By popular demand, I guess...
I was kinda just being a smart-ass, but some of you wanted more so here it is: epilogues for every NPC as if they didn't continue to travel with Gorion's Ward and instead just decided to live their own life. Obviously, there are some implied alignment changes here.
This turned out to be longer than I expected and I kinda just threw it all together while I was working. Please excuse any typos or sloppy writing.
I want to apologize for one thing, though. Viconia's epilogue really only works if GW is a male, so I had to make that assumption for the sake of her story. If it matters any, I easily play just as many female GWs as I do male GWs. In fact, I probably play more female GWs because I don't care for the romances, frequently play the canon party, and want to nip the lame Jah romance in the bud.
But, to have them all in one place, I included my original smart-ass epilogues with the additional ones I created. Now, every character from BG1 and BG2 has an epilogue. I don't have the EE characters, though, because I play the original games and don't really know them.
So, just for funsies, which one is your favorite and why?
"Anomen continued to wait at the Copper Coronet for a party of adventurers willing to travel with him. Maybe it was the grating sound of his voice, or perhaps the way he leered at women, but he continued to remain alone. Eventually, he needed to find work to make ends meet. With Gorion's Ward having disbanded the slave traders and pit fights, Hendak had to find a new form of entertainment for the patrons. As such, he invented an all male review ladies night, and Anomen found work as a 'dancer'. He left the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart to join the less noble order of the pole. He also renounced his faith to Helm and instead allied himself with Waukeen because if you wanna see some groin, you gotta have some coin."
"Despite Gorion's Ward clearing the trolls from her keep, Nalia was not able to reclaim her lands and instead lost her estate to Lord Roenall. The lord offered to let her retain residence in her family's ancestral home, but only in exchange for her hand in marriage. Nalia found the proposition to be repugnant. Instead, she salvaged whatever wealth she could from her family's keep and moved to Athkatla to start a new life. She no longer helped the less fortunate, as she was now among their numbers and had her own problems. Nalia's lack of any practical skills combined with her sense of entitlement sent her into a life of failure followed by drinking and debauchery. She now spends more time back at the Copper Coronet than anywhere else. It is hard to say where she squanders her wealth more, the alcohol, or on the dancers during Ladies Night."
"After the incident with the Planar Sphere, Valygar was finally free of his past, could retire to his cabin, and pursue his true passion: writing. Ironically, the only inspiration he found ended up stemming from his family's checkered past. Valygar's only works that even had middling success were 'Tuesdays with Lavok' and 'Dude, Where's My Planar Sphere', with the latter being made into a production at the Five Flagoons Theater."
"Haer'Dalis continued to work as a performer at the Five Flagoons Theater. Unfortunately, it struggled due to poor management. It might have turned out better if an outside agent with fresh ideas had stepped in, but Gorion's Ward had better things to do than be a bard. While the work was generally steady, the returns were not great and the material was a little low-brow for Haer'Dalis' liking. The tiefling realized he reached rock bottom when he was cast as the lead in a play about a buffoon who apparently lost a plane-shifting apparatus the size of a small castle and had to find it before his parents returned from Neverwinter. After the opening night, he took his own life in his dressing room. His body was found the next morning with a note saying, 'Art is dead and I am art, so I shall join art in death.' Biff the Understudy stepped in for Haer'Dalis despite never having an opportunity to read the script. Nevertheless, the production was a resounding success and launched Biff's career to new heights."
“A heartbroken Garrick found work as a character actor at the Five Flagoons Theater, but eventually gained more success as a writer and director. He found it to be a mostly agreeable situation, aside from a tiefling primadonna who would constantly belittle his work and call it ”trite" and “drivel”. Fortunately, that situation worked itself out in time and Garrick found Biff to be much easier to direct. With the tiefling gone, his ideas had room to grow. He invented a new kind of love story, one where the protagonist doesn't always get the girl at the end but the journey to that ending would be quite amusing. He labeled this genre “the Comedy of Romance” and the works were mostly based on his own life. His plays were quite popular among the commoners, with his top selling shows being 'Sleepless in Saradush', 'Silverymoon Linings Playbook', and 'Crazy Rich Aasimars'. He eventually fully transitioned off the stage into the director's chair. By the peak of his fame, he was married to none other than Queen Ellesime."
“Aerie continued to work at the circus and WOULD NOT SHUT UP ABOUT HER DAMN WINGS. Even Quayle eventually grew sick of hearing about it. This put strain on their relationship. Things took a turn for the better when Ribald Barterman acquired a new curiosity for his shop. It was a magical ring which he sold to Quayle at a reduced rate out of sympathy. This ”treasure" was actually a cursed Ring of Deafness, which Quayle found to be anything but a curse and wore it for the rest of his days."
“Xzar and Montaron were both slain at the hands of the Athkatla Harpers, but this is actually where their story begins. Xzar, as he had done so many times before, had a backup plan of an arcane nature should death befall either he or the halfling. Their mortal essences were pulled to a pocket plane he created. There they could be channeled into restored bodies cloned at his estate. With this particular round of ritual, Xzar had incidentally made a slight error in the incantation and the two found themselves in a time suspended state in Xzar's pocket plane. It was only five minutes for the rest of the world, but it was fifty years for them. This turned out to be a pivot point in their relationship. Having only each other's company in this shadowy void, they were finally able to work out their feelings for each other. When they had returned to the prime material plane, they discovered their mutual animosity was replaced with love. Rather than pick up their life where they left off with the Zhentarim, they decided to pack it all in, moved to Bryn Shander, and start a bed and breakfast. Montaron rediscovered his halfling roots and love for the culinary arts while Xzar would perform seances to connect guests with their late loved ones. Scones and Bones became an overnight success and was consistently listed as a “must see” in Volo's travel guides. In their golden years, the couple co-wrote a memoir of their journey, ‘Brokeback Montaron’, which is sold in bookstores everywhere."
“After briefly crossing paths with Gorion's Ward, Mazzy Fentan continued her crusade as a de facto halfling paladin. She eventually found herself petitioning for membership at the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart in Athkatla after she had singlehandedly saved a village from an ancient dracolich. Despite the extent of her virtue and accomplishment, her petition was denied on the basis that halflings could not possibly be real paladins. This inspired her next crusade, one to break down vocational barriers for all demihuman races. Why couldn't halflings be paladins or dwarves be wizards? And why did gnomes always have to be illusionists? It simply made no goddamn sense. She began to get traction with her quest when she attended lectures by the wizards of the (sword) coast in Candlekeep. With their help, she ushered Faerun into a new edition era where there would be no vocational barriers for adventurers based on their race. Soon, the world began to see roguish halflings that also venerated Helm, while tending to the wilds as a druid. Half-orc bards also studied as wizards while manifesting natural arcane abilities as sorcerers. Tiefling paladins took their crusades to the wilderness and served as rangers, while sidelining as clergy to Mystra. The world was now a liberated place, free to not make any goddamn sense in a myriad of new ways. At one point, Lady Mazzy Fentan of Trademeet (now formally a paladin) crossed paths with a dwarven shadowdancebard and in that moment she regretted everything. Seriously, just take a moment and picture that. It would look fucking ridiculous.”
