their own factories?’ She asks the question, then answers it. 'Brands don't want to be responsible for the people who produce their clothes. All brands benefit from that, including Patagonia.
RESPONSE FROM PATAGONIA When asked why it does not pay its suppliers more for decent wages for workers, Patagonia replied: ‘Relying on one brand to simply cover the gap is a band-aid solution and does not serve the factory in the long run. If the one brand that pays the gap were to leave the factory, then those wages for workers would go away, leaving the factory with a shortfall they would not be able to cover. Additionally, if the brand just writes a check to the factory, then there is no guarantee that the money would go towards workers’ wages. The brand has no authority over how much workers get paid as they are in no way, shape or form the employer of those workers.’
About the long working hours, Patagonia says: ‘Excessive overtime is pervasive globally, which is why it is audited regularly. If we find a problem that can be resolved, we work with our factory partners to implement sustainable solutions. This can take many years, but we find this is the best outcome for the workers and the factory.’
In response to the allegations about drug use among textile workers, Patagonia says: ‘These are serious and new allegations, however without evidence, we are not able to comment on them. We are continuing to conduct our ongoing monitoring program and we remain committed to addressing systemic issues to ensure workers’ wellbeing across our supply chain.’
Link to the article: https://www.ftm.eu/articles/sustainable-clothing-brand-patagonia-uses-same-suppliers-fast-fashion-brands-do-workers-exploited?share=p8cq84oSmbUiJtEQUObUZSPZh8ZNReEKHj0wGJnBMQUMqLcwK9PC1kpMJCev5Mo%3D%26utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebuttonnietleden&utm_source=linkbutton
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I was just reading this article from the New Yorker I really, really related to. Triggered lots of thoughts and questions I just wanted to get wrote down before bed...
“If your little brother flicks your ear, maybe you ignore it,” he said. “If he flicks your ear a hundred times, or punches you, then maybe you give him a little smack to show you’re paying attention.”
Although redditors didn’t yet know it, Huffman could edit any part of the site. He wrote a script that would automatically replace his username with those of The_Donald’s most prominent members, directing the insults back at the insulters in real time: in one comment, “Fuck u/Spez” became “Fuck u/Trumpshaker”; in another, “Fuck u/Spez” became “Fuck u/MAGAdocious.”
The_Donald’s users saw what was happening, and they reacted by spinning a conspiracy theory that, in this case, turned out to be true. ^{(I don't think this is my dad or brother's behavior. Why would they remove me from my own family, if I've done no wrong? The problem is that I've been unwell since losing Liz in very serious ways. I've tried everything to heal and I need Liz to give me the ending my lifetime's most important friendship deserves. Without it, our relationship meant nothing. If it meant nothing than no human relationship can ever mean anything to me. This is my greatest hurt and divides my life's timeline into a before Liz and an after Liz era. It's been obvious me for years that my most loved people have the tools to set me free. I've been begging them to spare me, but they choose not too and only contribute to a pain that was already more than I can handle. They've put more energy into adding to my hurt than helping me heal actually. That's no family at all, and they don't have my back, so why do they even pretend to? What kid of family steals children from each other? My life's biggest miracle and the reason for this divine love. The woman the gods gave me to so she could use her magic to heal all that's broken in me? I don't get to see my kids like I'd like, and I can't wait to be an uncle someday. Even if it's not my miracle, who the hell wouldn't my brother let me know my own niece or nephew? Why wouldn't I be the best man in my brothers wedding? Why is my brother encouraging my suicide suddenly when I've never done him any real wrong?})
“Manipulating the words of your users is fucked,” a commenter wrote.
“Even Facebook and Twitter haven’t stooped this low.”
“Trust nothing.”
The incident became known as Spezgiving, and it’s still invoked, internally and externally, as a paradigmatic example of tech-executive overreach. Social-media platforms must do something to rein in their users, the consensus goes, but not that.
Huffman can no longer edit the site indiscriminately, but his actions laid bare a fact that most social-media companies go to great lengths to conceal—that, no matter how neutral a platform may seem, there’s always a person behind the curtain. “I fucked up,” Huffman wrote in an apology the following week. “More than anything, I want Reddit to heal, and I want our country to heal.” Implicit in his apology was a set of questions, perhaps the central questions facing anyone who worries about the current state of civic discourse.
Is it possible to facilitate a space for open dialogue without also facilitating hoaxes, harassment, and threats of violence? Where is the line between authenticity and toxicity? What if, after technology allows us to reveal our inner voices, what we learn is that many of us are authentically toxic?
^{--we're all just a bunch of half grown, imperfect humans. It's a never ending battle between the good in us and bad that makes us. You need to keep your knife sharp and guard up, but most importantly your bearings straight and vision clear to keep from getting lost. Most often that's when the panic hits and if you let it take hold, then you're good as gone. That's why it's important to surround yourself with those you respect. The kind of people you can sharpen your blade against. The ones that see clear and navigate true, so that they never lose you. News is important to our populations health, and there's a reason gossip is old as time and every old ladies favorite past time. Siliceous stories invoke emotions and are more easily memorable (member?}. Important stories carry weight and are naturally significant. Often real news is downplayed and rumors crafted into clickbait for this reason. You can't have open, true dialog unless both parties are present in good faith. That's why it's more difficult to have an honest conversation online, where the added layer of anonymity detaches a person from himself. The less humanity a human has, but poorer his faith...)
It might be most helpful to compare a social network to a party. The party starts out small, with the hosts and a few of their friends. Then word gets out and strangers show up. People take cues from the environment. Mimosas in a sun-dappled atrium suggest one kind of mood; grain alcohol in a moldy basement suggests another. Sometimes, a pattern emerges on its own.
Huffman and his college roommate, Alexis Ohanian, founded Reddit a few weeks after graduating from the University of Virginia, in 2005. The first people to show up were, like the co-founders, the kind of strong-headed young men who got excited about computer programming, video games, and edgy, self-referential humor. Back then, Ohanian was ungainly and clean-shaven, and he was often photographed in a hoodie and with a goofy smile. At his wedding, last year, wearing a beard and an Armani tuxedo, he was nearly unrecognizable. (The paparazzi weren’t too interested in him, though, given that his bride was Serena Williams.) Huffman, on the other hand, has always looked more or less the same: bright-blue eyes, chipmunk teeth, and a thatch of blond hair. ^{(Serena is the youger Williams sister, right?})
“It’s pretty amazing that a big corporation would have something like this, which reflects badly on it,” he said. Traffic to Jailbait quadrupled overnight. Twelve days later, after someone in the group apparently shared a nude photo of a fourteen-year-old girl, the community was banned. And yet the founder of Jailbait, an infamous troll who went by u/Violentacrez, was allowed to stay on Reddit, as were some four hundred other communities he’d created—Jewmerica, ChokeABitch, and worse. (Yes, it gets worse.)
--^{I really related with steve. He sounds like a guy cut from my very cloth. Alvarez has been here since the start. I've never been able to pin down exactly who that'd correlate to since it's a phonetic outlier. My best guess is it's me, which is unfortunate. I was wrestling with some demons when I lost liz and had been watching some weird porn, not that all porn isn't weird. I've never clicked with someone like I did Liz. I'm open to this being a time travel paradox, because the easiest explanation to explain her is that she is me. She's always felt like my other half that made me whole again. It's the reason I'm still devastated and crying four years later. I haven't seen her in so long that I've forgotten what she look like mostly. The subtle details that took my breathe away every time are gone and it's they've been replaced by generic features that lack the resolution to even capture her level of beauty acutely. I'm not exaggerating a bit when I say she's the most beautiful girl on the planet though. That was my best friend and it even felt like she loved me more than I had ever been loved. I felt so blessed and the universe was screaming it was meant to be. It dropped all we needed right in our lap and we were so close. I still think if I had just got her to say yes to peru, our present lives would be unrecognizable and our lives infinitely enriched. I know mine would at least. Im not sure if liz is alive anymore honestly. Hard as I search I've never nailed down anything that truly brought her back to life. But I had spent six months asking to the olive garden and trying my best to have an honest conversation about how much she meant to me. She would never open up and some demons were born from frustration and feelings of powerlessness from past traumas that manifested in my porn interests and I spent awhile wrestling with. I got new demons now, because I blamed sex for the death of my best friend for a long time. They're much more serious demons I don't think I'll ever get over again. I don't know if I can ever have sex again honestly. It'd take a special girl that trusted fully. It sounds gay, but its my brain and it's fucked up. That's why I've been screaming for help for four years. Why hasn't my best friend lifted a finger for me? I had never been on the same wavelength as anyone so the unexplained discord killed me and I needed to Liz to have that heart to heart with me so we could get back to our divine path and off to peru. When we first formed friends I was able to tell her anything and it felt like she could tell me anything. I never knew how she saw right through me, but I didn't care because I was comforted by it. I thought she'd speak up and let me know if she saw something that concerned her. That's what a friend would do, and looking back that has to be about the time I lost her. I assume she felt bad for spying on me, so she hesitated to say anything, but had real concerns about me watching hardcore teen anal. I can't blame her since it is weird. What sucks is I'd have gladly never watched porn again and given her all the dick she'd ever need if I was ever given the chance. I think liz always knew I'd never intentionally hurt her though, so I don't get what happened there. This was the original rift the started the invisible wall between us. It stemmed from miscommunication and mistakes made on both sides. I needed some commitment to open up to her, but she needed trust and was closing off. We couldn't comfortably talk about what truly concerned us and our cycle of death began, just when the most important romance on earth was supposed to be birthed. (And I now suspect it was in a very literal sense, but because of simple miscommunication a child was stolen from us that sealed out death, and the death of the universes most important romance. A lie that cost me everyone I love and left the world needing only death from me. I hold my father responsible for destroying all the gods had given me. I'm not sure if my brother stole my divine gift or if it was deb. Considering my father and brother tried to kill me in the most cowardly way possible, I'd imagine caleb stole my child. He has made many subtle jokes about it online when he thought I'd never know. Same with all the jokes he's made about raping children. Him and my dad are too big of pussies to admit it though, and I wonder if they really aren't pedophiles considering that cowardice. I desperately need to know and they desperately need me to stay depressed and broken, because they can't bear the thought of the truth seeing light. They're lies cost me everything in life, and they're alright with me paying the price for their fuckups. I'm their son/brother and they should be fighting for me in an effort to help family, but instead they're fighting against me getting healthy and want me dead. Literally} I've written almost every day for the last four years in an attempt to correct a clear mistake, but liz has reaffirmed there was no mistake over a 1000 times now, so I should just accept it at this point. I lost everything now and my only sin has been trying to heal myself and my relationship with everyone I love. It's only made the problem worse and pushed my family away further. I see now Liz omitted some important truths pertaining to my dad from the start, but so has he. I still feel there's truth to the fact that she could be herself and speak freely without worry in our beginning days. It was just that my dad had tainted things before our paths crossed. It was probably his abuse that birthed our divine purpose. Repair all he had broken in both of us. His abuse has grown out of control since then and he lies about the undeniable while he falsely imprisons his own son while intentionally smearing my reputation to anyone that'll listen. He has fully betrayed me and stole everything I cherished in life at this point. When clearly caught and seen in his true colors, yet offered the chance at forgiveness, he refuses to admit any wrong and give his own son a simple sorry for what even an impartial judge called heinous mistake. He's a lost human now and the best thing for him is to be removed from society because he'll only keep killing the people around him without ever admitting any fault. He's not my father anymore and since he's lost all humanity and began fully attacking the innocent, it's safe to say he's not even human anymore either. I don't really know much about their relationship outside of the fact that it existed and was serious all the way back in 2016. Whatever it was lends to the reason everything is broken now and for sure plays into my moms death. I shouldn't speculate beyond that.)
“In the twenty-first century, information is power,” Obama said in a 2011 speech on Middle East policy. “The truth cannot be hidden. . . . Such open discourse is important even if what is said does not square with our worldview.”
Wong left the company in 2014, after two and a half years. His successor was Ellen Pao, a former venture capitalist. She lasted eight months. Early in her tenure, Reddit announced a crackdown on involuntary pornography. If you found a compromising photo of yourself circulating on Reddit without your consent, you could report it and the company would remove it. In retrospect, this seems like a straightforward business decision, but some redditors treated it as the first in an inevitable parade of horrors
She resigned in July, 2015. “The Internet started as a bastion for free expression,” she wrote in the Washington Post. “But that balancing act is getting harder. The trolls are winning.”
despite the mounting aggression in some online forums. “And the reason is because I have a lot of faith in the American people.” (In response to Obama’s remarks, a commenter on The_Donald wrote, “fuck that low energy cuck!”)
Trump, or someone typing on his behalf, participated in Reddit’s signature interview format—an A.M.A., for “ask me anything.” In response to a question about the “protected class of media elites,” Trump wrote, “I have been very concerned about media bias and the total dishonesty of the press. I think new media is a great way to get out the truth.”
they have designed their platforms to be feedback machines, giving us not what we claim to want, nor what might be good for us, but what we actually pay attention to.
There are no good solutions to this problem, and so tech executives tend to discuss it as seldom as possible, and only in the airiest of platitudes. Twitter has rebuffed repeated calls to ban President Trump’s account, despite his many apparent violations of company policy.
--^{why cant I be steve instead of alvaraz. This guy gets me man}
Huffman, after leaving Condé Nast, spent a few months backpacking in Costa Rica, then founded a travel company called Hipmunk. In July, 2015, he returned to Reddit as C.E.O. In a post about his “top priority” in the job, he wrote, “The overwhelming majority of content on reddit comes from wonderful, creative, funny, smart, and silly communities. There is also a dark side, communities whose purpose is reprehensible, and we don’t have any obligation to support them. . . . Neither Alexis nor I created reddit to be a bastion of free speech.” This was shocking, and about half true. When free-speech absolutism was in vogue, Reddit’s co-founders were as susceptible to its appeal as anyone. In 2012, a Forbes reporter asked Ohanian how the Founding Fathers might have reacted to Reddit. “A bastion of free speech on the World Wide Web? I bet they would like it,” Ohanian responded. “I would love to imagine that ‘Common Sense’ would have been a self-post on Reddit, by Thomas Paine, or actually a redditor named T_Paine.”
Still, Ohanian and Huffman never took their own rhetoric too literally. The site’s rules were brief and vague, and their unwritten policy was even simpler. “We always banned people,” Huffman told me. “We just didn’t talk about it very much.
As C.E.O., Huffman continued the trend Pao had started, banning a few viciously racist subreddits such as Coontown. “There was pushback,” Huffman told me. “But I had the moral authority, as the founder, to take it in stride.” If Pao was like a forbearing parent, then Huffman’s style was closer to “I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it.”
I'm tired and going to bed. If we saw all this true in 2018, how is it that I got thrown to the wolves by all the people that knew me best? I can say with confidence that I've done no wrong. I've never abused any of you, nor would I ever. I still firmly believe liz was put here for me and I for her. ... So why has she refused to talk about it ever even once? That small rift between us has grown into a mountain now. It's still growing and it's become unstable. In a day or two it'll avalanche and kill every one of us. I kind of hope I am in a coma and our deaths will the be moment I snap out of this nightmare and wake up. Liz will be right there by my bedside and life will be normal again. I'll finally feel like I'm at home again and that I have family. I don't feel like anyone even loves me anymore, which is hard to explain since I've done no wrong. My exwife was the most honest person I met, beside my grandparent. She was a hard worker, and even if a little harsh at times, she always meant well and had a good heart. She's lying to my kids and telling them I went crazy while she steals my true love now. She literally kidnapped my kids a quarter of a year ago for no reason. My brother prays on my death and my dad does the same. My true love voluntarily died for no reason and spent YEARS betraying me in the most serious ways and never once apologized. Refused her best friend a simple goodbye or to acknowledge the most important relationship in my life ever meant anything to her. Not even enough to give a goodbye to. It makes no sense and these are good people. They are saying the worst things under the cloak of pseudo anonymity and nothing but lies in real life. They wont own their own actions or help me heal the situation one bit. The only end they'll accept in an ending where I commit suicide This is my family and I've done no wrong. It wont bother me a bit to leave this nightmare behind. My only hesitation is leaving my kids in the presence of these abusive assholes and likely pedophiles. I've fought for healing for four years and it's only made things worse. Im started for love and broken by 3yrs of the gas light. I'm giving up and I can't help it. I'm too tired and hopeless to rally for love anymore. Give me death please.
​
​
​