“Yeslick's clanhome was flooded once again. Despondent and without options, he took work at a smithy in Baldur's Gate but never stopped dreaming of finding both a clan and a home. He found a way to bring this dream to life after a courageous halfling paladin broke down the barriers for, among other things, dwarves to be wizards. Yeslick had an idea. He studied magic diligently until he was able to cast two spells of great importance: Water Breathing and Permanence. He then searched the lands for other clanless dwarves who would be willing to try something new. With the new clan he formed, Yeslick permanently gave all his fellow clansman the ability to breath underwater. They then moved into the flooded Cloakwood Mines and built the first underwater dwarven stronghold. Using his arcane powers, Yeslick also developed the ability to speak with the marine life that shared this stronghold. And, with that, the clan Aquadwarf was born. At one point, Valygar visited and wrote a play based on Yeslick's story. However, he couldn't even get it to stage at the Five Flagoons Theater. The illustrious director Garrick was quoted as saying, “A hero that can breath underwater and talk to fish? Nobody would go for that!"
“Keldorn finally retired from the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart and looked forward to a much simpler life. He rekindled his marriage with Lady Maria and life seemed to improve. It was rather early on when the couple discovered that Maria had become pregnant again. It was also not long after that when Peony, the housekeeper, also became pregnant. Maria started to ask Keldorn about this, but Keldorn started to get defensive and asked, ”Hey, who's the Inquisitor here?" Then Keldorn started to do the math with her to track the conception of Maria's pregnancy. She certainly did not want him to get to the end of that equation, so she quickly changed the subject. She suggested getting a new maid, but Keldorn chastised her for abandoning someone in their time of need who had been like family for years. He forbade Peony's departure claiming that his god, Torm, would not stand for it. Maria then made a passive aggressive comment about Torm being the god of loyalty, but she was mostly just muttering under her breath to get the last word in. Eventually, both children were born and had probably the most awkward upbringing of anyone in Faerun."
“After Gorion's Ward helped Coran take down a wyvern, the rogue brought the beast's head back to the mayor of Beregost for the reward and accolades. He thought this put him in a position to be a hero of great renown and perhaps, just maybe, people would stop mocking him for his flashy attire and completely superfluous eye mask. They didn't. He only gained acceptance when he crossed paths with a ranger who seemed indifferent towards Coran's keen fashion sense. Coran traveled the Sword Coast with his ranger sidekick, righting the wrongs against the ‘little guy’ and taking the law into their own hands when needed. This partnership dissolved when he discovered that the ranger thought Coran was the sidekick. As if! Coran tried to correct the ranger, whose argument was, 'Really, man, if that outfit doesn't scream sidekick then I'm Elminster's twin brother.' The ranger was not related to Elminster and shared no resemblance.
“Kivan never was able to get his revenge on Tazok. Unbeknownst to him, that honor was taken by Gorion's Ward. His thirst for vengeance continued to eat away at him until he found himself in a bat infested cave in the wilderness. It was then he snapped. He turned the cave into his secret hideaway, put together a disguise and started wandering the sword coast looking for evil-doers to punish. He would leave his calling card wherever he saved the day, a token of a bat with longer ears like an elf. And bats already had rather long ears so these bat ears were almost comically obtrusive. Nevertheless, his deeds were generally appreciated and the people stared calling him Bat-elf. For a short spell, another elf tagged along with him and tried to help, but he was so flamboyantly dressed that one could pick his sidekick out of the shadows blindfolded. Kivan eventually had to send him on his way. Unfortunately, his vigilante crusade abruptly ended after receiving a cease and decist order from DC Comics. Kivan could fight both monster and marauder all day, but his 14 Constitution wouldn't hold up against a lawsuit for trademark infringement.”
“Skie was deeply affected by both the death of her brother and the assassination of her father. And yes, her father was actually murdered and didn't lol-jk back to life in some crappy DLC. In any event, through these traumas, she came to realize the puerility of what she thought was her brilliant criminal masterminding. Instead, she decided to settle down and live a more responsible life as an upstanding citizen of Baldur's Gate. She took the reins of her father's estate after his death and rose to prominence as one of the Grand Dukes of the city. She maintained her relationship with Eldoth for quite some time, inexplicably, as he refused to get a job because he didn't want to take attention from his band which he swore was going to make it. However, the bard spent most of the day either lounging at Skie’s estate or gambling away his allowance with games of three-dragon-ante at the Helm and Cloak. Eventually, inspired by the book “Men Are From Menzoberranzan, Women Are From Immilmar," she decided to call it quits with Eldoth and sent him packing. Shortly thereafter, she met a man who was nothing like Eldoth and they settled down together to start a family."
“Eldoth's dreams of being a world-famous musician fronting the greatest band in Faerun never reached fruition. This was partly because he didn't actually have a band and partly because he didn't have the talent to write music. Instead, he just had a lute he purchased at Lucky Aello's Discount Store that only had one A-string and was missing the E-string. Also, Eldoth could only play power chords and he couldn't really sing and play at the same time. Most of the time he would just strum a chord or two and then talk about what the song would do next, often describing a solo and half playing it on an ”air lute" (while he was still holding an actual lute, mind you) to give people the idea as to how the song would sound when it was finally written. Yeah, he was one of those guys. After Skie kicked him to the curb, he bounced between various barmaids who clearly had low self-esteem, but not low enough to keep him around for long. Eventually, he got one of them pregnant and was forced into a shotgun wedding by the barmaid's father. He now works in the kitchen at the same inn as his barmaid wife. She helps the customers up front and he cooks eggs in the back. Eldoth continues to tell himself that this experience will just provide inspiration for his music and that someday he was going to get the band back together."
“After being rescued by Gorion's Ward, Xan made his way to Baldur's Gate to regroup. He spent an inordinate amount of time beating himself up over his failures and trying to muster the gumption to continue his quest to unravel the political turmoil of the region. However, it took him months to get to this point, and by that time, Gorion's Ward already sorted out the problems in the region. Discovering this, he deemed himself a failure yet again and sunk into a deeper depression. He pulled himself out of it when he met a woman who lost most of her family to violent deaths during the iron crisis, yet she still kept herself together and became a local success in a few short years. Xan immediately fell in love with the recently single Skie Silvershield and began to court her. They eventually married and started a family. At Xan's insistence, and inspired by his wife's name, their two daughters were named Sunshine and Rainbow. Xan was a staunch supporter of his wife's career and stayed home to raise the kids. When they were older and needed less attending, he followed a new dream and became a motivational speaker.”
“Korgan had his revenge against his backstabbing crew and employer, but he felt...empty. It was done, but he felt no satisfaction. Disgruntled and disappointed, he decided to lose himself in his cups at the Copper Coronet. Even this did nothing to alleviate his malaise. One night, having passed out drunk in a peasant room at the Copper Coronet, he dreamt of that final fight but something was different. In the background of the battle, there was a glow coming from the door of a shack and he heard the whispering of a language that sounded like it was from Kara-Tur. When he woke the next morning, Korgan returned to the rooftop and found the shack from his dream. He knocked and was greeted by a priest of Illmater. Korgan told the priest of his dream and he was led into the backroom where he found a man from Kara-Tur infirm and huddled over a cup of tea. The priest explained that he had just reincarnated this man of the faith using a heart delivered by a passing adventurer. Korgan took this as a sign, converted to the faith, and the two paired up to help those in suffering as a result of the schemes of others. The tales of Korgan and Yoshimo were not only told in many of a tavern by the bards, but also collected in graphic serials that were popular among the children of Athkatla.”
“Ajantis' death sent him into an afterlife at Everwatch, the realm of Helm. For his honor and diligence, the devout knight was granted an audience with his patron. Ajantis then told Helm what utter bullshit the god was. I mean, c'mon, he's the god of protection, the Vigilant One, and he couldn't protect a group of knights from a dragon's cheap illusion spell that a mage even tried to dispel with True Sight? It was like Helm wasn't even trying. Helm was stunned by the confrontation but also had no valid defense. Ajantis called Helm to a trial that was mediated by Tyr. After careful deliberation, Tyr determined that Helm was sleeping on the job and the judgment was to demote him to a lesser deity. Now, Helm was the patron of guards, but not actual guards that ever see action, just the ceremonial ones whose weapons and armor are super shiny and probably not even real. Ajantis was then granted Helm's old portfolio and became a god that truly protected his followers.”
“Viconia left Athkatla's government district perplexed. She was rescued from burning at the stake by Gorion's Ward and then immediately dismissed. She found this to be unusual behavior for a male. She was accustomed to men either trying to bed her or kill her, but this casual indifference was completely new. Viconia came to be obsessed with Gorion's Ward from a distance. She spiraled into a fantasy where the two of them had a future together. It was pretty bad. There were some extremely embarrassing vision boards involved and that wasn't even the worst of it. When her mania reached critical mass, her obsession actually collapsed and she had an epiphany. She came to realize that she did not need this man, or any for that matter. She started on a journey of self discovery and took a moral inventory of her past relationships. She wrote about it in the book, “Men Are From Menzoberranzan, Women Are From Immilmar”. She then used the revenue from the book sales to open Athkatla's first feminist bookstore. In Her Words became a mecca for women, particularly those who felt trapped in bad relationships. The community that emerged here created the group, Friends of Galia, which strove to free women from abusive relationships. Eventually, the bookstore expanded to include an apartment block above that became a shelter for such women. Occasionally, the partners of these victims would come around to In Her Words in an attempt to drag their partners back home. You can probably guess how a confrontation between a drunken 0-level commoner and a Drow priestess of Shar ends."
“Faldorn was defeated by Jaheira in Trademeet and lost her title of Arch-Druid. In truth, she was relieved to be relieved of the position. Years of pushing forward the Shadow Druid agenda led Faldorn to realize that she had lost touch with the real Faldorn along the way. After some soul-searching, she reinvented herself as a lifestyle guru and developed an entire line of organic health and beauty products under the name, She-Wolf. Both her products and seminars were all the rage in Athkatla, specifically among noblewomen who clearly had too much free time. Faldorn eventually gave up her residence in natural environs for a lavish estate in Athkatla's government district. Her following soon pressured her to petition to join the Council of Six after the fall of the Cowled Wizards left the position open (aside from a short-term replacement). Her petition was a success and she soon found herself on the Council of Six. Under her leadership, she created created the FDAA, the Food and Drink Association of Athkatla. Now, instead of draconian rules governing magic in the city, equally restrictive rules and standards were applied to the food and drink that the people consumed.”
“Barely surviving being gravely wounded by Irenicus, Tiax left Spellhold for Athkatla where he intended to do what he did best: rule. Learning from his past campaign mistakes in Baldur's Gate, he changed his slogan from ”Tiax Rules!" to “Make Athkatla Great Again”. Of course, what he thought would make Athkatla great was putting himself in charge as a despotic leader. But, he toned down that aspect of his platform and instead focused on the history of scheming and backroom dealing of the Cowled Wizards (as if he was any less evil or scheming) and promised the people he would be different than all the other corrupt politicians. Miraculously, despite his obviously apparent character flaws, he succeeded in replacing the Cowled Wizards' representative on the Council of Six. He decided to take their stance on restrictive magic to the next level and banned magic entirely. Since he didn't study the arcane himself, it was no skin of his nose. This move undermined his support base leaving him with only the most backwards and ignorant followers. He was ultimately removed from his position when he insisted the city build a wall around the planar sphere and was expecting that the city's wizards would be the ones to pay for it. After his removal, his few remaining extreme supporters organized an invasion of the main government building under the guise of freedom of assembly. All nine of these “rebels” were rounded up, tried, and sent to prison. Tiax was convicted of treason and reincarnated in Spellhold, which was now just a common prison. After his eventual release, he was prohibited from seeking any position of power in Amn."
"Edwin Odesseiron continued to lay low with the Shadow Thieves for a while. The Cowled Wizards suffered a crippling blow as a side effect of the conflict between Gorion's Ward and Irenicus. Edwin decided to step in and finish the job. His thought was that he could wipe out the Cowled Wizard remnants and then take credit for their defeat, thereby gaining him more clout among the Red Wizards of Thay. After many conspicuous mage battles in the streets of Athkatla, he succeeded. However, the people who noticed his efforts the most were actually the people of Athkatla. They were tired of living under the Cowled Wizards' iron fist and Edwin was lauded as a liberator and hero. He even had a statue in his image raised in Waukeen's Promenade. Edwin was initially nonplussed over people finally giving him the credit he always felt he so rightfully deserved. But, he quickly came to accept their praise and bought in to being a champion for the people. Edwin continued his agenda of liberation when a clearly insane gnome who found his way on the Council of Six tried to ban magic entirely in the city. Edwin and his followers were primarily responsible for having the madman removed from his seat.
“Shar-Teel, Safana, Branwen, and Alora all happened to cross paths with each other at Elfsong one evening. Shar-Teel was looking to fight a man, Safana was looking to shag a man, Branwen was recently petrified by a man, and Alora was just excited to be somewhere new. The four got to talking with each other and, despite having wildly different personalities, seemed to hit it off. Shar-Teel was sarcastic and aggressive, Safana was self-absorbed and man-hungry, Alora was kind and sweet, and Branwen was the matriarch of the group. You wouldn't think this lot would get along, but they actually did, and their differences merely become the fuel for innocuous hi-jinks week after week.”