Upcoming Licenses Ultimate with Reasoning:
Most Likely Movies due to upcoming announcements surrounding as of recent news, everything involving the Friday the 13th game and it's licensing, and even though Pennywise's license wasn't available years ago, it was due to the 2nd movie's release at the time, and the recent Welcome to Derry show will be coming out soon, leaving the license available and open for discussion, especially with Bill Skarsgard more likely to voice with the inclusion of recent celebrity Nick Cage and Stephen King not having any involvement if I am correct when developing the show, maybe some given ideas, however ultimately not licensing, this is highly evident where the agreement of Nick Cage being brought in was at the same time of developing the Singularity due to months in advance and the Mori being a reference to the movie Face Off when applied to Nick Cage, plus at Summers Game fest, he did in fact confirm skins : Friday the 13th, and It.
Most Likely Video games due to collaborating Licenses, The Evil Within due to recent collaboration being worked on with an artist from the company, watch the stream for proof and Until Dawn due to the recent collaboration with Supermassive Games: The Evil Within and Until Dawn.
Most likely Paragraph's: Candyman due to a possibility of not Candyman being multiple people throughout century's which would make sense as a slasher code named "The Hive" to refer even to when Helen became one with the Hive and Cabrini green not being big enough for an entire map as a building unless they expanded across the Movies like the Map the Game from Saw, Candyman, F-n-a-f due to reasons that I am pretty sure everyone understands by now with no clear survivor and even though with some controversy and it may decrease some sales, behavior is in fact ultimately a business and just like how the costs for a Legendary skin can go for $15, F-N-A-F would in fact make many sales, and Slender-man, however- Slender- man is actually more unlikely due to not being in satisfaction surveys and unfortunate history in real life where someone was extremely injured, if you don't know, it's a case that is found on the internet however a warning for it being extremely disturbing and unsettling.
Surprise announcements: I state The Fly due to The Singularity's mannerism's and how in the Mori it could be changed from a needle to Fly vomit like in the movies and would work honestly better as a legendary than a whole chapter, would be cool though, The Fly Legendary for The Singularity, surprising chapters: Alien, I state The Thing due to them having good connections enough with Universal for more Ghost face cosmetics and previous Blighted Ghost face and upcoming cosmetics for the anniversary found in the most recent stream which would add evidence for The Thing as a collaboration with the Mount Ormond Resort being turned into another map as a realm from the movie, The Last of Us I say is due to recent history of it making high ratings and more intrigue however if not a full chapter, then I can definitely see a Bloater as a Legendary for The Clown due to spores making sense with the Clowns bottles even it it's not exact it can be similar to the Blight and William Birkin, with a possible new Mori as evidence of the naught bear upcoming Legendary set for the Trapper which will bring a new Mori for the Trapper which proves it is now possible, if Alien comes as a chapter, it's most likely due to the behavior team going for more Sy-fy as of recent history and also a high chance of a Legendary of Predator or a Female Predator for the Skull merchant, I state this due to it realistically making a lot of sales despite some feedback over Predator not being a full fledged chapter or killer. All Codenames that would make the most sense in order from what I have mentioned would be: The Slasher, The Deadlights, The Keeper, The Wendigo, The Hive, The Attraction/ The Animatronic, The Slender-man/The Legend, The BloateThe Infected, The Fly, and The Predator.
Bonus Original Killer made by recent observations: In the recent map of Toba Landing we see multiple alien Spiders which means that they have officially made Spider models into the game like previous rats and crows however to have specifically spiders be added of as of recently references a cutscene in Tome 9 of a Glyph/"Singularity appearing to the observer which then opens with multiple spiders and him ultimately running into a horrific humanoid spider which is extreme evidence to suggest that one of the next original killers will ultimately be that humanoid spider with mini spiders most likely apart of it's power due to recent design modeling, if true, I would most likely throw my hat in the ring and suggest that the codename would be: "The Arachnid".
Message: To everyone who plays this game, it's had it's ups and downs, if you're only here to hate then let me try to open your eyes, and if your here to listen, thank you, we all want this to succeed for the better, we all have our own reasons for playing however, whether your a survivor or slasher, or a fan, know that we can make this community awesome for both new and veteran, let's do this everyone, I want to see you-tubers, posts, dedicated to make this community better and fun again, I pray and hope you do as well, if you're still here, Thank you :)

A short selection to get people started on their Lokean journey or to answer questions for non-Lokeans. Please submit other resources to the subreddit so it can be included in this list
Queer Loki reading list
Mod post: It’s not upg or controversial to call Loki queer or lgbtqa here](https://www.reddit.com/lokean/comments/rhsih7/mod_post_its_not_upg_or_controversial_to_call/) mod post

• Loki’s gender fluidity and bisexuality in Norse mythology and in modern adaptations academia
  
• Loki: Thoughts on the Nature of the God, a Queer Reading academia
  
• Queer Themes In Old Norse Myth (MLitt Dissertation) academia
  
• The Marriage of Þorr: Violence and Transformation Queer Disrupt: Mystical Transformations - Gender in Mythology and the Occult, a academia
  
• Why my Gods are Queer blog post (sadly broken link if you’re the author it was a great post) https://web.archive.org/web/20201101080941/https://www.historicaloracle.ca/post/why-my-gods-are-queer
  
• An examination of gender in viking age Scandinavia blog post
  
• Kennings, Heiti, and Other Alternate Names for Loki - blog post
  
• Queer Ancestor Veneration rituals and Poems blog post
  
• Queer Deities in Northern Paganism blog post (sadly another broken link sorry.)
  
• What Loki thinks of LGBT blog post
  
• Queer Loki poem blog post
  
• Queer Asgard Folk blog post
  
• Vikings are Gay history podcast podcast
  
• Bury Your Gays: queer readings of Viking Age material culture academia
  
• Intersex Conditions in the Viking Age academia
  
• Gender Bending In Viking, Ancient Greek, And Egyptian mythology blog post
  
• Óðinn: A Queer tyr? A Study of Óðinn's Function in Iron Age Scandinavia. MA thesis academia
  

What is a Lokean and other FAQs or important articles

• Lokeans what we really look like
  
• Lokean Welcoming Committee FAQ
  
• What is a Lokean?
  
• Godspouse FAQ
  
• Reading List and resources
  
• Reading List 2
  
• Self-care and Wellbeing List
  
• So you want to worship the heathen gods and not be a racist?
  
• Recognizing fascism in Heathenry. Dog Whistles and subtle ideologies
  
• Fascist Pagan Watch on Galina and Raven and statement by a ex-follower of theirs
  
• Community Post: Warning signs of Spiritual Abuse and bullying
  

Loki worship tips and advice
Offerings, Altars, Crafts, Symbols, Herbs, Animals, Prayers

• Kennings, Heiti, and Other Alternate Names for Loki
  
• Lokean Welcoming Committee - Offering Recipes
  
• How to set up an Altar
  
• The Simple Beauty of Rock Art Altars
  
• Lokean Altar Gallery
  
• what kinds of food does Loki like? I heard he likes spicy things, but I'm not sure if that's just a UPG
  
• How does one blot?
  
• Lokean arts and crafts
  
• Loki Offerings Questions
  
• I have a question about devotional clothing and jewelry.
  
• Loki Poems and Prayers
  
• Small Devotional Acts to Loki
  
• Loki Plants for spells and worship
  
• La Vida Loka – El primer blog lokeano en español
  
• Symbols for Loki
  
• Animals associated with Loki
  

Sacred Dates

• July, Sirius, and Loki known as Lokabrenna (Lokis Torch) the star’s movements in July are celebrated as a time for Loki rituals.
  
• Loki’s Holiday — Dec. 13th
  
• Devotional Days of Yule- Dec 23rd – Loki and Sigyn
  
• Loki Sponge Cake Day - Sept 4th
  
• Question: Does Loki have a season he favors? Like is he associated with a season of any kind
  
• Loki Mischief Day April 1st
  
• Ranting Recon: What Are The Heathen Holidays?
  

Communication, Discernment, Divination

• Communication with Gods
  
• Developing the Godphone
  
• Talking to Loki: Communication and Discernment Reference Post
  
• Talking to Loki
  
• Thoughts and methods: Communicating with Loki
  
• When Godphones Ring – Discernment for Pagans
  
• Means of Divination
  
• Gods and Pendulum
  
• Fire Scrying Ritual
  
• Fire: A Guided Visualisation
  
• Druid Grove guided meditation
  
• Tasseography Symbol Meanings for Reading Coffee or Tea Leaves (and clouds)
  
• The magic wands of Viking seeresses?
  
• A Pocket Guide to Runes
  
• Taking Up The Runes: A Complete Guide To Using Runes In Spells, Rituals, Divination, And Magic
  
• Runes and magic
  
• Trolldom - Spells and Methods of the Norse Magic Tradition
  
• Spådom and divination in the Norse Trolldom tradition
  

Oaths

• Questions about Oaths and commitment
  
• Hi. I know you have talked a lot about oaths, but I wonder... What are really the dangers of breaking one?
  
• Sorry for my ignorance, but what are oaths? Are they some sort of promise? Could you do one unknowingly?
  
• What does it mean to be bonded with Loki?
  

Rituals

• Breaking Lokis Bonds ritual
  
• Question: Can you tell me what Lokean rituals there are and what they consist of please?
  
• Lokasenda Ritual
  
• Lokean Washing Charm
  
• UPG: Bowl holding ritual
  

Lokean Myths, History, Lore and Theory. From blogs to academic journals
Old Tales

• Getting started with Norse Mythology
  
• Translations of old sagas and eddas
  
• Icelandic Sagas
  
• The Eddas and Sagas on Sacred Texts.
  
• The Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus.
  
• Loka Táttur- Loki’s Heroic Tale from The Faroe Islands
  
• Thor and Jormungandr fight creates a lake in Holland. Origin of the Uddeler and Pale Lake
  
• Grumpy Lokean Elders Free book day. Contains academic journals and Old Tales
  

Blogs and Blogs with Citations

• Hel zine
  
• Loki Attestations in old myth
  
• Útgarða-Loki
  
• Kennings, Heiti, and Other Alternate Names for Loki
  
• Guys…We Need to Talk About “The Eddas”
  
• How do you reconcile Loki (as part of the Aesir)
  
• Sigyn: Lady of Oblation and Victory
  
• ‘This Lokeans view of Loki’
  
• Possible corroboration for Loki-worship back in the day
  
• Are there any symbols used specifically for Loki with historical proof?
  
• Hi! I was thinking on buying an Uppakra mask pendant (It's supposed to represent Loki) but some people belive it can be Odin too. Do you have any information about it?
  
• Evidence of Loki’s Worship?
  
• Loki in Fjölvinsmál: Lævateinn and Lýr
  
• When They come courting: Spirit marriage and related relationships: Spirit Marriage and Godspousery in Lore, History, and Contemporary Practice
  
• What did the Viking really look like? Red hair and make up
  
• Could you point me in the direction of any specific posts or other resources you know of (if any) that focus around being non-binary and having a connection with Loki?
  
• So I have herd and I'm not sure where, that Loki is considered a hearth deity in some fashion. Is there anywhere that can be found showing it as a credible source?
  
• Why do so many people hate Loki?
  
• Hello! Maybe a silly question, but would working with one deity e.g. Loki prevent you from working with another in the future e.g Frigg, especially if they didn't get on in the Eddas?
  
• These are people whose blogs are safe spaces within the Pagan and Heathen communities.
  

Academia

• Loki University
  
• The newest Loki papers on Academia.edu
  
• ”Loki, the Vätte, and the Ash Lad: A Study Combining Old Scandinavian and Late Material
  
• The Flying Noaidi of the North: Sámi Tradition Reflected in the Figure Loki Laufeyjarson in Old Norse Mythology page 59
  
• The Old Norse theonym Sígyn (*seikʷ-n̥-iéh₂- ‘she of the pouring’), Vedic Sanskrit °sécanī- ‘pouring’, the Celtic river-name and theonym Sēquana (present-day river Seine, France) and Proto-Indo-European *seikʷ- ‘pour’ [Loki and Fire, n.2]
  
• Lokrur, Lóðurr and Late Evidence
  
• A Little Bit of Lokrur: A Portion of an Old Icelandic Mythological Poem and a New English Translation
  
• The Old Norse dwarf-name Brokkr, Sanskrit Bhr̥gu- and Proto-Indo-European *(s)bʰr̥(h₂)g- 'crackle, roar' (Greek βαρυ-σφάραγος : Vedic giri-bhráj- ‘heavy-roaring’; ἀνεμο-σφάραγος : vā́ta-bhrajas- ‘with roaring of wind(s)’; σφαραγέομαι : sphūrjáya- : bhūrjáya- ‘crackle, sizzle’) Loki and Fire, n.1
  
• The Water Dragon and the Snake Witch. Two Vendel Period Picture Stones from Gotland, Sweden. Jormungandr
  
• Lokemasken - Var Loke en beskytter?
  

Podcasts and Videos

• Loki, a Fire Spirit?
  
  • The Magic of Runes
• Heathen History Podcast
  
• Gifts of the Wyrd:Loki
  
• Who Is Loki?
  
• How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love Þetta Reddast
  
• Pronunciation of Old Norse (Medieval / Reconstructed)
  
• Vikings are Gay history podcast
  

Community and general social resources

• Polytheism While Dealing With Mental Illness
  
• Spiritual Abuse Red-Flags
  
• Mental Health support and Suicide Prevention
  
• Support for those with Eating Disorders
  
• How to support someone with a mental health problem
  
• Planning for a crisis
  
• BLM, NAACP and ACLU protesters rights advice
  
• Tools for helping Racial Equality
  
• Mutual Aid groups for Covid Support
  
• Stop Asian Hate Resources
  
• Confronting Racism in Heathenry
  
• Hate on Display™ Hate Symbols Database
  
• Heathens Against Hate
  
• LGBTQA+ glossary of terms
  
• You Can Stop Appropriation of Indigenous Cultures
  
• Decolonial Futures Workshop - Why I Can’t Hold Space for You Anymore
  
• Bringing Race to the Table: Exploring Racism in the Pagan Community - by Crystal Blanton
  
• Shades of Ritual: Minority Voices in Practice by Crystal Blanton
  
• Jailbreaking the Goddess: A Radical Revisioning of Feminist Spirituality by Lasara Firefox Allen
  
• Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community by Pegi Eyers
  
• The Way of Fire and Ice: The Living Tradition of Norse Paganism - Ryan Smith
  
• Open Discussion - Balancing chronic health management, neurodiversity, and being a Lokean
  

Hi there, MechWarriors.
It's been a heck of a week, huh?
Thank you for your enthusiasm, your support for the game, and most of all your passion for the community. I know it's been a rocky last seven days, with a lot of things up in the air, a lot of rules flying around, a lot of new moderators learning the ropes, a lot of excitement, a lot of energy, and just a pinch of drama for spice.
But we're going to cut down on that last little bit -- the drama -- by shuttering this subReddit later this weekend. The official mission statement of Catalyst's little Community Building team, which I'm proud to be a member of, is to build safe and respectful communities for fans of our games. A week ago, in response to a fanzine Pride anthology, it was shown, loud and clear, that Reddit didn't have a safe and respectful community for BattleTech. Rem gave me the green light and I took quick action to create one.
Since then, changes have happened at battletech that have made it a safe and respectful community, thanks to ddevil63 and a new team of moderators being brought in. Catalyst Game Labs is assisting ddevil63 with moderation guidelines that we all hope will ensure it stays a safe and respectful community (moderation guidelines that we'll be using where ever we can, to create inclusive communities across social media). What's more, a few of us from the Community Building team will stick around as mods over on battletech to help out, to keep an eye on things, to answer questions (or to toss them up the ladder), and to provide battletech with the occasional bit of particularly juicy news straight from Catalyst. We don't want to split the BattleTech community into pieces on Reddit, we want to bring the BattleTech community together again and help it out.
In the last week, as a community, we have made our game and our hobby better. You have done that. Thank you. On a professional note, as a freelancer and volunteer on the Community Builder team, I'm really glad y'all didn't leave me standing in this subReddit alone and looking like a dork, because I never would have heard the end of it. XD But on a more personal note, as a contributor to the Pride anthology in question and an out, proud, bisexual man, thank you. Sincerely. You took a principled stand last week, you made headlines all over the internet with your outrage, and then you filled this place with welcoming messages to one another and post after post of paint jobs you'd been itching to show off for years (to remind us all why we did it, and how much we have to celebrate). Before long, it was business as usual, and just fun BattleTech conversations.
BattleTech is for Everybody. You all said that this week. We, as CGL Community Builders and Reddit mods, just wrote it down.
Have fun (and follow the rules!) over the next few days. Take a day or two to save any badass images you really want to save, reach out to one another for painting tips, and that sort of thing. Sunday night I'll shut 'er down.
And hopefully, on Monday, I'll see you all at battletech to get right back to talking about robots, intrigue, Shrapnel stories, novels, laser beams, hex maps, explosions, unlucky dice, and cool paint jobs.
Look for a big, stickied, moderator post over there in coming days, as we go over the details of the new rules that we'll be using over there to try and keep everything running smoothly.
Thanks again, and have a good weekend, everybody, --Russell Zimmerman