"With Gorion's Ward's help, Cernd was able to rescue his child that he then abandoned again at the druid grove near Trademeet. He promised that he would return to raise the child, he just needed to run to the general shop in Trademeet for some pipeweed. He never returned, but that was pretty obvious since he didn’t even smoke. Cernd continued to wander Faerun. It came to light in Cormyr that Cernd had actually married, and had children, with numerous women in Cormyr, Amn, the Sword Coast, Tethyr, Calimshan, Turmish, Halruaa, Icewind Dale, Chondath, Sembia, Impiltur, the Silver Marches, and even the Troll Hills (don't ask). Furthermore, it was discovered that Cernd was not actually a druid, just a werewolf that had a Ring of Goodberries. The druid con was so that he could have a reason to abandon his wives and children and move on to a new situation. You would be surprised at how many women could fall for a guy that can conjure an impromptu picnic in the park. Unfortunately for Cernd, Cormyr was not the kind of place to run afoul of the legal system. For the crime of bigamy, he was sentenced to life in prison. He never set foot near a druid grove again, but he was allowed to participate in a work-release program tending to the gardens of nobles.
“Kagain returned to his shop and grew even more bitter, but not over what the death of Entar Silvershield's son had done to his reputation and business. Instead, he resented that even the Enhanced Edition of the game didn't give him a remotely decent companion quest. By Moradin's hammer, Cernd even had a pretty involved companion quest and the story there both starts and ends with a deadbeat dad! Also, Kagain can regenerate! Korgan can't even do that. And another thing! He was sick of people confusing the two of them as if all dwarves look alike or something. Ok, granted, they're both old dwarves with greying beards, but Korgan's beard is tied while Kagain's beard is brushed out. Of course, none of this made sense to anyone, even to Kagain who never actually crossed paths with Cernd or Korgan. However, the dwarf had nothing to do with his time except stand in his shop, isolated and alone, until he was done in by insanity and plantar fasciitis.”
“The death of Khalid shook Jaheira to the core. She convinced herself that she could never love again, certainly not so soon after his death nor with anyone that would be a child in her eyes. That would be absurd and rather tacky. After her escape from Irenicus' prison and deposing Faldorn from the druid grove, she took over as Arch-Druid. Being a Harper just wouldn't be the same without Khalid. However, the grove would allow her to explore a new, but comfortingly familiar, phase of life. She had barely been installed as the Arch-Druid when Cernd dropped off his child and disappeared again. He did not even stay long enough to tell Jaheira the child's name. Knowing he would likely not return, she named the child Khalid after her lost love. Realizing there were other children our there without families to care for them, Jahaeira would send her subordinates to wander nearby lands and bring them to the grove for a better life. Perhaps not surprisingly, many of these children happened to be Cernd's. She eventually renamed the grove to Kinder Garden in honor of the grove's new purpose of giving these children a kinder upbringing. Jaheira's headstrong personality served her well with these lost children, who all loved her as they would any mother. The Kinder Garden became the most thriving druid grove in all of Faerun. Jaheira eventually died in 1547 DR, with hundreds of children haven been rescued in her lifetime, and a memorial was erected in her honor at the grove. The inscription read, 'Nature's Servant Awaits.'"
“After being freed from Irenicus' dungeon, Minsc put his boots on the ground at the Copper Coronet. Being the simple man that he was, he found himself unwittingly recruited into fighting in the gladiator pits (before Gorion's Ward was able to free the slaves). Yet again, Minsc took a blow to the head. But this time, its effects were something completely new. No longer was he the slow-witted evil-slaying ranger, armed to the teeth and packing a hamster. Instead, his intelligence and wisdom started to blossom and he explored, through dissertation, the impact of modern civilization on the overall ecosystem of Faerun. Indeed, before Minsc started his work, the people of Faerun didn't even have the concept of an ”ecosystem". He left Athkatla to pursue a residency at Jaheira's grove where he could study and work in peace. He published works like, “The Intersection of Geopolitics and Biodiversity: Living More but Dying Sooner”, “The Essential Symbiosis Between the Savage and Civilization”, and “Moral Urbanization: Seeking a More Comprehensive Prosperity”. Minsc continued his studies and writing and ultimately produced enough groundbreaking works to have his own annex in Candlekeep. It was shortly after the dedication of this annex that Minsc disappeared from Faerun, never to be seen again."
“Jan Jansen's fate was the most impressive of all as his endeavors shaped the very fabric of Faerun for centuries to come. His story truly serves as a moral lesson for everyone and we should heed its virtue quite seriously. Helping Lissa and Jaella planted a seed of regret in Lissa with regards to her marriage to Vaelag. Speaking of seeds, this reminds Jan of a time when he was helping his Uncle Scratchy with his turnip farm. However, Uncle Scratchy was hoodwinked and the seeds he received were actually purple carrot seeds. You can imagine Uncle Scratchy's surprise when they sprouted and he suddenly had a field of purple carrots. Well, as you probably know, you can't make turnip stew, or turnip casserole, or turnip pie with purple carrots. But it just so happened there was a mage tower nearby and the resident mage needed a vast number of carrots. Apparently, her plan was to animate them as a kind of vegetable army to combat a myconid infestation in cave system rather close to her tower. Of course, animated carrots are quite self-assured and were immune to myconoid's confusion spores. Anyway, Jan had a once-removed cousin, Bobil, that was lost in those caves when he was a young gnome. He had wandered so deep that he found himself in the den of a solitary xvart who was obsessed with a magic ring. Bobil happened to purloin that ring but it turned out to not be magic at all. However, it was still worth enough for Bobil to buy himself a nice cottage in Trademeet. He then started his own turnip farm and had better luck than Uncle Scratchy. Wait, what were we talking about, again?”
“Boo continued his mission to study the sentient life forms of Faerun and determine their potential impact on the metaverse. He preferred the continued company of Minsc due to the ranger's kindness and protectiveness. Boo found this to be quite valuable in his current miniaturized state. Even after Minsc's accident, where his intellect began to expand, Minsc never lost his good heart and inherent kindness and the two remained the best of friends. It was a number of years later that the term of Boo's mission was complete. A team of his fellow people arrived on a spelljammer to collect the giant miniaturized space hamster. Minsc (and Boo) were on a retreat in a remote part of the Neverwinter Wood when a vessel shaped like a giant acorn landed in a nearby clearing. A number of human-sized anthropomorphic hamster-like beings, who called themselves the Ysoki, emerged and met with Boo. One had a strange crystalline device which it used to restore Boo to his proper size. Minsc naturally remained composed while all this was happening. He and Boo talked often and he knew this day would be coming. Boo returned to the spelljammer with his brethren to debrief on the mission. The Ysoki wanted to bring a sample back to their homeworld for further learning and study. Boo offered Minsc for the task, as the exemplar human would fit in nicely with the Ysoki's advanced culture and society. Everyone was in agreement and made the offer to the ranger. Minsc felt like he had made every contribution he could to the people of Faerun, so he accepted and boarded the ship. Boo, excited to finally be on a spelljammer again, took the helm and plotted a course for his homeworld. At his side sat his friend and faithful companion, Minsc.”