Link to part 2
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/13qcl3m/the_big_rock_candy_mountain_book_2_finding/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Well, this is going to be a little different.
First thing I want to say is that Kev will be back. I’m not the type to sugar coat things, he’s in a pretty sorry state, but he’s going to pull through. He’s a tough bastard.
In case you haven’t clued in yet, it’s Mike, I might not be as much of a wordsmith as Kev but I think I can keep your interest.
She was about five foot four, pale greasy skin and pitch colored hair that was just about to cross the double line from shiny into gross. Early thirties I’d guess, but with the strange shit Kev and I have gotten ourselves into she could be a million, or put together yesterday for all I know.
She was a “ Shame Monger” which was as esoteric of a job title as it sounds, and the first context me and my little buddy had on our current assignment.
The place we’re in is an old, decrepit arcade, I’m surrounded by shadowy figures sticking to the dark recesses like insects.
Kev is somewhere deep within the place sticking his neck out with God knows what ( I mean, I do as well, but I’ll let Kevin relay shit when he’s up to it.), and I’m making small talk.
“You human? “ I say, she’s not offended but raises an eyebrow.
“Are you? “ She has an edge to her, human or not, she’s seen some shit.
I laugh, running a hand over the branded lines mimicking clown patterns Art left me with after that stay in his gulag.
“Sometimes I forget about the braille.
Yeah, %100 sadly. “ I lean on the counter as I speak.
“Me too, you haven’t been working with the watchers long, have you? “ She sounds concerned, “ I’d suggest finding a new job. They have a bit of a reputation. “
“Long enough. “ I’m wary now, information is a resource I’m not willing to part with easily.
I don’t think she’s wrong, mind you, every day I spend with these wizards by another name, I like them less and less. Being sent with Kev, Jr, and the voices in my head, wandering across the country to find something called “The Fleshsmith”, is the best case scenario in my opinion. Gives me some breathing room.
“How do does one deal in shame? “ I say after a long silence. The glitched beeping of the machines becoming grating.
“Not as spooky as you’d think.
You play airsoft? I’m Tori by the way. “ Tori says, lighting up a small black cigar.
“Never got the bug, but I’ve heard of it, and I’m Mike. “ I reply.
“Well Mike, I play, and it’s a great hobby. Lots of physical activity, lots of equipment to learn about, it’s got something for everyone. For the most part, it’s an exciting activity .
But, think of the factory that makes the plastic ammunition. It’s integral, but it’s cheap, easy to make, monotonous, and far removed from any of the interesting facets of the hobby.
That’s me. I brush up against all kinds of folks, but besides the little wrinkle your friend is dealing with, all of the real spooky shit is well past arm’s length. “ she coughs, the thick, cherry scented smoke hangs in rings, “ It’s a living. “
“Honestly, I couldn’t be happier.
I hear ‘ Shame Monger’ and I was thinking torture, and, I don’t know, ghosts maybe? “ I shrug, motioning for one of the cigarellos.
She gives me one, it tastes of rose and a rich, almost syrup like tobacco.
“Sorry to disappoint. No, extraction is pretty painless, uses a kind of blotter paper. And to the best of my knowledge, ghosts aren’t a thing.
As I said, things are safe and boring. “ Tori says, taking a seat on a black waist high stool.
I let her statement hang for a moment.
“So what’s with the big guy trying to blend in, waiting for me to leave the counter? And why did he come with 2 friends and a running engine? “ I say, low but casual.
I can tell she’s annoyed at my insight.
“That’s nothing horror adjacent. Just a good old fashioned shake down, cost of doing business.
He doesn’t know exactly what goes on here, but him and his associates know it’s profitable enough they can squeeze ten grand out of me a month. “ Tori shrugs, putting out her cigar.
“You can’t give someone a discount to rattle their cage? “ I ask, curious.
“Listen to you. “ Tori laughs, “If your butcher asked you to get shot for them, would you jump at the chance? “
I make eye contact, I can’t help but smirk.
“I’ve gotten shot for less. “ My comment gets a sideways look.
“Mike, I’m seeing you, and I’ve got to say, kinda seems like you’re full of shit. “ Her reply is harsh, but I can’t blame her. I’m dressed like salesman, facial scars or no.
I don’t reply. I walk to the grimy, dim, wet floored men’s room.
Someone who chooses my line of work doesn’t get into it because they have great impulse control. And unfortunately, I’m not unique .
Since I’ve got here, I’ve felt scared, small, ineffective. I know you guys have seen Kevin’s point of view on things, and it makes me seem like some kind of wrecking ball, but that is 50 per cent showmanship, 30 per cent planning and 20 per cent not caring if I lose a piece or two.
But this situation, some low rent semi-connected asshole who thinks he’s Don Corleone? It calls to me.
The clothing I wear is designed to be reversable, and with a few adjustments, I’m no longer wearing a cheap looking used car salesman’s suit, but an antique tuxedo with a 1940s design.
The mirror is grimy as hell, I try to clear a spot, but the sad, octogenarian Esque flow from the tap isn’t up to the task.
But it’s clear enough to reflect him, standing behind me. I jump, and my heart starts to pound.
“Not the time for this. “ I say, pacing.
I try to look away, but there he is, in the corner of my vision, each time. I’d close my eyes, but that’s what he wants, he gets closer when I can’t see.
For a half second my vision is taken up by a crystal clear image of his face. That angular, pale visage inhuman by any standard, but haunting in it’s echoes of a past rooted in mortality.
I stumble backward, slamming into the wall. Panting, my eyes locked on his almost-there form.
He’s tall, wicked, and everything about him exudes power. He’s taken to looking like me more and more lately. But a twisted, malignant reflection, what I could be if I let this pulp novel of a corner of reality have it’s way with me.
“Fuck off Demi! “ I say, getting to my feet, “ I’ve got shit to do. “
Still don’t know if he is just another hallucination, or who he says he is, but Demi and myself are on pretty poor terms as of late.
I hear the bodyless old ghoul whispering what I assume are dark threats as I open a small tube of what I like to refer to as ‘Mike’s Mix’.
A combination of preparation H, topical anesthetic, and just a hint of clown white. Laugh if you want, but it stops a hell of a lot of incidental injuries in my line of work.
Demi starts to fade and I see what I can of myself in the dull mirror.
I’m a little too old for the phrase, but I’m sure a lot of you folks out there would refer to the cliché spook I’ve cultivated as “Cringe”.
I don’t disagree.
But, it’s the game I have to play right now. I’m not some invincible cursed killer, but you know what, I can certainly play one on T.V.
(Did I just try to relate to kids, then make a joke from a 40 year old commercial? This is why Kev does the writing.)
I walk out of the bathroom, reeking of fear sweat and tainted water. The foot and a half lucite rod is tucked up my sleeve, I tap the end of it against the wall as I walk.
The guy is six feet, easily, he’s fifty or so, but making up for it with trips to the gym and a few friendly doctors if I don’t miss my guess.
He doesn’t take the bait, just keeps talking to Tori, once he looks to me, I can tell he is asking her who I am, she’s smart, she shrugs after looking over.
I had an entire plan where I would embarrass the man, get him to send some guys, and make things so costly he just gave up on Tori. It’s a classic, but if it ain’t broke and all that.
But plans, like the people that make them, tend to fail at the worst times.
Once I get within striking distance, the guy turns, his speed isn’t supernatural, but a lot more than I was expecting. His punch lands well enough that I don’t remember starting to fall.
The second finishes the job before I can get my bearings.
The darkness creeps in and in it’s peace I realize how stupid it was to go in this half cocked. I was jonesing for a fight I could win so badly, I went in without a plan B.
I need someone to reign me in, back home it was Eli, here, it’s Kev. As the last bits of conscious thought leave me, I feel bad about leaving him alone.
It's the stifling heat that wakes me up, before my vision clears I smell hot, cheap leather, old vomit and years worth of attempts to mask the smell.
I’m soaked in sweat, the air is like a sauna. I’m sitting in the back of a car, I wouldn’t call it a limo, but it’s clearly built for comfort, in optimal circumstances. There’s a tinted glass partition separating me from the front seat, it’s cracked slightly, I try to tell if anyone is there, but have no luck.
“Can’t say this is a new experience. “ I say, to whoever may be listening.
I try kicking out the windows and the partition, they don’t budge a millimeter.
“If you are up for talking things over, I’m game. “ I try to pry the overhead light loose, and that’s when I notice it.
It's a note, in a thick plastic sleeve, wrapped around my forearm and stuck with some kind of adhesive.
The pain is horrible, made all the worse by the constant pouring of sweat literally putting salt into the wound.
Said wound isn’t deep, a few layers of skin down, enough to weep blood, but far away from pouring. But if this kills me, it won’t be exsanguination. Depending on how long, whoever, plans on keeping me in here, I worry about infection, necrosis, pretty much all the members of the Untreated Wound crew.
I take off the suit jacket, and tear it into strips to use as makeshift bandages, I have a feeling I’ll be needing plenty by the time this is over.
My left arm is slow and clumsy as I open the envelope. I hope it’s just shock, or swelling, not nerve damage.
It reads:
Hey, Dracula, or whatever the hell you are.
Fuck yourself, you think we don’t have ways of taking care of your kind?
Have Fun
Niko Ferang
“Well, can’t say the guy isn’t succinct. “ I say, laughing.
If I just went up to the guy with a threat and a pipe, I’d have either won or lost, and that’d be the end of it. But my genius self succeeded in convincing him I was scary enough to toss me… here.
It dawns on me that there is something obvious I haven’t tried.
As I pull the latch on the passenger side door, something inside me tells me to stop.
Visually, I can’t really describe what it looked like opening the door. The brief period before I saw what was beyond was the visual equivalent of trying to catch a greased pig.
I was left with a view, an identical car interior. The other car parked impossibly close, Their doors seeming to blend with their exteriors.
I enter, as a great man once said “Buy the ticket, take the ride. “, and my dumb ass need for assurance, bought me one hell of a ride.
Once I get in, the driver’s side door closes, and I find myself in the same sweltering heat, in the same backseat.
The damp leather sticks to my arms, I start to calculate how much water I’m losing by the minute, and the math scares the hell out of me.
I try going through the door a few more times, but the more I do, the more I realize, it’s the same car.
The fear becomes as oppressive as the wet heat, I’ve researched a hell of a lot of things from the watchers library, but infinite Oldsmobiles didn’t come up.
I’ve been disarmed, but left with my phone, and wallet. I’m kind of impressed they managed to find 99 per cent of the equipment I can hide in a suit, but hey, %1 is better than nothing.
The phone makes a useless bludgeon, I quickly retire the idea, and figure, even neutered as it is ( I find I can get online, but little else.), it’s better doing phone things than broken.
The good news is frighteningly slim.
I’ve got a few feet of polymar tarp, folded in the wallet, useful for a lot of things, but most important in my situation will be trying to get some kind of drinking water.
An emergency credit card knife, barely useful little thing, won’t do me any good in a fight, but might be a useful tool.
Three strike anywhere matches, a small hook and length of fishing line.
My lips are cracked and bleeding, it can’t have been more than an hour or two, but I’m starting to feel heat exhaustion set in.
I think I’ve found something when the knife sinks into the thin leather of the overstuffed backseat, but the shoddy blade encounters some kind of solid matter, and as I pull the knife out, the leather seals itself.
I stay still, trying to conserve energy, trying to formulate some plan.
He sits beside me now, his looming hunched frame bent in the confines of the car. His face is a blur, but I know beneath the shadows he's smirking.
“I’m way too tired for you Demi. “ I say, wiping what feels like a liter of sweat from my forehead.
His repeating, echoing laughter proves me wrong, I shiver, despite the brutal heat.
It can’t have been more than a few degrees, bit It feels like getting splashed with ice water.
The light in the car begins to dim, and with it, the soul crushing temperature of the luxury automobile drops.
I scramble to set up the tarp, I was banking on this, without some kind of temperature drop, the plastic sheet is useless.
Within an hour droplets have began to create a small stream, collecting at the cone shaped tip of the suspended tarp. Lacking anything to put it into, I catch the liquid in my mouth.
It's foul, and likely contaminated, but it’s my only option. If I’m stuck in here a week I can get by without food, brutalized by heat, I won’t make it 2 days without water.
I feel exhausted, wondering exactly how long I’ve been stuck here I check the time on my phone.
It’s almost random progression does nothing to comfort the surreal sense of dread that is enveloping me.
I don’t know when I passed out, but I wake up laying across the reeking leather, being dragged backward.
I feel fingers, dozens of them, clawing, scraping, trying to gain purchase. A crevice begins to open in the deep black leather, and I begin to be dragged into it.
I throw myself forward, landing painfully on the sticky, grime ridden floor of the car.
Fear, and the awkward ergonomics of my situation make turning around a slow, nerve wracking chore. Once I manage to, I regret the decision.
Hands, some small, some large, some seemingly cobbled together from mismatched scraps, slowly pull themselves from the crevice between the seat and back of the back seat.
They prod and crawl like insects, none ever giving way to arm, just a lumpen flow of calloused, wrist like structure, giving each an segmented, centipede like appearance.
I sit up, watching the macabre display, trying to make some kind of sense of it.
I actually scream when there’s a sharp, loud, mechanical ringing beside my head. The type of analogue noise that went out of style long before land lines did.
It doesn’t take me long to find the handle and pull out an ancient car phone, it’s a two part wood paneled brick of a thing, I pick up the receiver, “Hello” I say, a question as much as a greeting.
The voice is male, probably early twenties.
“Don’t worry about them. They can be an issue if you don’t sleep on the floor, but I’ve never seen one drag itself more than half way across the seat. “ He’s calm, but has a survivors hushed impatience.
“Who are you? “ I ask.
“I won’t lie to you man.
I’ve been in here a while, but now that there is someone else, I think I can get out. Call me Pol. “ I catch the hopeful tone in his voice.
“How? “ I say simply, still trying in vain to put more space between me and the hands.
“Not to sound cold, but if I tell you, there is a chance you just take the information and leave me here.
The first step is us meeting, you’ll know the plan by the time that happens.
I don’t lie. “ If nothing else I can say Pol seems smart.
“Fair enough, what can I do? “ I Trail off at the end of my sentence, one of the hands is pointing at me.
“You need to understand a few things about this place.
First, don’t travel at night. Nothing you are going to find is going to be any better than the crawlers.
Second, remember the numbers, 1, 5 and 9. I’m assuming you have a watch, or a cellular phone? If the time ends in one of those, you’re likely to find a new space.
Last, what’s outside of the car, on the driver’s side, pretend it doesn’t exist. “ The instructions are cryptic, but I’m in no place to turn down good advice.
“How do I know I can trust you? “ I ask, knowing the answer.
“Don’t see how I could be anything other than what I say.
Wouldn’t it be pretty obvious if I was trying to lead you astray? “ Pol’s response is reasonable, but a lifetime of being blindsided makes me wary.
“I guess so. What should I be doing now? “ I say, flipping off the hand like thing that continues to point at me.
“Get some sleep. Time, day and night cycles, they mean nothing here, and passing out in a hundred and fifty degree weather is a shitty way to go.
I won’t be able to get through during the day, so listen carefully.
If you time your travel right, you are going to be looking for two main things. The first is going to be a pillow mint, eventually you are going to starve either way, the human body needs more than just sugar, but you should be able to find enough to keep you going till malnutrition kicks in. The second is a soda can, it’s a sip, and it’s turned, but it’s better than trying to lick the droplets from the windows. “ I listen to Pol, hopefully memorizing his instructions.
Daylight brings with it reek and heat, I watch the hands scuttle back to within the recesses of the seats, shuddering a bit as I see wave like, movements in the cushions.
“God damn it. “ I say looking at the display on my knock off phone. About %50, for all I know I’ll be out in 15 minutes, but I’m not banking on it.
I watch the numbers flash by like a stock ticker, waiting to see if Pol is trying to screw me over or not.
I see 1:39 and crack open the passenger side door.
The same sweltering heat, the same basic backseat, but I know, at a glance, things are not quite identical. Part repetition from the day before, part a decade and a half playing private eye, but I can tell Pol was telling the truth.
Lipstick, smeared on the passenger window, an old handprint. It seems like something bad happened here.
The leather of one of the headrests is torn, I purposely avoid looking at the certainly not stuffing inside.
It’s like this place wants to tell a story, I can’t help but try and hear it.
I don’t find any soda, but I do find a single, red and white pillow mint, wrapper mostly in tact, sitting in a sticky patch on the floor.
I try my luck a few more times, using the cell phone as a kind of metronome, and while I do get a lot of repetition, every so often, there is a little change, or quirk.
I’ve collected two pocketfulls of mints, and found myself desperately hoping to stumble upon anything to drink. Another night of distilled sweat, dust, and God knows what doesn’t seem appealing.
I must have been too slow opening the door, I’d done it over two hundred times at this point, and the grey haze of this new variation set off every danger instinct in me.
It felt like I was being watched from every angle, despite the gloom the heat was worse, and seemed to bake a fungal reek into the air itself.
The door handle on the passenger side is mangled, the steel colored plastic twisted into a useless lump.
The leather seems slightly rotten, weather stripping peels, light fixtures are cracked and loose, it feels very, old.
I watch the phone, my eyes instinctively darting around, there are noises from the front seat and I doubt they have my best interests in mind.
I’m trying the mangled door handle but something is broken.
That being, said, with a car this old, the fish hook, with enough persistence could work,
I Peel back some of the stripping around the window, te hook begins it’s slow trek down into the mechanics of the door.
I scratch my wounded arm, it hurts, but that isn’t what concerns me. I feel a small, irregular lump.
I peel back my makeshift bandages, and what I see attempts me make to vomit stomach contents that weren’t there.
Small, brown grey mushrooms, a half dozen, about the size of a grain of rice. I feel a tingling in the wound, and panic sets in.
Opening a door like this requires a steady hand, but between the noises in the front seat, and the literally budding body horror on my arm, my nerves are shot.
I hear the partition begin to lower, and that rotten, fungal reek becomes nearly a physical force. My eyes water, my nose runs, and I hear a noise, like flowing sand.
I feel the hook dig under the proper part of the lock and pull up as I feel something wet soak through my shoe.
The door opens violently, not that I’m upset, I toss myself forward like I’m going for a touchdown, my forehead slams off of the armrest in the newest backseat I find myself in.
Before the passenger side closes I catch a glimpse of the mess that spilled from behind the partition. Rot and flesh, an aborted rotten attempt at life enraged at the universe that spawned it.
I actually feel relief at the blinding sunlight, and shining leather, and find myself relating to the monsterous mass I left behind.
I look at my arm, realizing I didn’t leave all of it behind.
“Oh, fuck me. “ I say, fumbling the credit card knife together.
The mushrooms had doubled in size, the cheap tin knife makes a terrible scalpel, I scream as I err on the side of caution, flaying a half inch around each.
I’m bleeding heavily, half of the makeshift bandages barely keeping the flow at bay.
My vision swims, I feel sick, and I fight the urge to break down into a mentally and physically broken heap.
That’s where I’ll leave everyone. Night is falling, and without a little more help from Pol, I don’t know how much longer I’m going to last.
If this is the last time you hear from me, well I’m sure Kev will have you guys covered for the rest of what I hope is Art’s downfall.
If it isn’t, I’ve got a favor to ask, did you guys notice anything I didn’t? Is there anything that is more obvious from outside this displaced cluster fuck?

NOTE: English is not my first language; please be patient and merciful with me. And this is my first time posting. So if it's long- I am sorry. You can send me to the shadow realm after reading this-.
This is a story of how I got kicked out of a dnd campaign that I am still unsure how to feel about since it is still fresh (about a few months ago), so I am writing it down to clear my head and tell you the story while I still have it in mind. And I am still confused if I could have avoided ending up this way or if it was me being an asshat that had it coming. But a friend tried to make me think otherwise and encouraged me to write this post. I still have mixed feelings on the subject, and I need more than just people in my circle to gain more insight if I was the only problem since there were small experiences that only confused me more.
Cast: OP: Me the problem player Bard/DM: The one who invited me and made the final decision. Cleric/GM: The second DM who ran our combat sessions more often than DM. Rogue: The Gm's girlfriend. Warlock: a friend of Rogue, GM, DM, and another party member and the only one I managed to get along with more than the rest. The rest of the party were a Druid, A massive Leonian Artificer, and a Milf tempest cleric, which were super fun to play with.
How it began:
DM and I met through a mutual friend through Discord, and we hit it off right from the start (At least, I think we did). We had a lot in common and talked a lot when quarantine was losing its grip around the world; eventually, one day, we started talking about dnd and how he was running a campaign where he DMED for the first time.
He talked about it, and I tried to give him the best ideas I could come up with, so it was a load off his back, at least. Eventually, I told him about another campaign I was in that ended horribly. Short story short, it was a toxic mess of childish degrees and just humiliation.
I was invited into the campaign by DM and asked what the party was playing, and eventually, with the DM, I made my first Barbarian which I still love. I made him a Feral Tiefling even though I do not like them because of hilarity. I made it so that he doesn't come from the world but from the nine hells. I was new to this group of people, so why not make the character alien to the world?
After a time when the Campaign was being prepared, the DM told me how he would be a player and a dm. After those words, my head went into the enormous room in my mind palace only to find crabs snipping, mice screaming, and a dragon snarling because of how much I have listened to their stories about DMPCS going super wrong.
After Den of the Drake lessons, the red flags started firing like an M1911 on rapid fire. But it increased a little more when he told me the GM would mostly run the combat sessions and do the same thing. I was afraid since I had never met the GM before, but the DM told me he was an okay guy, and they both had a lot in common, so I decided to give it a chance. So one session, it was Dm, and the next was GM.
I was fearful, thinking it would just be two DMNPCS who would not suffer the treatment as the players would during the entire campaign, but it did not go that way. Well, sort of. There was a time when I was being attacked a lot. I don't remember if it was goblins or some other creature, but I do remember me saying something as a joke:
OP: "What me again?! Hit the Bard! I wanna heaaaalllll!" GM: "You know I would! But he made the world, so he has the protagonist status, and you are the tank, so you'll be fine!"
When I tell you, I felt the flags rising. I mean "rising up"
I was very uncomfortable because it reminded me of when I could not damage someone else's character in an rp. (They were an admin, so they abused their privileges by ganging up against my character. ) But I placed that nightmare aside and only told the DM how it made me very uncomfortable with that small comment, and he acknowledged it.
I initially thought Dm was insecure about running it alone, so he asked for help, but the more I think about it… maybe it was that he was insecure about running it on his own. I was a bit worried, but I never voiced my point of view and gave it a chance. GM had more experience than the DM, and he was a pretty chill guy.
But there was something that bothered me.
After we started, I always had this tension within the group, it was mostly because we're strangers and I am getting to know them, but what's even weirder is that it simply just stuck; every time we were in a session, there was this tension in the air that it was sometimes hard to even breath, it wasn't anxiety. Still, it felt like judgment more than anything. I worked around it by thinking it was me being insecure.
There was a point where the problems began to surface. I did receive some warnings throughout the campaign as I am very honest with myself and about other subjects that I enjoy, especially if it's something I have liked for a long time and some greedy company fucking it up with either some woke bs or politics. I also struggled to express myself correctly when I was little, so I am extremely direct and speak things as they are without any filter. Which is an issue I am still working on.
After small ups and downs and attempts to be friendly with them, I only settled more comfortably with "Maybe knowing them as the people I play dnd with is better than just trying to be friends."
October was a horrible month for everyone at the party. When this campaign started, I had a pretty bad back injury for almost a year, and it began to tank my mental health pretty severely. I couldn't even walk normally without feeling pain, sitting down was an issue too. Before that month, I helped someone by carrying them because they were about to fall and break their skull open, but that fucked my back even worse despite working on it for a year, then something relating to my DID that caused me to have a pretty dire existential crisis, even to the point of almost attempting suicide and my cousin getting shot and killed. And then… The DM's girlfriend died, and the Rogue and GM's friend did so along with his fiance or wife (I do not remember; I am very sorry) and their kid in a car accident. It was a horrible month for everyone, and while the others took time to mourn, I did not stop and take a break for myself. I spiraled into a long frenzy of overworking, trying to keep my mind busy with work instead of letting it settle down. Still, the emotional turmoil got so bad that I had sleepless nights that eventually got me fired in December. I almost ended up in a mental hospital because of how concerned my GF, friends, and mother were. A broken body and a wrong sleeping schedule can do that to you.
But that's not what you are here for now. You are here to know the whys and hows and a big reason I got kicked out. So a little about me:
I tend to be considered energetic, blunt, direct, brutally honest and confident, kind, and caring, but a very self-destructive asshole. I also have a bit of an issue with D.I.D (Dissociative identity disorder), which at times has caused me a lot of suffering because I have memory gaps of things that I did or said.
I love breathing life into new characters, and I get excited to play them, which resulted in a minor problem and my first strike here as a problem player.
The DM is a fair man, and he is straight with me when something has to be said. He told me that I was taking the spotlight; I remember this being a complete fault of mine because there were moments of this silence that made it feel awkward to me, so I tried to place something so everyone could join in. I am an ambivert, so I didn't think of it that way. Plus, I liked playing my character a lot and interacting with Dm's world; I was so excited that I took the spotlight without me knowing. There was also the part where I talked about certain subjects that made other players uncomfortable, which was my fault 100%.
However, this second one is still the most unfair out of all of them. The first half is something that happened with star wars. I was livid because of Disney's stupidity in trying to ruin a character. I did say something very offensive when I saw red, pissing off the GM, and I can take responsibility for that… It was mine, 100%. In the second half, after a back and forth, I am still not even sure how the fuck this even happened or how I was in the wrong, so let's talk about Rogue.
She is the GM's girlfriend, and how do I say this? She is pretty tricky. There was one time I asked who was joining the campaign, and since nobody other than maybe Warlock, druid, DM, or GM would answer so, I asked the GM if she was joining that session; keep in mind I do not know rouge at all, and how she is or acts during this period, I only knew her as the rouge of the dnd party.
I shit you not. She instantly replies with the most aggressive and sassiest message that goes:
"If you're going to ask if I am coming to this session, do not ask my bf or DM about it. You ask me directly, and no, maybe I won't be coming to this session."
Uh yeah, I remember this situation, and honestly, I still feel like I was being mistreated and disrespected for such a stupid reason as to ask for someone who never even spoke that often. They only just came into the vc, and who comes, comes. And after that, she refused to even come to the session over that, and because of other personal stuff, she had to attend. I asked the DM to see what I should do. And he explained that Rouge was kind but very aggressive when she felt wronged. I still do not know how I even made her fly off just by questioning whether she was coming. We never talked, so I only asked the people I could feel more comfortable with to talk to so they could check on her. I was understandably more pissed off but gave it a bit of patience. Dm advised me to apologize to her, even if I did not want to. I still tried, but I wouldn't be treated that way again. I can understand if there was a reason. But I asked a question, and I got such a backlash. Yeah, fuck no; how was I supposed to apologize for something as basic as asking if someone was attending?
I wrote an apology despite clearly showing that I was still baffled about the unprovoked outburst. I told her that it was okay if she had a bad day. However, I told her I wouldn't take unprovoked hate, pettiness, or just a grudge from anyone; I came to have fun and not have someone lash out at me cause they had a bad day or just because I asked for their well-being. It happened in my last one, and Druid was with me, so I wouldn't let it happen to me again. She said it was fine, that she was sorry for being rude, and that she didn't mean it. And she was dealing with a lot and wasn't in a good headspace. I understood, and I thought that was the end of it.
But ever since that outburst, I was afraid to talk to DM's friends, ESPECIALLY GM. I came from dealing with a toxic server that was out to get me, so feeling that around the dnd table was a landmine just for speaking was a fucking nightmare.
What's worse? Oh yeah, remember how she said she was sorry for the rudeness? DM, came to me and told me why she didn't come. I told her in my apology that I took dm's advice to apologize to her, but stated that I DO NOT KNOW HER AND HOW SHE ACTS AND DID NOT KNOW WHAT TO APOLOGIZE FOR. Dm said to me that she found my apology not to be genuine. That's true, but a context behind it. This was one of the reasons why she didn't want to come to the sessions for a while. Which now that I am out of the campaign? This was the most enormous fucking unfair strike. To the point, I wanted to avoid going to the sessions, but low and behold, I still arrived first than anyone. Like a moron…
I also remember being a vc where I remember DM and GM just sitting me down.
And Dm said one of the first things I began to lose respect for him after the Rogue situation… He told me after we talked it out to end the bullshit.
"I'll give you a bit so you absorb what we just said, and then we will start the session."
I never felt so much fuckin disrespect and pure bullshit in shaming me for something I do not fault for. Then get treated like a fucking child over it.
Before you ask, "Did she do anything else that made you feel even more uncomfortable and more unsettled by her?" The answer may surprise you: YES, MULTIPLE LITTLE INCIDENTS.
Little things pushed me further away from interacting with her or her character.
So apparently, GM and Rogue have been rping with their characters when Rogue wasn't there. (GM made a separate character to help me while the other was with Rogue) which they had a little adventure together. Which is fine, but when she comes back, her character is wanted around the city, and the GM's DMPC is a noble from a house that wants him dead. That was fine. But what's worse is when we plan out what to do next, this happened:
OP: in character "I know the skills of Warlock and the rest, but I do not know precisely what you can do." Rogue: "Why are you asking? You're not my type; I have been doing this since I was x amount of age. I am a rogue, so deal with it."
I do not know what to tell you. I was amazed and still believed she did not let that bullshit go. I remember cringing at this; that killed my mood.
There were also these times when she just left, and the GM and sometimes DM just called the session in a few minutes. Not to mention the one time she had a screaming match in vc with someone on the other side of her mic that I just wanted to leave the session that day. And then the red flag.
Hearing the GM stop the combat for a bit, only to see her muted and him going
"What? What is it!? I am sorry!" in the most degrading way possible.
I have helped friends out of relationships that had those exact words. I felt terrible and uncomfortable for him, and the more these little things happened, the more I just wanted to avoid Rogue.
And I remember when we were in a VC, and Rogue told me to be careful about Warlock cause they might place some bad rumors about her. But what's weird.. It is that she wasn't alone. GM and Milf Cleric were there, which to me, smells like she needed people to confirm an alibi. But against her friend? Yeah, her words did not sit right with me. I lost credibility for her to a maximum.
But against Warlock? Her friend? Well, let me tell you, the only person other than the DM I got along with there…
Warlock was the other friend I made, then maybe Druid and Artificer.
They were very kind despite nearly killing us twice with fireballs. They were having fun. We made our characters friends even to the point he trusted him enough to protect his sister if my barbarian ever found her or if he died. The more I talked with Warlock, the more I felt at ease with the group, like at least I knew there was a mutual friend there. Or so I think.
Eventually, Warlock opened up to me about something that had them on edge, how they wanted to kill a character they liked.
Warlock told me that the problem was that their character was a female Dragonborn that was a harmless flirt, and her dead husband was a Goliath. There was teasing between their character and DM's, which was a Goliath. But apparently, the teasing got so bad that they wanted it to stop despite telling Rogue about it. Warlock also stated that Rogue sometimes holds grudges, even things that died out. That encouraged me to talk to Warlock about how I felt about Rogue, how I thought that she hasn't let it go, how I didn't want to get close to her character, and the antagonism was not something I wanted within the rp between our characters nor outside of it. I was not too fond of that idea, and Warlock reassured me that it wouldn't bleed into the game. In return, I told the warlock to say to the DM if the teasing happens to help them settle it down, Warlock doesn't truly express their feelings entirely just to not kill the mood, and I felt bad about it.
I was looking at myself before getting humiliated for making a character, so I didn't want them to feel alone and suffer that fear of just making something they liked. I hated seeing that similarity, and it opened a door. And it was like a whisper to me:
Suppose Warlock had so much bottled up and feeling this way. Is my feeling that there is judgment when I play my character or being myself? Is it their judgment and dislike towards me? After that, I started thinking that they were friends on different servers, so I began to assume the worst that they talked about the worst of me, and it was that they were waiting for something.
Then the OGL happened. Everything was going to shit, and my motivation was already on the floor. How much shit has happened to me the past few months and how uneasy I felt about the campaign was more like sinking into hell.
And then strike three happened… when I toned out so badly that I said something in a conversation that I do not remember, but after careful thinking, I remember now.
The DM and GM changed a few things that I thought were OGL bs. I remember talking to a friend before I realized my mistake when they mentioned it was their decision. But where I toned out was when I spoke to this with Warlock and Milf Cleric; I remember, at least in my perception, how there were better names for certain things, how I loved a specific and disliked some. As an artist and world builder, I am no stranger to criticism, but my mistake was not telling them or asking them directly. I admit here… It was my mistake. It was my third strike.
Dnd night, the most humiliating thing happened. Everyone was there and then slowly left as dm explained how upset he was. I pissed him off and explained how I talked shit behind his back, and I admit I should have asked beforehand… he was angry and had the right to be. I was a terrible friend for doing such a thing.
But there were some things in there. I still wonder if I do not remember or even if Dm mentioned it to me about it, but he told me he wanted to publish it how he wanted to, but I did not know. And I don't remember that conversation.
He was angry and then said to me:
DM: "I know you speak your mind; I am not asking you to change who you are. I ask you to THINK a little before you talk."
Those words hurt me because I had been told those words by someone else I knew. And that was when I didn't want to sit at that table anymore, not because he was angry but because those words opened an old wound. He then said that he would leave before he said something he could not take back when he already did say something that he could not take back.
I fucked up. The session was canceled, and I was left alone in the vc while I just stood in silence before feeling the same as the other times I was just humiliated by the servers that made me scared to rp. And that feeling of "You fucked it all up, might as well leave."
And the next day, someone joined, and I thought it was a new guy, but I knew he was going to take my place because I was going to get kicked out.
And my last conversation with the DM went like this:
DM: "So… You know I've been fair with you-" OP: "Look, if I am out, I am out; just saying don't sugar coat me anything." Dm: "Look, I hate to be the bearer of bad news. There are just a lot of votes against you. And not a lot with you." OP: "Okay." DM: "There will be campaigns but you won't be in this one… You can still stay in the server. I am sorry that has come to this?." OP: "Why? Your friends do not want me there. It's better to leave than watch you all have fun. I rather stay out where I am not wanted. And make my character disappear into the night with his stuff. No letter, no nothing. That's all I ask." Dm: "Okay… Well uh… See you later, OP." OP: "Yeah, see you someday."
And that was it. I left the server that day and asked Dm if I had his consent to post this down…and he said yes. (A few months late. But hey better late than never)
I know I did a lot of things wrong. I know that I made mistakes. But I am not sure how to feel if there was just me being a moron or there was something more.
DM, if you happen to read this by random chance, I am sorry for not being a better friend. I do not hate you, nor do I have a grudge. I only wrote what needed to be written down. And I hope that is good enough.
There you have it, Reddit. My RPG horror story and I was the problem all along. Take it as you will, be dragon, mouse, crab, or crow. Even if you believe you're a problem player yourself. I thank you for reading this post, and I am sorry if my grammar is not the best.
My advice for those who are in the same situation. Speak when needed. Keep your distance, and if you feel like you are not wanted there, talk it out first. You could be wrong. But if you're right? Walking away is easy, dnd is long, and life is short.
I hope that it was clear enough!
Take care, respect your body, keep your mind healthy, and sail to another day.