Carol Frye
Fiction Workshop
Apr 19, 2024
My Escape
Yes this is a serious plot, anime fans. We are in a literary fiction class, it will be original
Chapter 1
Trigger Warning: Suicidal Ideation
Seoyeon wanted to faint, or get sick, or randomly fall into a coma. It was a familiar feeling. She sat at the blindingly bright cram school . This entire life felt like a prison in the darkening day. And in this moment of her life her cell was the rows and rows of desks that lie next to each other and pale beige walls. But she, like most prisoners, didn’t want to die. She couldn’t blame those who did.
She just wished that she lived in any other rich country. Sometimes, she daydreamed about swimming from the Busan harbor to the relaxing sunny beaches of California or Washington state. She still remembered going to In N’ Out, the fries, the burger, the “audacious” kids not studying at 8pm on a wednesday. Instead they were sitting down, talking, using their phones, while sitting on tables veiled by umbrellas, while the sun set. She was annoyed by how little international travel she did. Sometimes the In N’ Out felt more real than the cram school. But usually the cram school felt more real than the In N’ Out.
“Seoyeon. You have to be studying right now.” The teacher said in his usual sharp and slightly heavy voice.
Stupid fucking cram school.
Stupid fucking cram teacher. These words always played in her mind while here.
But she did her work, getting distracted or doodling every few minutes. And she anticipated, always anticipated the next class on the bullshit schedule she did every day, counting down the moments until she could leave. The sunset was a good marker that she was in the home stretch. Thursday were the worst kinds of days because they were the days where all of her cram schools were done. Her parents budgeted a little by buying more sessions in what she was bad at. She was good at english, and math, but she simply couldn’t understand biology or especially Korean. She liked rules, Math had rules, and so did English. The rules of english are irrational, and the language contains truckloads of irritating surprises in terms of pronunciation. And sometimes the rules weren’t even always consistent. No, it must have been her history of learning languages. She might’ve liked Korean, but all that was done was boring shitty depressing books. And it would be mediocre if it weren’t for the fact that she had no idea how to intercept the text. It all had to be cookie cutter. English was the last of this class marathon of walking for cram school to cram school over and over again.
That was what she was thinking in the middle of the cold night, walking to the bus home. Only the bright as hell city lights and consumerist billboard guided her. Nobody bothered to place street lights. The weather changed significantly from day to night. The jean jacket that was good enough with her t-shirt in the morning now made her cold. Slowly, the nights were coming early and the prison got darker. She was annoyed by this a s it reminder her of the time she had to fucking waste. She didn’t usually think about this sort of thing at all. Rather she chose to rebel by thinking about new metas in games, and new tv shows (That aren’t stupid K-dramas. She didn’t want to admit she liked those.). People said that she was strapped to her favorite MMOs but she saw it as freedom. A lovely beautiful simple world where she could do so, so much more than study. She could be an adventurer, a hero even. She heard of hikikomori in Japan, people who leech off of their parents and stay at home. She couldn’t allow herself to leech off her parents. She would not leech off her mom, Haeun and especially not her Dad, Doyun, who already couldn’t speak and had a hell of a bad time with his shitty job. And as much as she didn’t want to admit it, she felt like she had to work. Instead hoped that one day she could just get an apartment of her own and live alone being a hero forever. Forget this stupid work culture. Either way she has never had more than six hours of sleep. After all, as the stupid saying goes, you’ll only get into a college if you have less than four hours of sleep. Isn’t that what they want? Seoyeon hoped that her father knew deep down that this was her escape, or that Mom wanted her sufficiently sleep-deprived and this was the way to do that.
At home she she open the door to her living room/dining room which consisted of a dirty white hard couch and cyan pillows. The table was large and glass. Doyun peaked out from the side of the TV. It was the placer where another parent might have called Soyun, but he couldn’t speak or even yell if she tried. He signed “Hello, you better have done your cram school. We will now do homework”
Seoyun walked into the skinny kitchen which was a hallway reaching towards the left. Doyun sat at the far end. She sat on her chair at her desk next to Doyun. She had to do some normal distributions. God, what’s the point in that?
She had to be at least 2.5 standard deviations lower than most people in terms of time saying Korean per day. For one, she learned sign language before Korean, her dad was mute and could only model that language for him and Haeun played a minimal role in her development. His boss never learned sign language and his wife only learned a few signs. They instead preferred to speak to him through a method that he could understand but couldn’t respond in. But he was mute, and her Mom, Haeun, and therefore only played a minor role as a parent, couldn’t even be there to model speech. It was only with instruction from her (at 3!) that she learned to articulate the words in the language she already learned to read (also at 3, she was smarter than average). But out of habit, she always kept signing to her dad. But don’t get it wrong, she felt grateful for being capable of speech. How the heck else was she going to complain?
She didn’t want to be like her dad, who was, by necessity, quiet and small. Doyun, the polite factory worker. The perfect factory worker, who could never respond, only listen and obey. Doyun, who wanted to sign reassurances to his coworkers about how everything’s fine, and to not listen to the colored remarks of his boss, but none of them know KSL. She was certain that Doyun must’ve accepted that he had to go with the flow, and that was why he was the way he was. Even his wife didn’t bother to learn more than a few signs. She much preferred to speak in a method where he could only listen and not respond. She pitied her dad’s lack of vocal cords. And she was not planning on living the way her dad made her live, but she did not want dad to feel the pain of struggling against her currents.
⭑◉⭑
After yet more assignments, a long night of playing SohanWorld with her (male) American friend Gorgen was due. She had to use VPNs to contact the server but that was a microscopic price for being able to play past midnight, and avoid the stupid server curfew.
Gorgen So I found some side hustles where u don’t have to leave home
Neenok Cool
Gorgen You’re so good at this game and overwatch. IDK why u don’t want to play competitively
Neenok I hate this place. I say that over and over.
Gorgen I know. But isn’t gaming fun? I thought u hated the educational system. lol
Neenok You don’t know how competitive gaming is. I am good but I hate spending 6-12 hours of my life in any pressure place.
Gorgen It is “place with pressure” lol. (Seoyeon was mildly annoyed by that) Anyway gonna answer questions randomly on the test or what? It’s coming up in 8 days.
Neenok My dad would know if I did, because I would get about a 25%. Some questions are not A, B, C, and D, you have to write them out. Yes it is coming out in 8 days.
Gorgen Just get 60% of the questions wrong or something.
Neenok can’t
Gorgen why
...
Gorgen why
Neenok I don’t want to put in the effort into answering the questions
Gorgen lol u really that lazy
Neenok I’m not I just can’t have them win. Can have them force me to do this.
Neenok Oh no! Oh no I’m on a server.
Seoyeon would’ve said oh god if her limited english allowed it. Language skills weren’t really valued her.s
Gorgen I’m one of the few english players and the only reason im here is that I bribe the compsci teacher with snacks LMAO. What time is it in korea
Neenok 1:30Am we are not even supposed to play games at this time
Gorgen literally 1984
Neenok You always say that
Neenok let me tell you something.
Neenok I want to prove them wrong so bad. I hate this place I hate the pressure and I want to prove that I don’t need it. That is why I am not doing e sports
Gorgen Damn
Neenok What do you mean?
Gorgen I can’t believe ur determined like that. TBH, if I were like that I would deny capitalism.
Neenok but the US is great. What is bad about the US?
Gorgen FFS we don’t have universal healthcare. My dad is getting sick and we are in a money crunch rn.
Gorgen Our government is corrupt lol. So much corporate bullshit in the government. Both parties are the corporate party.
Seoyeon You have no clue what corrupt means!
Seoyeon shut the computer off because she didn’t want his slander of what she felt was a distant, pure, milk and honey land. She knew she couldn’t come back there. It was all much less pressure. While trying to sleep, she remembered the level up system for spells 1, then 1+2=3, then 3+3=6. She thought that would try to succeed on those questions. Then for each number after those, she would try to fail. Otherwise, she would just make a rough guess.
She wrote down this great idea
Well, she thought, didn’t need his help to screw up the test anyway.
⭑◉⭑
The next day, Seoyeon’s Mom, Haeun came from her business trip in the Philippines. Seoyeon’s notebook was left open and moved into the living room. Seoyeon knew that Haeun wanted to talk with her. So she herself must've made a mistake. Seoyeon had drawn her ideal single room apartment where she made no contact with anyone on the right page, and on the left was a note on how to fail the CSAT. For Seoyeon it was her escape plan as a prisoner of this stupid society. A bundle of hope. But her Haeun wanted to play stool pigeon.
“You really decided to be this lazy.” She looked like she didn’t care. “Well, I want you to succeed” Haeun said this if she was told that this was the automatic thing you were supposed to say in response.
“Don’t tell dad about this-”
“You will not be a parasite” She interrupted “I will tell him because I’m tried of him being such a-
“I'll do the right thing! I'll do the right thing! Sometimes. I make things up.” She rushed to say.
“Why would you even dream about this thing? Why would you care show god damn much about burdening us”
“Burdening! I don’t want to live with you! I just don’t want to do anything!”
“I thought you said you would do the right thing. And why do you like making yourself so pathetic.”
“No I’m not. No I’m not.”
“Then why are you doing it?”
“I DON’T WANT TO BE A PARASITE! I JUST WANT TO REBEL AGAINST THE CULTURE OF THIS STUPID COUNTRY! I WANT TO PROVE THAT I DON’T WANT TO BE FORCED TO DO THIS SHIT.”
“You don’t understand where I came from. Let me explain something.” Seoyeon sat down.
“I didn’t want to marry your father but I had to. He was in love with me. I didn’t care for him but he was better than my other suitors. You were an accident. We weren’t planning on having any children but my parents were against abortioning you. I wish I could but I didn’t.” Haeun stood up, walked a bit closer and leaned in. “Sometimes… You have to go with the rules. If you love your parents that time will be know”
Seoyeon was floored. She always hoped, really hoped that Haeun secretly loved her and her Dad, that like other fictional parents, she was just busy. But she was never there, and she was never aware.
And all she could say after 2 minutes, faintly, was “fake.”
“You call me fake?” Haeun cornered Seoyeon as she was about to leave
“FAKE! All of this love was fake!”
Doyun ran into the room, and, after a bit of hesitation, peeled off her Haeun’from the wall.
“I read her notebook and noticed that she wanted to go be lazy and screw up her test”
Doyun looked angry and held her head within his hands, turning it towards him.
He grabbed her head gently but firmly from above and signed “Seoyeon, I need you to succeed. I know the future is scary but it is gonna be alright.”
“Yeah, as I said it's only a fantasy.” she said.
Haeun looked in the notebook and flipped some pages back. “You were taking it seriously!”
Doyun signs backed her up “Seoyeon, you will not do that.”