I posted this to my Facebook as I posted Tate-related content there and upset but also pleased a few people so I wanted to make my mindset adjustment public. I'm gonna copy and paste it here with some extra stuff that I didn't want to say on my Facebook because it would shit-stirr my family but I truly want to get it off my chest a day spread my message.
After taking plenty of time to think about it. I've decided that I am no longer a supporter of Tate. When you're just another one of the many young man outcasted by society, having your masculinity blamed for everything wrong in your life, bullied by the popular kids in school, never having a girlfriend and being blamed for all of those things, it's easy to see why I fell for his trap.
Having already left Incels and decided I want to try to improve instead of just giving up, I saw a man who told you it's okay to be masculine, it's okay to want the hot chicks, it's okay to want to drive sports cars, it's okay to want to be rich, it's okay to want submissive wives, it's okay to want to fight, it's okay to be a man! It's very hard not to be drawn to it in a world that tells you these things are toxic and will keep you celibate, that this is the reason women aren't attracted to you. Tate comes along with his 4 wives, videos of him with women in bikinis, his big muscular physique, his hundreds of millions of dollars and his 4 world kick-boxing champion belts to prove that notion wrong.
"If I'm such a misogynist then how come I'm fuckin' and you're not fuckin'? If I'm such a misogynist then how come women are coming to me?"
"All I talk about is how men are better than women and I'm still fuckin' more pussy than you are."
It's hard to argue with that point. The answer is because being a misogynist doesn't stop you from being attractive.
But, that doesn't excuse it. Tate knows with his money, status, physique, influence, accolades and confidence that he can still have a plethora of shallow women at his disposal and still get away with spewing his sexist vitriol.
"Women should not be allowed to drive"
"Women have been trading sexual favours in exchange for career advancements for decades, it doesn't make it sexual assault just because of the metoo movement"- Response to Harvey Weinstein's scandal
"When women end up in senior management it's nothing but a shit-show and a bitch-fest"
"I'm a realist and when you're a realist, you're sexist. There's no way you can be rooted in reality and not be sexist"
"When a woman marries a man, she belongs to that man"
"I was getting on a plane and I could see through the cockpit that a female was the pilot and I took a picture and I said, ‘most women I know can’t even park a car, why is a woman flying my plane?"
"A woman cheating isn't even on the same level as a man cheating"
"Female promiscuity is disgusting and it has been looked down upon in every era of human history to the point where a female could be executed for it." "As they should be"- Another man on the podcast "Get the rocks"- Replied Tate
Men, there's nothing wrong with wanting to improve yourself! You can work out, figure out how to make money outside of employment, learn how to increase your testosterone, do NoFap, quit porn, jaw-maxing, eating clean, learning how to pick up women(and let's be honest, accepting that their advice on how to do so sucks 😅) learn a combat sport, have submissive women, be polygamous(as long as it's not deceptive). This is not cringe, it is called AMBITION! But here's the news flash:
YOU CAN DO THIS WITHOUT DEEANING WOMEN AND TRYING TO TAKE AWAY THEIR RIGHTS 🤯
Some people will call you cringe for doing this. Because they want to keep you on their level. Most women will say that you need to be a feminist or you will stay single and that self-improvement is cringe. But just laught it off, it doesn't matter. And no you don't have to be a feminist either. You can just be a respectful person who doesn't want to divert women's rights they are entitled to in the modern day.
The reason us sexless, emasculated, envious, unloved men felt compelled to him is because he offered a way out. A way out of the deception that you have to be feminine, emotional and deceived by fourth wave feminism to be accepted in society and have women attracted to you. This is a lie. When these young men fall for this lie, it becomes hard not to be angry and resentful when women do not act the way our parents, the education system and the media tells us they do. That they don't like the assholes, the bullies, the jocks, and yes... the MISOGYNISTS. We were told just being a nice guy who respects women is enough.
When this lie unravels, many unfortunately go one of 2 routes:
The red pill- Aiming for self-improvement and maximisation in every metric of your value(nothing wrong with that). But unfortunately then using this to control the women in your life and preach oppression to make things the way they used to be.
The black pill- Where men convince each other that they will never be able to obtain sex/relationships no matter what and their situation is inescapable, to just give up. Some of which tell others to rape women; some of which do. Some of which tell others to commit mass shootings; Some of which do.
Many men have now left the black pill because of Tate which is great and it is better they idolise him than murderers like Elliot Rodger and Alek Minassian or content creators like EggWhite and WheatWaffles. Some never were black-pilled but admire Tate for preaching masculinity and stoicism in a world that demonizes it. I will reiterate to those men- YOU CAN DO SO WITHOUT DEMEANING WOMEN
So why does Tate do this? 2 reasons:

1. He is a misogynist and wants women to be oppressed because he is threatened by their freedom and wants to enjoy the pleasure of seeing them controlled, at his service, being dependant on men, not being allowed to lead in any corporate or industrial organisations because he believes they are incompetent in doing so. He doesn't listen to his own rule here. But just because you want that and it is feels better to live that way as a man, doesn't necessarily mean you should do it.
   
2. He doesn't care about you. He really doesn't, he just wants to profit off you. He knew that targeting lost young men, a group that is hated, lonely and angry could be easily radicalised. Same as Hitler did with the Nazis by telling them it's okay to be German and then pointing the finger at Jews to blame them for all the injustice dealt toward them. It's a classic trick that is yet to fail.
   

Tate's mindsets are helpful in many ways:
"Do what needs to be done regardless of how you feel"
Beat Tate at his own game! Self-improve, do the hard work even if you don't feel like it! But draw the line with the misogyny because wven thought it FEELS tempting, comforting and easy to do so, doesn't mean you should. Having that said, it is painful for me to acknowledge I was wrong and deceived by this evil genius. It's also very satisfying to know that a certain someone was seeing me support ideologies I knew would never be approved of and that the brainwashing, abuse and manipulation I was subjected to wasn't working. I wanted to stick it to you and show you how wrong you were for trying to strip me of my masculinity. I hate that you will be releived I am moving on and respecting women and that you will feel justified in the way you treated me. But:
"The most important part of being a man is not doing what you want to do but doing what you have to do. Your feelings don't matter as a man!" -Tate
Thanks for reading 💚
The "certain someone" was my mother. She made me sleep with her until I was 14, walked around naked in front of me and encouraged me to do the same. She would tell me my penis was big when it is in fact under-average. She used to constantly make small-penis jokes, say misogynists, show-offs and even rapists were projecting their small dick insecurity. She also told me my bullies had small dicks. This hurt when I realised I had one myself but she wouldn't listen and insisted me it was above average for my age and I'm still growing. My father on the other hand would open the door on me in the shower, wave his finger at me with a stupid smile and tell me I will never impress any girls with a small one. I of course didn't wanna say this on my Facebook with my real identity and my sister thinks my Mum is some kind of saint who can do no wrong and nags me for a justification for ghosting her and I obviously don't want to provide the details because a; I have to admit I have a small penis in order to do so and b; I know I will probably be accused of lying or just gaslight me and say it's all in my head.
The worst thing she ever did was when I told her this 13 year old disabled girl had a crush ok me and I was being bullied for it so she told me "I don't think I can trust you to not have sex with her. You have high testosterone and are treating girls like sex-objects." This is difficult to say but I remember never loving my mother again after she accused me of being a paedophile who would take advantage of a disabled THIRTEEN year old girl.
We suspect she has Munchausen Syndrome and she told me I was sick my whole life with things I wasn't. Every morning I had to wake up and drink celery juice with no breakfast be cause she was convinced I was poisoned with toxins I was given at the hospital as a baby after I got bitten by our cat.
She told me I was gluten and dairy intolerant, I have since eaten these things and am fine.
I had developmental echolalia throughout my adolescence(if you don't know, similar to Tourette's syndrome, causes involuntry ticks and is common in autistic pubsescents). Both my parents and my sister told me I was doing it for attention and I could control it. I would get bullied in school for it and they would continue to tell me I could control it or to just "cover my mouth" when I do it.
She told me that my sexual urges were unnatural and for a "boy like me", I should not be "Seeing women as sex objects": This was her reaction to me telling her I would get erections and sometimes ejaculate when I saw sexy women in skimpy clothing and I tried to refuse going to the beach because of the women in bikinis but she would still force me to. I would usually rub one out before leaving if I had time or try to go in the water until the boner went down.
She also assured me before high-school that because I'm so handsome and "wasn't like the other boys"(respectful gentleman she apparently raised me to be) that I would be very popular with all the girls. When this didn't happen, she said it was because I must street them like sex objects.
She told me I was "addicted to masturbating": Apparently 4-5 times a day was addiction which in reality is just normal all teenaged boy stuff.
I explained that I was attracted to the hot women and not the nerdy ones like she told me to be and asked why this was. She told me it was because I had entitlement problems and it was due to my high testosterone. She said to avoid the hot ones because they are "too much drama" and that no matter what my girlfriend looks like, I will enjoy sex with her just as much because the emotattraction is what counts and hit girls will only manipulate me and take me away from her.
Because of this she would cry and hug me, telling me I was going to grow up to be a suicidal sex addict. She then went to the adult store and bought me a fleshlight as per my father and his friend's suggestion. She told me it would satisfy my urges and stop the spontaneous ejaculatiobs in public. I told her it wasn't do she threw it out and kept buying different variants, tryto find tge one that would work. None of course did.
She would tell me I needed to be saved to prevent myself from taking advantage of all the women with bad fathers who would want to sleep with me and I couldn't resist it because my testosterone was too high. She told me I needed treatment for my "hypersexuality". I told her I was hesitant and she would say "I don't know why you want to be a sex-addict. Why do you want to live like this? Why do you want to be a misogynist who abuses women? I could never deal with losing my boy, so please get the help you need.
She then took me to accupunctural therapists to give me treatment for hypersexuals that constricts blood vessels to the genitals and would convince him to administer it by telling him the same bullshit she told me.
I now look at my small penis and hate her knowing that it could've been even just a little bit bigger if it weren't for her "treatment" and I will never forgive her for the physical and emotional damage she caused me. There is so much more I could get in to about how she and my father too abused me but it's gonna be too long.
I always get worried when I see mothers who say they want their son to be "different".
"I don't want him to rape, be a patriarch, stalk women who reject him, embrace his emotional side, be attracted to strong and independent women" etc.
To those mothers. I am warning you, allow your son to embrace his masculinity, teach him to be stoic, if he has a father figure, let him influence him as an adolescent, let him be attracted to who he is attracted to. Don't be like my mother or he will resent you, he will he scarred for what you do.
Thank you if you read this far. Feel free to follow me for more and comment your thoughts.

Hello,
Alongside some 3500 communities across Reddit, /teslore will also be going dark on Monday 12th June. The changes being made by Reddit will adversely affect its users and moderators, and the questionable communication of the Reddit administration (including today's AMA) have roused our belated entry to the protest.
In case you have been spending time in an Outer Realm, here are some relevant links and a prepared summary from the people of /ModCoord:

• Major Reddit communities will go dark to protest threat to third-party apps - The Verge
  
• Reddit blackout: Subreddits to go private on Monday - BBC News
  
• Today's AMA With Spez Did Nothing to Alleviate Concerns: An Open Response : ModCoord
  
• Reddit CEO doubles down on attack on Apollo developer in drama-filled AMA TechCrunch
  

What's going on?

A recent Reddit policy change threatens to kill many beloved third-party mobile apps, making a great many quality-of-life features not seen in the official mobile app permanently inaccessible to users.
On May 31, 2023, Reddit announced they were raising the price to make calls to their API from being free to a level that will kill every third party app on Reddit, from Apollo to Reddit is Fun to Narwhal to BaconReader.
Even if you're not a mobile user and don't use any of those apps, this is a step toward killing other ways of customizing Reddit, such as Reddit Enhancement Suite or the use of the old.reddit.com desktop interface .
This isn't only a problem on the user level: many subreddit moderators depend on tools only available outside the official app to keep their communities on-topic and spam-free.

What's the plan?

On June 12th, many subreddits will be going dark to protest this policy. Some will return after 48 hours: others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed, since many moderators aren't able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app. This isn't something any of us do lightly: we do what we do because we love Reddit, and we truly believe this change will make it impossible to keep doing what we love.
The two-day blackout isn't the goal, and it isn't the end. Should things reach the 14th with no sign of Reddit choosing to fix what they've broken, we'll use the community and buzz we've built between then and now as a tool for further action.

What can you do as a user?

• Complain. Message the mods of /reddit.com, who are the admins of the site: message reddit: submit a support request: comment in relevant threads on /reddit, such as this one, leave a negative review on their official iOS or Android app- and sign your username in support to this post.
  
• Spread the word. Rabble-rouse on related subreddits. Meme it up, make it spicy. Bitch about it to your cat. Suggest anyone you know who moderates a subreddit join the coordinated mod effort at /ModCoord.
  
• Boycott and spread the word...to Reddit's competition! Stay off Reddit entirely on June 12th through the 13th- instead, take to your favorite non-Reddit platform of choice and make some noise in support!
  
• Don't be a jerk. As upsetting this may be, threats, profanity and vandalism will be worse than useless in getting people on our side. Please make every effort to be as restrained, polite, reasonable and law-abiding as possible.
  

Thank you for your patience and support.
 
Be seeing you,
Hi there,
The /teslore mod team

Introduction
The short story you are about to read was created/inspired/based on a variety of sources related to or about Aniara. Aniara rock opera (Seventh Wonder) - The Great Escape, the Aniara wikipedia page, the Aniara film, poem etc. So if you read something and it sounds familiar, it's probably because it comes from or is based on, one of those sources. I have also tried to incorporate some of the thoughts and ideas expressed here on aniara, so some of you may see that reflected. I have not read everything that has to do with the Aniara universe, but I have found many of the resources listed on aniara very helpful in creating this short story. Thank you for those. I have also included a couple alternate endings.
Also, this story belongs to everyone, so everyone should feel free to to fill in the blanks, add to, subtract, or change any part of the story, in anyway they see fit.
I dedicate this short story to all the fans of Aniara, this story is for you and of course the late Harry Martinson.
Like many people who watched the film 'Aniara', I was mesmerized/traumatized by it. It really had a profound effect on me. So much so that I decided to write this fan fiction short story. I am not a writer. The short story that you are about to read is my (very) amateurish tribute to the film. I apologize in advance for all of the grammaspelling and other errors. Despite the (many) flaws of this short work, I hope that you can see what I was attempting to do. Anyway without further or do, I present to you:
​
The Lost Voices of Aniara: A Space Saga
WE CROWN THE SKIES WITH OUR TIARA, THE LIFE AND FATE OF ANIARA
​
Note: The following represents the most complete (so far) chronicle of events that happened onboard the Aniara.
​
Year 18 - Song of Melancholy - My name is Benjamin Jenkins, but everyone calls me "Benny", I am proud to announce that I am the new "Captain" of the mighty space "cruise ship" Aniara. Of course, my title could just as easily be the Admiral of Mars or the Conquer of the Universe, or some other ridiculous sounding grandiose title. Sometimes you must laugh in the face of despair otherwise you will go insane. It's all just for fun of course. I was given the title "Captain" by the crew because I was able to restore the communications transmitter. At least I think I was able to retore it? The lights show green for transmitting, so yeah I bet it works, and besides, all of this is being recorded for posterity and it will be placed in a time/memorial capsule. After that the capsule will be sent in the (general) direction of Mars/Home, where hopefully someone finds it. I'm also the Senior Maintenance Tech in charge of repairing/prolonging various ship systems, etc. There are now only a few remaining livable areas of the ship so it's not as much work as one might imagine. And to think 18 years ago, I was just an ordinary passenger, how far through the ranks I've come! As the "Captain" I will now recount the entire history of the Aniara, the various events, the everyday happenings, from the awe inspiring and amazing, to the boring and mundane, great triumphs and crushing defeats, all the feelings of happiness and joy that come with new life and all of the sorrows and despair that come from (too) many deaths and (too) many hardships. All of our great accomplishments, setbacks and everything in between will be laid bare before the entire universe to witness. Our love, our hate, our dreams, our wants and desires, disappointments, anger and fear but above all our HOPE. Our precious HOPE, the only thing we have left, which has kept us alive for so long. Our HOPE that this message will be received, that someone, somewhere will know our story and our struggle, our HOPE that Mars will be successfully terraformed into the paradise that we all know it can be and our HOPE that Earth will be restored to the paradise that it once was. It's all here, it's all being recorded for the future. I will start our saga from the very beginning of our trip all those years ago...
​
Hour 1 - Routine Voyage - Well, this is it! Soon I and many others will make a new home on Mars... of course if we hadn't ruined the first one...
​
Week 3 - Without a Map/A Slight Detour - Today the Captain made an announcement that there would be a slight detour in our trip. In order to avoid a collision with space debris, (which would have destroyed the ship) we had to veer off course. Some of the debris hit the nuclear reactor (a very rare event), which forced the crew to eject all of the ship's fuel. The Captain told everyone that we will be able to resume our trip to Mars once the ship passes a celestial body, which should (probably) happen in about two years. Everyone is (understandably) disgruntled by this unfortunate news. As for me I have no one waiting for me on Mars so it's not as bad.
​
Year 2 - Wait and See - After several long months of trying out all of the various amusements and other distractions, I was starting to get bored, so I spoke with one of the senior crew members and asked if I could volunteer to do something, anything. Also a job would help keep my mind off our current situation.
Today, my request to work was approved and now I'm part of the crew. My job is to do general maintenance tasks around the ship. I also help take care of the algae, which are used to supply the ship with oxygen and food. It's not a very challenging task, in fact I find it very tedious, but the algae are crucial for the ship's survival, so it gives me a sense of purpose and on top of that I also earn extra points.
Eventually, because of my (part time) job in maintenance, I would come to know every nook and cranny of the Aniara. On one particular day I noticed a slight problem (Electrostatic Diffusion Impaction or EDI) with the ship's air filtration mechanism. I was quick to inform my supervisor about the issue and together we fixed it immediately. If I hadn't spotted the problem, it could have gotten much worse and that would have been catastrophic for the crew and passengers. Afterwards my supervisor bought me a shot of (rationed) Dutch brandy. Other than that, nothing of note has really happened. Everyone is basically in a holding pattern.
One last thing. I've heard a disturbing rumor that there is no celestial body for us to turn around at... If this is true then, that would mean... But for now all we can do now is wait and see...
​
Year 3 - The Yurg/The Passing of Mima - A memorial was set up to honor the end of Mima. So much joy had she given us. On the wall among the thousands of drawings, pictures, and sad goodbye letters was a poem that went like this:
We sit and stare at all the marvels that she brings us.
Mima lead the way.
Shine your light!
Be the beacon of hope at night.
Perfect grace in the barren house of space.
Shine your light!
Blind us when reality bites.
We so need the magic she does.
Many rumors are going around about what happened to Mima. People say that the Mimarobe (MR) was the one that ended up causing Mima to die. As for me, personally, I don't believe it. The Mimarobe just didn't seem like the type. A few times after I got off from work, when I walked to the end of the long line of people waiting to see Mima, the Mimarobe would come out and say "Ok, everyone that's it that's enough for today, you have to leave now, sorry." My own personal opinion is that she was just trying to give Mima a break, so even though I was of course disappointed, I completely understood. Sometimes we all just need a break. Sometimes things just get to you and you start to feel overwhelmed. I understood the feeling. Mima was like us in that way. Anyway, Rightly or wrongly the Mimarobe was locked up in the ships brig, her and another woman, I think she was one of the pilots, Isabella\, I think was her name but I might be wrong. Oh well, our lives must go on, much sadder of course, but that's life, I guess. ****Isagel, the pilots name was Isagel, her and the Mimarobe would later become a couple.
​
Year 4 - The Cults - Strange things have started happening. Various cults have sprung up all over the ship with bizarre and strange names. One of these (that I am a member of) is called the ゴールデンサンライト・フォーエバー・クラブ - Gōrudensanraito Fōeba Kurabu - which roughly means the Golden Sunlight Forever Club. Some of these phony cults are/were created as a disguise to have outrageous sex orgies. The cult that I am part of is one of these. (HELL YEAH!). The other cults are very boring, stare out the window and worship the stars or something like that, types. (Glad I'm not a member of those!).
​
Year 5 - The Calculation - A few weeks ago I met someone special (Carmen) at one of the "worship" services. I've seen her before a few times, but this is the first time that we "connected" and it was amazing. I'm glad that she accepts my physical imperfections (burns scars). Now we are a couple and have left the cult.
Fantastic news! The Captain has announced that an Emergency Refuel Rescue Probe is on its way! The news of the rescue probe has had an electrifying effect on the crew and passengers. Everyone is so excited that no one even cares that we will have to wait just over a year for it to get to us. People are starting to clean and pick up trash again, and the sex clubs and other cults are starting to go away (in anticipation of a return to proper civilization). Now we have hope again! Thank GOD!
​
Year 6 - The Spear - The rescue probe is almost here. (Only one week away!) I also have even more great news! My girlfriend fiancée is pregnant!, now I will be a Father just like I always wanted! I have spoken to Captain Chefone and he has agreed that he will marry us on the day that the Aniara turns around and heads (finally) back to Mars/our new HOME! Even though it will take us several more years to get back, it will have been worth it to me. I am grateful for the "slight detour" we had to endure, because it allowed me to meet the love of my life! Now with our precious child on the way, I am truly happy. PURE JOY - beyond all words...
Something is wrong... After an entire year of training and preparation, the crew has successfully grappled the refuel probe and brought it on board. Everyone expected that within a few days, (a week at most) that we would turn around, but it's been three weeks and nothing. Every day the passengers ask the crew what's going on? When will we turn around? and every day we get the same answer: "Soon, everything is going according to plan, just be patient." People are starting to doubt and lose hope. I even walked right up to Captain Chefone but he knew what I was going to ask and he brushed me aside very angrily saying "Not now, I'm busy!". Now I don't know what to think. One minute I have a future and the next nothing. How can this be? I don't understand! WHY?
Catastrophe! After work I went straight to my quarters to sleep, it had been an exhausting day. Just after I fell asleep, I was awakened by a rumbling. Then, over the speaker came the announcement: Return immediately to your cabins and fasten your seat belts! Since I was already in bed, and had no idea what was going on, I quickly fastened my belt. When it was all over [missing] passengers and crew left. I was told that it happened because of something called "bow shock", which [missing] kind of like a shock wave. The bow shock had badly damaged many systems. [missing] so now I've been "promoted" to Senior Maintenance Tech. Repairs must [missing] don't have any more spare parts for [missing] so many are dead...
Today the Mimarobe completed her beam-screen project. So now when you look outside you can see beautiful waterfalls and green fields etc. I try not to look at it too much. For me its just too painful...
Year 7 - The Fall of Heaven - Today marks the one year anniversary of the arrival of the so-called "Emergency Refuel Rescue Probe". What a very official and grand sounding name for a giant stupid looking dart or as some call it "The Spear". I've even heard some people refer to it as the "Devil's Javelin", but whatever you call it, it's of no use to us. The Astronomer had once told me before she died "supposedly" from a heart attack, (rumors say she was murdered by the captain, I don't doubt it) that all the work and tests they had done on the probe were useless and that even the hardest drills were simply ground into dust without even making so much as a scratch on the probe. Despite a literal barrage of tests and every possible experiment known, even using our most advanced lasers, they had achieved NOTHING! That was the moment I realized that we would never make it home. I even visted "The Spear" once, it was years after all the experiments had ended. There was a time when the area was heavily guarded by the crew and only authorized personnel were allowed in. Of course when I went to see it nobody was around, nobody cared, everyone had given up on it long ago. I saw all of the black marks from what must have been hundreds, if not thousands of desperate attempts to get inside it, or just to figure out what the damn thing was supposed to be. On the floor all around it were small heaps of black and silver metalic dust, remnants of our strongest and hardest drills, remnants of our hope. Our best and brightest couldn't even figure out what it was made of, let alone figure out how to use it to take us home.
I beat my hands against it over and over and I cried out my pain and anger at it. "You were supposed to save us!" "You were supposed to take us home!" You Damn! stupid thing, help us! save us!" But of course it was all useless my cries went unanswered, all I did was injure my hands and hurt my soul, assuming I even have one. After that I (I'm ashamed to admit it)... in complete and total desperation... I got down on my hands and knees in front of it and begged it to save us. "Oh, great magic spear, please save us and I will do anything, anything..."
After I had exhausted and humiliated myself I got up and went back to my quarters broken and alone. All hope was lost before my visit with "the spear" and afterwords it didn't even exist, not even as a word, as though there had never even been such a thing or concept as "hope".
I had been struck by the spear, just like everyone else, head on. My now ex-fiancée and I have split up. Things just weren't the same after the procedure. I don't blame her at all for our break-up, after talking about it, we agreed that if there was now no chance for us to make it home then... what was the point? I went with her when she had the procedure done. But before we went I secretly met with the doctor who would perform the operation and told her what I wanted done after. She told me that I was sick... that it was "disgusting", and what did I plan on doing with "it". I told her that it shouldn't matter, none of this matters, then I pulled out an EFR (emergency food ration). EFRs could remain edible for an indefinite period of time. (In theory they could last for hundreds of years.) Here I said, "one now and one when I get what I want". The doctor was stunned, I knew what she was going to say and I interrupted her and said,"Unlike everyone else I saved my emergency rations." "I only have the two left (I was lying) so don't try to extort me for more." After years of eating only algae, EFRs were (almost) more valuable than oxygen. Of course the doctor agreed and I got what I wanted. It might sound crazy but I had a plan. Fate had taken my family away, but I was prepared to defy even the gods themselves. I was determined that I would have my FAMILY! No matter what! Nothing and no one, no force of nature, no power in all the universe would take that from me. NO! NEVER!
I asked me a question, no reply.
I dreamt me a life and live a lie.
Dream me a nightmare...
I traveled the stars but passed them by.
For trapped on Aniara, here was I.
...always been leaving.
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Year 8 - [missing]
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Year 9 - The Daily Grind - I have now returned to reality. I have stopped all of the sick and sad mind games that I have being torturing myself with. I once created a "plan" to do the impossible, but no more, no more. Everyday now seems like an endless pointless, struggle. Sometimes [missing] and hours. Some of my co-workers stopped [missing] for now that's all any of us can do...
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Year 10 - The Jubilee - Tonight at the Light-Year Hall, those of us that are still left are going to "celebrate" the 10th anniversary of our 3 week voyage to Mars or as I like to call it the "never ending space adventure" Ha!
Captain Chefone gave the Mimarobe a medal for her creation of the beam-screen device. I sat in the front row and couldn't help but notice that one of the Captains wrists was bandaged, probably from another suicide attempt...
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Year 11 - Hope Restored - My ex-fiancée is dead. She commited suicide like so many others before. I was hard at work trying to revive the algae (they had been neglected for some time) when my assistant rushed in and told me the news. "They were about to send her body into space, you have to hurry if you want to see her". I immediately and literally dropped everything I was doing. The algae pack I had been working on fell and splashed on the floor as I ran out the door as fast as I could. As luck would have it, I made it just in time to see her, and I even had time to cut a lock of her hair. I then kissed her one last time and said "Goodbye my love... but, goodbye is not forever."
Then that was it, off she went into the empty, endless, void. She was gone I told myself, but not dead. I squeezed the lock of hair in my hand and vowed that I would bring her back to life, somehow, someway, I would make things right, we would live the life we were supposed to have. I would make it happen. It would happen. Suddenly, I felt a force deep inside me rushing to the surface. It had been years but I knew what it was, It had returned to me, a feeling of exuberation, of joy and the certainty of knowing that everything would be okay. I now resurrected my "plan" and now I had a reason to live again, I had a purpose, and now I had......HOPE! And this time I was determined that I would never lose hope again. NEVER!
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Year 12 - Return of the Cults - Some of the old cults have started making a come back... However this time they are no longer sex/fun cults, because after so many years of eating just algae, almost everyone has lost their sex drive/ability to reproduce... I think because the type algae on board was genetically modified to produce the maximum amount of oxygen possible, so it was never intended to be used as a permanent main source of nutrition. If we had access to more than just the one type, things might be different...
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Year 13 - Foward, Foward into the cold empty night! We ride! - Captain Chefone is dead. Suicide. I knew he had been on the brink the past few years so it's not much of a surprise. I would often hear him say to himself "We should have been home by now." Of course he was right, we should have, but instead here we are stuck on this eternal "voyage of the damned".
A week after Captain Chefone died, I found myself walking by his quarters. I had the sudden impulse to go inside. I don't know what it was (probably just morbid curiosity), but I think I just wanted to find some answers...
I was surprised to find that his quarters were just as much of a mess as mine. (And everyone else's.) I think because he was the Captain, I expected a lot more. (He was only human.) After looking around the room, I went over to his desk and inside I found the Aniara's Offical Ships Log, but the electronic notepad was damaged beyond repair (on purpose). However, underneath it was a small paper notebook. "Ah, I said out loud, now this should be interesting." When I opened the notebook I was immediately disappointed. Most of the pages were torn out and those few that remained had been harshly scribbled over.
On one of the few pages not missing or completely marked over was written this: Today, we almost lost the entire ship, were it not for my quick and decisive actions as Captain. [illegible] an incredibly rare occurrence [illegible] critically damaged our main nuclear reactor. [illegible] only seconds [illegible] forcing me to [illegible] off course [illegible] have power for some time. This evening I will break the news to the passengers in such a way that will cause the least amount of panic and at the same time not destroy their hope. If they knew the real situation, it would only cause unnecessary chaos. In this way, I will maintain order and keep the passengers safe. Fear and [illegible] as Captain of Aniara [illegible] that is now my primary job. [illegible] now like a Shepherd Father and the passengers my sheep children. In many ways we are very lucky, [illegible] this trip, Aniara's sister ship crashed into Jupiter heading towards the Orion belt colony. Everyone on onboard was killed.
On another page was written this: The rescue refuel probe is here. [illegible] turned out to be [illegible] not what I expected. I have [illegible] for clarification, [illegible] Mars [illegible] -----cation. Testing will continue. I still remain confident that [illegible] the project called "[illegible] ---elin" can still be used in someway to turn the ship around and resume course.
The last two pages were so scribbled over that I could barely make out any words let alone a full sentence. I did however, notice what looked like the word "Devil" written over and over. Very strange. I left the Captain's quarters with more questions than answers...
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Year 14 - [missing]
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Year 15 - The Light Show Ends - Today the projection device created by MR, (Everyone still calls her the 'Mimarobe' as a sign of respect.) had to be shut down to conserve power. The Mimarobe often expressed to me her regret at not being more forceful with Captain Chefone in explaining the problem with Mima. She told me that if she could back in time she would say to the Captain:
"Just imagine what it will be like if Mima isn't here... do you understand how hellish the situation will become? My life is dedicated to this program and I'M TELLING YOU, IT WILL BURN OUT AND DIE! Imagine if people can temporarily go back to earth by turning on a light switch, now imagine if the bulb blows up, and there's no replacement..." "I know how important Mima is and you don't get it!"
The beam-screen seemed like a great idea at the time to keep everyone's spirits up, but in many ways it may have done more harm than good. People lost their minds staring all the time at something they knew they would never have...
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Year 16 - [missing]
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Year 17 - [missing]
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Year 18 - The Time/Memorial Capsule - The Mimarobe was the one that came up with the idea for a time/memorial capsule. She (like all of us) has suffered greatly, but from time to time she would show a small spark of her old self. The idea, while slow to catch on, would eventually give those of us still left a renewed sense of purpose. (People now had a reason to get out of bed.) But, it was I who would take the idea and transform it into something greater. Our first attempt at creating the capsule was successful (it was little more than a metal box) but at the same time, as the Mimarobe pointed out it looked too much like a large coffin. I agreed. We could do better. We had to do better. But we had to be careful [missing] effecting power systems. I asked the Mimarobe if she could sketch a better design. After two days the Mimarobe presented me with a new design, it was beautiful, but simple, yet elegant. Above the sketch was were the words, "Heart of Aniara." The name was perfect. We would fill the "Heart of Aniara", with our art and our poetry, with our hopes, dreams and wedding rings. We would pour into it our stories, our struggles, our trials and tribulations, we would fill it with the tear drops from our very souls.
The "Heart of Aniara" is almost complete. It has taken an entire [missing] solid effort to build and everyone took turns polishing it, so now it shines like the golden sun. We also wrote [missing] and painted two large red hearts on the sides. It [missing] long and on the inside are different [missing] created using metal partitions. [missing] was instrumental in its consruction...
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Year 19 - A Slight Delay - Disaster! Several Power systems, including all emergency back up systems across the ship have begun failing for some unknown reason. [missing] working around the clock to figure out what is wrong... I don't know how much longer we can hold on...
We finally found the [missing] will work for the time being, but [missing] restored power [missing] will do for now...
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Year 20 - The Heart of Aniara - At last the time has come for our send off. Everything is ready. As the "Captain" of Aniara it is my great honor to commision this new vessel "Heart of Aniara". Behind me I heard someone whisper "vessel?". I continued, "It is my firm belief that the "Heart of Aniara" will make it back home to Mars and everyone will know our stories..."
A moment before send off, I told everyone to wait. Theres one more thing left. I then slid open a hatch on the side and told everyone that I hated to do this to them, but I was going to Mars with my family. The Mimarobe approached me with a half smile on her face and said in a very serious tone "Good Luck, Captain Benny", "tell everyone on Mars hi for us and that we wish we were there." I smiled and promised that I would. Then to my suprise all the others came up to me, with some shaking my hand and congratulating me, asking me to say hi to their family and friends as well. I then ducked down into the newly christened "Heart of Aniara." Then the hatch was sealed. A small rechargable electric candle that I brought with me, provided the only light. Knowing that we would be leaving in a moment I opened a small box, took Carmen (lock of ex-fiancée's hair) and Sarah Ann (small jar with dead fetus) and held them together in my left hand against my chest. I could feel my heart beating with a mixture of fear and excitement. I took out a small children's book with my right hand and began reading it from the beginning. It was my daughter's favorite. It was called "The Duck and the Noodle." "Daddy are we there yet?" I laughed as tears ran down my face and said "Yes, my little princess noodle were almost there."
The Memorial Capsule lauched into space with a loud whoosh...
(Mimarobe, MR) - When everyone had just got through waving goodbye and were getting ready to leave, the view screen turned on and with it a pre-recorded message from Captain Benny. "To celebrate this great day, I have arranged for you a "Grand Feast", then he paused. A few people exchanged questioning looks. Then the Captain spoke again. "You see", he said with a smile, "Unlike all of you, I saved my emergency rations. You will find them hidden inside the mattress in my quarters, enjoy!" "Also, you will find two bottles of wine, yes! real wine!" Before the video even finished several people had started shuffling as fast as the could to Captain Benny's quarters. The Captain wasn't lying, it appeared that he had indeed saved almost all of his emergency rations for some special occasion(s).
What a feast it was! To make it fair for everyone we took all of the rations and put them together to create a kind of giant stew. Each of us not only savored each precious spoonful, we cherished it as though it was a long lost loved one. It is not an exaggeration to say that each bite was chewed one hundred times or more and then held in the mouth for ten minutes or longer, swishing the pulpy liquid around and around. I even saw one person spit the food back into their bowl and then put it back into their mouth, over and over again. That seemed a little bit unusual to me, but everyone should enjoy their last real meal the way they want. As for the wine their was enough for everyone to have a shot glass filled to the brim. We talked about the "Great Feast" for months afterword...
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Year 21 - [missing]
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Year 22 - The Living Dead - (Mimarobe, MR) We've had to abandon almost the entire ship to conserve power, but basically were still good alive... I still dream about Isagel and our son from time to time...
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Year 23 - [missing]