“You've always been too soft” Haeun said to Doyun “and, Seoyeon, you are a spoiled piece of shit. If I were like you I would've left all of you. But I am responsible. I will never ever allow you to fulfill any of your fantasies, not even if you decide not to be a parasite on this family. I expect you to listen to society.”
Seoyeon just ran. His dad tried to come after her. She sprinted and got onto a bus without him.
⭑◉⭑
She ran off the bus a few stops later. She felt crazy and wanted the decision to be reversable. God, her mom hated her. She knew now that she could never obey. She was tired, and walked into some random park of plaza will benches. People walked all around her. The park was at sunset. (She had more time on Friday because she didn’t go to math and english during this time.) She then looked at the annoying, evil sign outside the cram school. “If not now, then when?” Such a stupid ideogly. An ideogly invented by the cram schools invented by everyone fuck over every high schooler in korea. And Samsung loved it, her Dad was brainwashed by it, and her Mom only cared about her following it. Was cram school seriously time sensitive shit? From their perspective it was. It was necessary, essential for any life goals. Life goals like mine. The sunset started reminding her of the landmark she used time and time agains to mark the home stretch of this school after school. Escape: If not now, then when? If today wasn’t the day to be free how much longer will I have to wait? How will Mom trying to stop this dream, this escape? Will I be able to succeed at that point?
A person brushed past her and broke her out of her trance. She spent the rest of the day wandering around until it was midnight dark. There were no consumerist billboards or street lamps so she couldn’t see a thing. She got tired eventually and sat down on a bench. She took out her phone. She was in such a daze that she had forgotten her phone existed until now. She saw a sign with the same stupid message as when she started. I guess this slogan is popular …and effective. She felt so much calmer. Outside was a little bubble tea stand. Some teenagers and a lone hairy skinny fat adult sat outside of the bubble tea stand. The stand emitted bright white-yellow light that vaguely illuminated. She could she simple white house with a frames in different colors red, green and blue. She wished she lived there.
The stand reminded her of the bubble tea shop she went to with her weekend job money. Her crush Wook was often there. She would ask out wook, if she didn’t believe that she was a shitty girlfriend. She didn’t care about her looks and was under no delusion that she looked beautiful. Her hair was straight and tangled and while it wasn’t gray or anything it gave off the feeling of having aged like an old dusty school chair from lack of grooming. She had a skin tone resembling a lighter shade of the skin of almonds, and two clouds of freckles in formations around two sagging phone lines propped up between cheekbones and lips on each side. She never wanted to go outside, and had shitty hobbies that she thought no boy would be interested in. She didn’t have the emotional energy to even try to return affection and while she could articulate she knew it as the reason she was a bad girlfriend. So she ignored him.
She looked around for some way to escape but she didn’t know how. So impulsive, and at first solemnly, she got onto the bridge. The houses were still clearer now. Each one having gardens and quiet dark streets. She sees a factory and an industiial distort downstream coated in brown and gray. There no fucking way to ecapse. I’ll be fucked up I’m a orphan at this point I’m a orphan at this point. She looked down in the water.
You shouldn’t do this! This is stupid. You shouldn’t die!
It’s okay. It's just dark. You would even see the river just jump.
A great debate raged in her mind between common sence, because her will to live and general reluctance to die and her want to espcae, the voice inside her head saying: “There’s no other way, how else can we leave?” and “if not now, then when?”
She leaned on the bridge then stopped herself. And stared for a moment. She heard frantic footsteps.
It was her dad, and his face said it all. He knew what was going on.
What in the actual fuck has gotten into me?
He signed “I’m sorry”
She signed “Dad, Mom said that she doesn’t love you. She said that it was a mistake”
He signed “Is that why you did it?”
She yelled: “Don’t blame yourself! Please don’t blame yourself! I was just looking at the river… Don’t blame Mom either…”
Doyun chased Seoyeon.
See, you are a spoiled brat. You just fished for sympathy.
You bitch, now you should fall in there.
Just escape. He has so much on fucking mind. He has to go to sleep at 9:00 pm everyday and the only reason why he doesn’t sleep at 8 is because of you.
Everything you do is so contradictory. You want to be free so how about you just jump the fuck in.
The water splashed. Seoyeon had already gotten off the bridge but she didn't know how to swim very well. Doyun couldn't swim at all and just wade-ran at the edge of the river. Good. Just steadily swim towards the center of the river. At some point he'll stop trying to get me.
She wasn’t scared but her body was. She squeezed her eyes closed. She just tried to get through the river to go with the flow and try to swim slightly faster in case her Dad was crazy enough to follow her.
She came to check if everything was ok. She looked back seeing if Dad was around. She felt like she was about to die of hypothermia. She saw her Dad in a lifeboat. Right then she knew that she deserved nothing.
Contrary to her survival instinct, her eyes began to blur with tears.
She said, and signed “I love I just want to leave I want to escape” hoping that his eyes or ears would perceive it.
Someone pulled her from the waters. Or at least she assumed. She was in some kind of gray room but she couldn’t tell because her vision was so blurry. The woman looked off and inhuman, not really it an uncanny valley kind of way. Her voice sounded like an angelic version of a robot voice but not in a voice that seemed unnatural.
“I have a deal for you Seoyeon. I know how much you want to escape.”