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Year 24 - The Sarcophagus - A few remaining survivors, including the Mimarobe, sit cross-legged in a dimly lit room. One of the few survivors speaks in a rhapsodic manner about the divine power of sunlight on Earth.
The Aniara slowly descends into final darkness...
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Note: Years 25 through 5,981,406 are missing.
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Year 5,981,407 - Lyra Constellation - The Aniara, derelict, frozen and devoid of human life - reaches the Lyra constellation and approaches a planet as verdant and welcoming as Earth was formerly. It quickly passes by continuing on into the endless void of space...
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Date Unknown - The Warm Embrace - Ages come, Ages gone, Aniara soon embraced, engulfed by warmth and shine, newest born crimson light, Aniara far from home, aflame, not even ashes remain.
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Epilogue: Year 100 - The Triumph of Hope - Despite the faliure of many valiant rescue attempts, including all attempts at communication, we remain confident that those onboard the Aniara knew that they were not forgotten. It is difficult to imagine (the speaker momentarily shuttered), the impossible challenges they endured. The story of their lives will remain in the collective hearts of humanity for all time. It is our hope that we will do right by them, now and in the future. We vow to never repeat the mistakes of the past... and that is why today, on the one hundredth anniversary since the Aniara was lost, we reach across time and space to bring their souls back home, home to this sacred place... We hereby consecrate this new park as the "Aniara Memorial Park and Museum Complex." As you walk through these doors, one of the first things you will notice is the "Heart of Aniara" on display. Along the walls are the names and pictures of the passengers and crew, their artwork, poetry, and most importantly, the stories of their lives, their hopes, dreams and wedding rings...
Aniara Memorial Plaque: We ourselves are the sorrow, we are also the joy, everything human is rooted in humanity, and no human being can escape humanity, not her hatred and her self-degradation, nor the joy she spreads, nor the love she forms.
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Date [redacted] - Project "Devil's Javelin" - Status report #[redacted] - As of today's date we are aware of a total of four "spear-like objects" [redacted] and has contextualized that there are many more as yet discovered. Because of [redacted] we now know they are made of [redacted] and probably come from [redacted] the first was found on Earth 86 years ago, at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The second one was discovered by the crew of the Aniara [redacted] years ago. The third was found here on Mars, near [redacted] and moved to its present secure location. The fourth and newest one was found when [redacted] the far side of the Moon. [redacted] buried inside the [redacted] impact crater. We have yet to discover the purpose of these "spear-like objects."
After [redacted] to prevent another type of incident. [redacted] have been able to gain access to the inside of the one here on Mars. [redacted] only after [redacted] and the entire team. [redacted] using the most advanced technology and research methods. Dr. [redacted] found [redacted] which is impossible and should not exist. However, we must now come to grips with the horror that this new revelation about humanity has [redacted] general public must never find out...
THE END?
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Alternate ending 1
Year 5,981,407 - The Sarcophagus World Destroyer - As the ship Aniara descended towards the lush and green planet, the crew rejoiced. Or at least they would have if they hadn't all been dead. After thousands of millennia wandering through space, they had found a planet that was almost identical to Earth.
The planet's gravity was very strong, and the ship had become trapped in the planet's gravitational pull and started hurtling towards the surface.
The Aniara crashed into the planet with a deafening roar, causing massive destruction and sending out shockwaves that rippled across the surface.
As the dust settled, it became clear that the landing had been catastrophic. Plant and animal life had been completely obliterated, and the once green planet was now a barren wasteland. Soon not a single living thing was left to witness the horror and the devastation that had been caused.
Another beautiful, thriving, planet, a blue and green jewel, once teeming with life has been turned into a lifeless barren wasteland...
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Alternate ending 2
Year 5,981,407 - The Second Chance Sarcophagus - As the ship Aniara descended towards the lush and green planet, the crew rejoiced. Or at least they would have if they hadn't all been dead. After thousands of millennia wandering through space, they had found a planet that was almost identical to Earth.
The planet's gravity was very strong, and the ship had become trapped in the planet's gravitational pull and started hurtling towards the surface.
One one-trillionth of a second after the Aniara crashed into the planet the mysterious spear-like probe on board finally awakened. A God-Like Power. In that one one-trillionth of a second the Aniara was scanned by the powerful probe and the events and lives of the crew had become known to it. At the same time, both the ship and the planet were saved by a force field of immense power. The ship was now resting safely on the surface of the lush, green planet. The probe had determined that the primitive life forms on board were worthy of a second chance at life and it was able to resurrect the entire crew and all the passengers from microscopic DNA that had been left. The Aniara was perfectly restored and even the Mima had been brought back. The crew and passengers awoke to find themselves in a veritable Garden of Eden, a paradise. Maybe this time things would go better and the mistakes from the past would not be repeated...
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I just hope that people see this post, that they might start spreading the news before it’s too late. Something big is coming, something ancient, something older than any of us could have ever imagined. It might be too late. I don’t know what will become of me, of the people I love that I might never see again, by the time you are reading this. But I implore you to listen and take this story seriously, because it could save your life. Or not. I don’t know yet how deep this goes. If it’s true, if what I think is true…God help us. Nothing can save us now.
I’ll start at the beginning, because you need to understand how long this has been happening, and the implications of what is possible now that it’s getting worse. Over winter break, I went to visit my friend from high school, Jackson, in Vermont. He goes to Bennington College, studies Social Sciences with a minor in Linguistics. Smart guy. He used to write my papers for me in English class, and I would pay him back in six packs. That’s always how it was: him, studious and put together, and me itching to get outside. I was constantly on the move, biking through the forests behind my house, trail-running, building a treehouse for my little brothers, you name it. I wanted to get my hands dirty, get into nature. I guess that’s why I opted out of college, and went for camp counselor positions and summer gigs until I secured a conservation job with a park near home. Nature is important to me, and I want to do my part as the generation that has a responsibility to heal the world.
The outside was what called me to Bennington, aside from the fact that I missed my best buddy. I don’t remember when it was first brought to my attention, but I became aware of murmurings of Bennington’s rocky past online about a few months before I was set to visit Jackson. Being an experienced outdoorsman, I wasn’t afraid; on the contrary, I was rather excited to get out there and prove my worth to Jackson and his college buddies, who were far less athletic than I am. Looking back, I’m kicking myself for being so cocky. I can’t believe I ever thought of my best friend in that way.
From what I could see on the internet, Bennington College’s history was a long and often sinister one. There were videos about people vanishing into thin air: a girl wearing a red parka went for a hike alone and was never found, an experienced man leading an outdoor expedition disappeared in the woods, a woman fell into a stream, doubled back to the campsite to change her clothes, but never made it to the site, a man on a bus disappeared from the vehicle at a stop but left all of his luggage, a teenage boy was waiting in his mother’s truck and when she came back, he was mysteriously gone…I wish I could say these stories deterred me from poking my head somewhere where it didn’t belong.
Instead, I only grew more curious. What was going on in this so-called “Bennington Triangle?” I was in a unique position to investigate this phenomenon for myself. Many people hear about strange occurrences and the intrigue piques their interest, but they never have the chance to see it for themselves. But I could. I knew I could hold my own out in the wilderness—it was literally my job! Besides, I was a strong, slightly stubborn young man, built steadily, and I could protect myself well. What could possibly happen to me out in those woods, much less to a group of young college-aged men? The people who went missing most likely made one fatal mistake that cost them their lives, or maybe it was all just a big coincidence. Either way, I was about to find out for myself.
It was halfway through December when I left to meet up with Jackson. I got there on the last day of classes, and Jackson told me he would be busy until later in the day. I assumed he was cramming for a final, and I told him it was no big deal, I would meet up with him and maybe meet some of his buddies later. Besides, I had some plans of my own.
The most famous missing persons case in Bennington went cold, and is still unsolved to this day. The case is a tragic one, and I didn’t want to be insensitive by going around asking for information or throwing around names. Everything I needed, I found online. Paula Welden was the name of the girl in the red parka that went missing. Allegedly, she left campus one day to go on a hike by herself. She left the campus around 3pm and hitchhiked to an entrance to the Long Trail, a trail that runs for almost 300 miles from Massachusetts all the way to the Canadian Border. She wasn’t dressed to be outside for long, but as the story goes, she never made it back from the trail.
There was one sighting of her, however, that particularly interested me. A man reported that he had seen her running around, rather erratically, in the bottom of a gravel pit near the entrance to campus, and I wanted to see if there was anything left of the pit. Because I’m experienced with many different kinds of natural phenomena, I initially wondered if there wasn’t a natural explanation for her distressed behavior. I thought maybe there might be an insect nest or an infestation of small animals at the bottom of the pit that she might have disturbed, so I decided to check it out in my free time.
After the RA checked me in and I tossed my luggage into Jackson’s dorm, I packed a small backpack with essentials: water, sunscreen, energy bars, mini first aid kit, some rope, a utility tool, a flashlight, and a lightweight jacket. Then I headed out towards the pit.
The first thing I noticed was how much smaller the pit seemed. According to the eyewitness description of the incident, Paula was running up and down the side of a deep gravel pit, but what lay in front of me now was something much more shallow. I walked down into the center of what was left of the pit, but I could easily see over the edges. The small, dark fragments of rock crunched and ground together under my hiking boots, and the slowly sinking midday sun bounced off of the remnants of white snow around me. It was an unusually sunny day for winter, and the snow was, curiously, letting up for my visit. But the good luck for me ran out here—there seemed to be nothing to investigate at this location. My hopes of finding any evidence of insect or pest infestation that could have disturbed the girl were dashed, maybe buried several feet underground.
I lingered awhile, kicking at the bits of gravel in the small pit. I watched the small rocks scatter over the rest of the gravel, hitting up against the edge of the pit and rolling back down a few inches. I turned to go, but stopped. Maybe it was a trick of my eye, the sun reflecting harshly off of the snow and glinting in my sunglasses, causing me to not see clearly. I walked to the edge of the pit and kicked some more gravel at the side. The small rocks skipped across the uneven surface of the gravel pile, and scattered up the edge of the pit, farther than gravity should allow them to travel. I kicked more, and it happened again. My heart started beating faster.
I crouched down and picked up a small stone. I rolled it gently across the gravel, softly enough that it started to slow when it reached the incline of the side of the pit. I watched, astounded, as the rock slowly rolled uphill about a foot before coming to a stop. I gave a shout of excitement and jumped to my feet.
As I stood up straight I nearly fell back down. In an instant, my hearing seemed to go and I felt an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia. I spun around, thinking someone must be behind me, messing with me, but the sensation of closeness stayed pressing at my back. I spun around again, searching for an explanation. My head was fuzzy. I heard my footsteps, overwhelmingly loud, and I couldn’t hear anything else, almost as if my range of hearing was limited to my immediate surroundings. Like I was trapped in the pit. As soon as those words flashed through my head, the claustrophobia overwhelmed me, pushing up against the very air around my body. The silence built up inside my ears until all I could hear was my muffled footsteps, my desperate breathing, and the blood rushing faster and faster through my body.
I lunged for the edge, clambering up the side as fast as I could. Instantly upon passing over the edge the sounds of the late afternoon bore down on my ears. I stumbled and covered my ears, the chirping of the birds and rustling leaves almost too loud for me to bear.
It’s not that I was scared. Obviously, I was a little shaken up. As I hastened back towards Jackson’s dorm, I tried to rationalize what had just happened to me. Maybe I hadn’t drank enough water and I simply became dizzy. Maybe it was altitude sickness. Maybe a strange bug had bitten me and I temporarily lost my bearings. Nothing quite made sense. I tried to push it from my mind and focus on having a good first day, because soon I would be meeting Jackson’s college buddies.
When I got back to the dorm, Jackson was waiting for me. Fresh from the shower, his hair was damp and he was putting on a clean t-shirt. Pulling me into a hug, he expressed his excitement over my visit, asked me about my flight, what I thought about the campus—all the preliminary niceties. Internally, I breathed a sigh of relief. Even if he noticed, he didn’t pry and try to ask me about my slightly shaking hands, my pale face, or the vague disconnectedness with which I answered his questions.
That night eased my worries slightly. I ended up meeting Jackson’s group of friends and, together, we ventured into downtown Bennington. We hit a few bars and chilled at some of the many breweries in town. Live music, good company, and many, many beers did wonders on my nerves. By the end of the night, I had completely forgotten all about my encounter in the gravel pit. Jackson’s friends were nice guys, and I was too busy feeling proud about my best friend coming out of his shell in college. When he left, I had my doubts, but it was crystal clear that Jackson was really coming into himself at this school.
The festivities continued for the next few days: the guys were stoked to be done with their final exams and excited to connect with Jackson’s old friend, so we spent our time drinking and hanging out, bumping music and generally having a blast. It was almost enough for me to forget about one of the very reasons I was excited to be in Bennington in the first place.
It’s been a few days since that incident. I had even almost started to feel better about the whole thing. Maybe it was a mistake to poke around in old history, and maybe I should just focus on living my own life and fulfilling my own passions, working to heal nature as best as I can. But now Jackson and his friends want to go on a hike, and I’m starting to feel that same claustrophobia creeping back in. What the hell is out there, and why do I feel like I shouldn’t be messing with it?
Jackson chose the hike, not me. It was like him; he was the researcher, he was the one who looked at details, so he suggested we hike on the Long Trail. It intersected with the Appalachian Trail, and maybe I wasn’t paying attention when Jackson explained this to me, because it didn’t raise any alarms about the missing persons cases. Paula Welden went missing on the Long Trail, sure—but she wasn’t with a group of capable college guys like I was.
We packed some backpacks, crushed a beer or two for celebratory sakes, and set off on the trail. I let myself feel excited as we stomped through the trees, Jackson and his friends decked out in their matching red Bennington shirts from graduation. The hike was long. It was tedious. I don’t know when I first started noticing the weird aspects around us until about an hour in. The others didn’t pay any mind to these things, but I saw them: leaves drifting in the air with no breeze, snowflakes trapped in patches of sunlight, floating but unmoving, and that tree. It was a towering douglas fir, half-dead and reaching for the afternoon sun with bare branches. Each time I looked over my shoulder to check for hikers behind us or glanced ahead to see what awaited us, it was there. At first I assumed my eyes were playing tricks on me. After all, we had been hiking for a few hours.
Only when we stopped for a breather and Jackson pointed at a nearby stream did the weird things become too much for me. We were hiking on an incline, and we were exhausted, but when Jackson knelt beside this stream, it was flowing uphill. By then I was a little panicked. I freaked out, telling them that we needed to head back. Who cares if we hadn’t reached the halfway point yet? Was there even a halfway point? It felt like we had been walking for miles!
One of Jackson’s buddies opened up a map of the trail on his phone, and it was blank. He had service and bars, but the map was just…gone. Shocked with sudden fear, we immediately turned and headed back down the path. The sky darkened within minutes of us retracing our steps. Somehow, night was falling, despite us beginning the hike only a few hours prior. I tried to point it out, pulling Jackson aside when we slowed our pace to pass around a bottle of water. But Jackson was terrified and unfocused, and when I asked him what was wrong, we realized that one member of our five-person group was missing. How had we not noticed?
So, we made a U-turn and headed back up the mountain. Twenty minutes later, we found his torn university shirt. I turned the red fabric over in my hands, panicked and bewildered. When I looked up to scan our surroundings, I saw that same Douglas fir directly to my left. I was shocked, and the rest of the group must have noticed. We looked at each other and saw the panic rising on our faces. What the hell was happening?
I only had one goal at this point: we had to get down the mountain to call for help.
We decided to do our best to follow the trail on the way we came up, but only once daylight broke; it was difficult to make out the trail in the dark cover of the night, so I insisted it would be too dangerous. Someone could fall and get seriously injured, we could all get separated in the dark, or worse. So we did our best to hunker down and build a makeshift shelter to wait out the night, but it wasn’t easy. I can only describe the sounds we heard as otherworldly. Despite the lack of animals in the woods, nature seemed to be alive around us. The clicking of bugs kept me wide awake, but the noises were louder and deeper than I had ever heard. The baying of giant wolves, so close I imagined them coming up directly behind us. The snuffling of something in the underbrush, but from a cavernous creature larger than any moose could ever be.
Where had these animals been in the daytime? Why did it feel like they were surrounding us now?
I don’t know how I ever fell asleep, but when I awoke in the morning, the sun was beating down on us. From the sheen of sweat on my forehead to the dreadful pit in my stomach, I could tell something was horribly wrong.
When I scrambled to my feet and glanced around the area, I realized that only Jackson and I remained at our site. It was us, the clothes on our backs, and the demure amount of leftover supplies in our pockets: keys, gum wrappers, half-eaten power bars, and anything else that was ultimately unhelpful. We had been stranded on the forest floor, us against nature, as if something had swooped in from above and whisked Jackson’s friends under the pitch-black cover of the night.
I frantically took in our surroundings, peering into the bushes and pushing through thorny shrubbery. There were no tracks, no drag marks. Not even broken branches. I told Jackson we had to get out of there, and fast. I knew we needed to find the closest trailhead and book it down the mountain. Jackson ran so fast he nearly chipped a tooth on a steep hill. He was trying to keep up with me since I was faster by a long shot. All that sports stuff in high school paid off in the moment, so I almost felt bad leaving him in the dust. I called back over my shoulder to him every minute or so, making sure he was there.
He stuck with me for the most part. His t-shirt got torn by overhanging branches at one point, leaving a nasty scrape almost as red as the decimated fabric. I found myself struggling to remember if he was wearing that shirt to begin with, back when we started.
Then I decided I was losing it. It was like a fight against nature, Jackson and me against the blaring sun and sloping trail. Eventually, Jackson starts glaring menacingly at the passing scenery, cursing loudly and deliriously at everything surrounding us.
When we stumbled upon a trail marker, we barely had enough energy to celebrate. While we caught our breath, I tried to calm Jackson down. Something told me that cursing out Mother Nature wasn’t the best idea right now. Whatever was sicking the elements on us wouldn’t appreciate the nasty things he was saying about them. But he was terrified, and nothing I said could slap any reason into him. I had to lead us to safety, get us out of here.
Suddenly, I heard a sound in the distance. But unlike everything else we had heard so far, this one was man made. Jackson heard it too, and started yelling about a helicopter. He made a break off to the left, towards the sound, and I bolted after him. Somehow, he burst out into a tiny clearing.
Ripping off his red Bennington shirt, he started calling out and waving it in the air like a rescue flag. He jumped and shouted, but as the helicopter got closer, the unbelievable happened. The clearing started shrinking, tree branches reaching from either side to close the gap and obscure us from the view of the pilot. Jackson screamed in fury, cursing the forest like never before.
Then the chopper must have been lowering down towards the treelike because the wind picked up, blowing in circles around us like the blades were inches from our heads, faster and faster, more violent by the second.
The brush beneath our feet blew up in the air along with the topsoil and dead leaves, obscuring our vision. We could hear each other gasping for breath, trying to keep the debris out of our eyes and coughing. I flung my arms out into the space around me, calling for my best friend and reaching out for his hands. But then I felt something shift. The decaying leaves around me smelled stronger. The wind became more vicious. The earth trembled beneath my feet, and I thought I felt something looming above me, breathing down my neck but also looking straight into my unseeing eyes.
Then it clicked. Jackson's red shirt, the gravel pit, Paula's erratic behavior, the other missing hikers...something was picking these people off, luring them deeper into the woods where they were sure to never be seen again. Did the color red cause whatever it was to literally see red, like a sick, twisted joke? Like a giant bull in front of a matador? What kind of creature could it be? Such a stealthy hunter, a commanding presence that made man tremble at the sensation of its mere aura...I couldn't even think about it without snapping my mind.
Before the flurry of leaves and moist earth settled back onto the ground, I knew Jackson was gone. I knew the chopper hadn’t seen us and that I was on my own now. I tried not to panic as I felt like every hidden eye in the forest was staring me down, sizing me up. I took off blindly, but where to, I didn’t know. After what seemed like hours of desperately sprinting, I saw a pile of rocks in the distance. Shelter, I thought, and decided to rest there for a minute to get my wits back about me.
Then I had an idea. With what little juice I had in my phone and whatever cell service luck would afford me, I knew I had to send out a warning. For some reason, I didn’t think about myself. I didn’t think about dying, disappearing, or whatever had happened to my friends. If the nature around me would be the thing to end my life, so be it. I had decided to dedicate my life to nature long ago: to save it from my fellow man, to preserve its beauty, and to keep it out of the wrong hands, the people that wanted to use its power for evil and to bring about the harm of those around them. I know it sounds ridiculous to be thinking about when my life was at stake, but I knew it was what I needed to do.
From my makeshift hiding spot in the rocks, I began furiously typing my story with what little battery I had left on my phone. When my hands started cramping, I used the voice option. I didn’t care. I just had to get my story out there.
For an hour , I’d been trying to put it all down in words. I couldn't believe my luck, that my battery hadn’t run out yet.
I had almost gone to the end when I felt the same creeping silence begin to close in on me. It was as if the forest was falling silent around me, and that silence was racing in on all sides, but it was different from when I was in the gravel pit. There was more to the sensation this time, not just the sinking, breathless feeling and the loss of hearing.
Somewhere deep within the forest, but at the same time, only miles away, I heard an awful rumbling sound, something I’ve never heard before. Nothing like the helicopter, not even the giant animals I was convinced I had heard in the night. I can't even think of a word to describe it, but it filled me with a frantic kind of dread that I’ve never felt before. I feel it in the ground. My entire body wants to run as fast as I can, but it’s like I’m glued to the ground. I taste metal in my mouth like maybe I bit my cheek or the dirt from the wind or I bit on a rock, I spit and I can’t get it out. I’m going to open an app and copy and paste it so people can know while I still can type I’m shaking so hard they have to know.
And the smell I’m smelling it’s like fruit that’s gone ripe, but it keeps getting more ripe, a sickly sweetness that keeps building mixed with the smell of the richest earth imaginable.
This is happening now, I’m smelling this now and It’s it’s like I’m trapped under the shadow of some thing bigger something that’s taking the shadow away from the trees and I can’t see the shadow of the trees anymore and the ground around me is trembling. It’s like I can hear the trees calling out to whatever it is, that’s walking towards me or flying I can’t tell, everything is stretching and growing out towards me. No behind me above me something is coming. I’m I feel better right I feel better than I have in days or however long I’ve been out here I’m not thirsty anymore. I’m not hungry anymore. I feel fuller stronger smarter. My mind is overloading. I’m thinking of 1 million things like I don’t know if I can speak anymore it’s like, it’s like I’m fruit like I’m a ripening on the vine and this giant wings beating above me and the smell is too much I

Background: I have been living in Perth for about 2 years now due to work purposes and what I notice is that most people in the public has the tendency to ignore crime committed by Indigenous people. For example, if a non-indigenous person attempts to harrass other people such as screaming at them for no apparent reasons in public places, that person would either be kicked out by security or told by someone else to stop immediately. But this is not the case if the harasser is of Indigenous descent. There is always this weird "silent atmostphere" where everyone is just kind of trying their best to pretend it doesn't happen.
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What I am trying to do: so this makes me curious about Indigenous crime in Australia in general so I decided to do some Google search about it. I tried searching for "Aboriginal and Indigenous crime and violence in Australia" and (amazingly) there aren't any meaningful sources of information out there! The top results displayed by Google only show random information about Indigenous hardship, culture, history and the like - which is irrelevant to the information I am seeking. The only useful piece of information that I found on Google was an ABC News article discussing research done by the Australian Institute of Criminology - but that article was like 13 years old!
I then limited my search time frame down to 5 years interval and it seems like most of the information about Indigenous crime was kinda stopped or ceased to exist from 2008-2010 onward. This brings me back to the original question: Is this type of information censored by the Australian Government? Why did they only start censoring it from 2008-2010 onward and not before this? Is there a transparent source of information about Indigenous crime that I can search for?
Thank you!

A reflection on my experiences both pre-dx and post-dx when it comes to being covert or overt vs what I have seen online and around me. I plan on talking about this to my therapist. If anyone wants to share their experiences as well, feel free! I think it's worth a discussion.
Note: This is a LOT of text, but a TL;DR will be at the bottom of the post!
(I also use alters/parts interchangeably, and I have no idea what flair to put for this.)
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Pre-Diagnosis: I remember the distinction of a few parts was somewhat there, as was realizing gaps in my memory and loss of time when being asked about things. However, looking at everything from a spiritual POV when I became "aware" was my mind's form of being covert for many years, the coping method my brain chose to use in order to make everything seem as ""normal"" as possible.
At one point, I was in an online circle that had polyfragmented systems. I don't remember if any of them were diagnosed or not. In the public, they were covert. In their little private circle, it was overt and very disorienting to watch at times with the rapid splits and partnerships and etc.
Being as the portrayal of their experiences was vastly different from my experiences, I actively refused to believe that my own condition was anything mental health related, even when parts would show themselves. The denial was strong... I adamantly stated that I would NOT say that I had DID/OSDD or that I was a system unless a professional diagnosis proved me wrong.
Eventually, I fell out with those people over something really insignificant as the final straw. I was ganged up on by them to the point where I was breaking down in the bathroom at my (at the time) new job. Vulnerabilities and experiences I shared were twisted against me and I felt completely unsafe, which is a term I use very rarely for online experiences. There was one part with me at the time, and she said that we had to leave and get actual professional help.
I got a therapist, having had 5 free sessions under this work assistance thing. In that timeframe, another altepart was stuck in the front for one of the sessions and chose to be overt about it. I don't remember that entire week. Once I was back in the front, and I was caught up on what happened, I had no choice but to get this genuinely checked out.
I got an appointment with a clinical psychologist after having to do the run around of a doctor referral [as they can diagnose and prescribe meds in my state hence needing the referral]. I was nervous as hell but tried my absolute hardest to be as open as possible, having a list of bullet points on my phone in order to try and not forget anything. And in the follow up after a whole lot of testing to rule out other possibilities, I was diagnosed with OSDD and clinical depression. I was then referred to a new therapist who had more experience in trauma related disorders.
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Post-Diagnosis: I think the only time I remember being super overt about my diagnosis was shortly after getting it. But I was only that open to my therapist, my mother, and close friends who knew that I was seeing the psychologist, because it was the first time in so long that I felt like I was not completely crazy. The diagnosis was not great news, but it was something to work with. It had a name. I grabbed the pages about OSDD directly from the DSM-5 and showed them in order to try and explain it.
To any other friends, I did not delve into too much more than knowing the disorder had a name, and that I was in therapy. Any alters/parts who would front, to my knowledge, were not super open about it. Most of them would not know at any given time.
But eventually, we collectively did open up more to people, even meeting other systems who were far more overt than us... and it was an absolute mistake as it once again ended in being shoved out by those I thought I could lean on for support on more than one occasion.
Now... my alters do not openly make themselves known to many, even other system friends. Most of the time, they mask as me if I am not in the front. But I/we are medicated now, and more stable. Internal communication between parts is getting better, and I will be seeing a new therapist soon.
I've come to realize that my experiences, both pre-dx and post-dx, are so freaking different than most of what I see online or on social media, and the people I once knew feel so alien to me now in their portrayals that I remember. I fight off the imposter syndrome and avoid most of those old spaces now, and I am more guarded around any new friends I make. Choosing to be overt about these things in the hope of meeting those like me was a 75/25 ratio of absolute disasters to good experiences. I plan on talking about this dichotomy with my future therapist as well.
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TL;DR: My experiences do not feel like they align(ed) with most things portrayed online or in the past friend circles I was a part of. After being diagnosed, it was learned the hard way over time that being overt about the diagnosis comes at a cost, even with those who also are also systems. My parts and I remain mostly covert nowadays apart from certain people that I keep close, and this will be discussed further with my future therapist.