So I am a high school math teacher and there a couple deadheads on staff. I had this idea for a fun t-shirt using the Stealie logo. Basically instead of the lighting bolt it would be a pi symbol and also use our school colors which are red and black. I was trying to see if there is a template out there that I could use to design it. Any help would be awesome!
Bonus Points!, if anyone has a good dead math slogan for the tee.

Hello.
A few days ago I put up a thread with a suggestion for how the lead-up to the ACW2 can be altered to be more realistic, with only some slight lore changes. Though I proposed mechanics changes and I'm not a programmer, I thought I could take it as a personal project to write more. The original thread received about 75% upvotes, so I thought there might be at least a little interest. I am very much hopeful to hear feedback, but thank you to anyone who just clicked this link to read in curiosity.
The original thread was here, but it's a serious 'rough draft'. https://old.reddit.com/Kaiserreich/comments/1cecaka/a_possible_new_direction_for_an_acw_that_still/
This is a long document, so I've broken it up into imgur links for those who don't want to sit and read the entire mini-essay all at once as a big blob of text.

1. Premise https://i.imgur.com/118BhzQ.png
   
2. Backstory https://i.imgur.com/uaFnBc5.png
   
3. Republican Party https://i.imgur.com/GS9TW98.png
   
4. John "Jack" Reed, republican? C'mon. https://i.imgur.com/hqGzxyN.png
   
5. Democratic Party https://i.imgur.com/S1Ku5iJ.png
   
6. Scandal! https://i.imgur.com/FVNCG58.png
   
7. Republican choices for solutions to the scandal. https://i.imgur.com/eKv3bsS.png
   
8. Republican results for solutions to the scandal. https://i.imgur.com/tIYAnL7.png
   
9. Summation, mechanics, and the fail-state. https://i.imgur.com/rFTVYVt.png
   
10. What is the fail-state, in lore and mechanics? https://i.imgur.com/0Lgtzmp.png
    

Premise: The German rework has raised KR expectations to new high standards. Compared, the leadup to the ACW2 looks primitive. This is an attempt at suggesting how this could be altered. It would not suggest fancy mechanics, new 'tick-down' timers, a few decisions, and new focus trees.
Consideration: There are many criticisms that the political landscape of America in krTL just makes no sense. Such is that left-wing ideologies would permeate so far into public consciousness, and that the federal government would be split into a four party system. I therefore approached this suggestion with two goals: 1. Address the criticisms. America retains its two party system. There is no wide-spread support for outright syndicalism, just for a need for more progressivism that will be used by individual syndicalists for their own ends. Either by implanting spies, sympathizers, or 'useful idiots' who naively believe syndicalism can be 'worked with.' Huey Long also focuses on taking over the Democrat party, not forming his own party. 2. Keep the "usual players". Do not touch, expel or introduce anyone strange. The same general people are around. That means the main choices are Olson, Landon, Garner, Long, and Reed. MacArthur similarly is there, but his appearance needs to be earned and his decision to return to a civilian administration or become dictator is determined by paths chosen. None of these are changed, despite any lore changes. Quentin Roosevelt is also around, as he's been introduced to Kaiserreich with some popularity. However, Quentin's personality is more in line with his RL personality that we know of. That is, he was good-natured but brash and impulsive. Not a calming figure.
Backstory: 1936 America, life continues on, the great depression is still a thing. America has been hit by a string of underwhelming presidents who either lack vision, guts, or support to take any sort of decisive action. The 1936 election is coming, and no one expects anything to change. The working class has become more progressive, but outright support for Syndicalism remains restricted to extreme fringes. Not one federal politician openly calls himself a syndicalist. There is no "new deal" beyond a pipe dream of progressive republicans in government.
America is controlled by two parties. The Republicans and Democrats. The republicans control the Senate and Presidency. The democrats control the House by a wide margin.

1. The Republican Party is being increasingly entry-level co-opted by secret syndicalists, syndicalist-sympathizers, and 'useful idiots' who detest syndicalism but approve of civil rights. Genuine progressives are also gaining more popularity among the common voters as economic woes have continued in the country under republican administrations. The old establishment of pro-business leaders still have control of the party, but many have retired. Some have even become democrats, or at least endorsed the democratic party, in apprehension of the rising progressive influence in the party.

Republicans still control the senate, mostly because of long six-year terms, and that independents choose to caucus with them. Herbert Hoover is also President, owing to victories against an unpopular Al Smith in both the 1928, and the 1932 presidential elections.
Republican control of the senate is slim and It requires appealing to senators who have more progressive leanings and some politicians who are serving as Independents. Herbert Hoover is not well liked by the population, but as a second term lame-duck president, not many in the party care anymore about his public appeal. He is a stable figure for the Republicans, because he is a firm anti-progressive and the old power structure is still tenaciously trying to hold onto power.
Noteworthy republicans in the party: President Herbert Hoover, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt Jr, Senate Majority Leader James E. Watson, Governor Alf Landon, Governor Quentin Roosevelt, Frank P. Walsh, Nathan Witt, Henry A. Wallace
Old-Guard republicans leader: Herbert Hoover.
Independent, but is considered the progressives leader: Floyd Olson
Republican progressive who is the syndicalists' 'useful idiot': Henry A. Wallace.
Independent, but votes with republicans, has syndicalist leanings: Norman Thomas
Independent, but votes with republicans, secret syndicalist: John "Jack" Reed
Noteworthy persons who have left the republicans and become democrats: Charles Curtis, Reed Smoot
Following the tradition of the VP being nominated for the next presidency, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt Jr. is the presumptive nominee, and no challenger to his nomination has emerged as all sides approved the candidacy. The republican party has, despite its differences, rallied around the idea that to have any chance of winning the presidency and maintaining the senate, they absolutely must be united. No serious primary challenger emerged.
Question: How is John "Jack" Reed voting with the Republicans? C'mon. Answer: This is partially a conceit. I don't want to expel him. You have to have John "Jack" Reed as face of the CSA. You just have to. But the main idea is that after returning from Russia, Reed claims he simply went there as "a journalist," and that he has since repudiated any endorsement he could have made about Leninism, Bolshevism, and that Syndicalism should be dealt with on a 'if you want the best strategy against Syndicalism, ignore them." Republicans don't like him being associated with the party, but they need him for two reasons. One, he's popular among the working class. Two, his vote also influences progressives like Wallace, Thomas, and even Olson at times.

1. The Democrat party is facing a resurgence in popularity. The years of Hoover and the increasing paranoia about the Republican party are gathering voters weary of syndicalist influence in the Republicans, and old Republicans who defected. And those who didn't outright change their party are now endorsing them after retiring. They outright won the House of Representatives in 1934, and are heavily favored to win the presidency. After some contention for leadership, they are united behind John Nance Garner, an old party boss known for his ability to steer political rules to his favor and has an established political machine in the South, which is a region they desperately need to win. They coalesce around him for a very good reason.

Huey Long.
"America First" Democrat, Huey Long, has his own political machine in Louisiana, and it has spread from its base to other parts of the country. John Nance Garner has the popularity of the old power structure bosses, but that is slowly being subverted by Long's populist rhetoric. Huey Long has proposed a bill that he promises will save the entire nation: Share the Wealth. Democrats decry it as 'flimflam', 'snake oil' and 'syndicalism in all but name,' but the promise of economic equality is a powerful one. Garner furthermore has no catchy-slogan economic cure-all legislation up his sleeve. Garner's campaign is not based on policy he is ready to implement. Nor does he even offer any vision for a new direction. He is campaigning on "I'm not a republican." Huey Long smells blood, and he's impatient. He knows this election is the best chance for the democrats to defeat the republicans, but if Garner wins as the candidate, Long's dreams of the White House evaporate forever. The main speed-bump: the Democrats absolutely refuse to let him be the candidate, and the fiscal conservative economic politicians from the republicans who have defected to the democrats have done everything they can to subvert Huey Long's efforts. When the dust settles, Garner is set firmly to be the nominee, with the Vice Presidential candidacy going to Newton D. Baker, a Ohioan who they hope can deliver them support in the north. The defeat is crushing for Huey Long, but he still has his political machine, staunch loyalists, populist base, and a plan up his sleeve.
In this environment it erupts:
Scandal!
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. is revealed to have had his hand in numerous government corruption cases that stretch back for more than a decade. In truth, this information had been known and held by Syndicalist spies for over a decade and left to fester. It is only to be released now in the last hour when Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was already accepted as the nominee. The republican party is in complete disarray. The evidence is too damning. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. tries to argue he should be the nominee anyway, but that illusion is short lived. The party leaders of the republicans are fractured enough that they now no longer can prevent criticism of their nominee and he is forced to retire. Theodore Roosevelt Jr.'s one universal appealing point is that he was his father's son, and now that family name is tarnished.
Meanwhile, Quentin Roosevelt, ever the impulsive and brash man he is, takes a seemingly ordinary public event he was supposed to merely attend as a guest speaker and turns it into a barn-stormer of a speech in which he openly denounces his brother, confesses the pain he's caused to the family, and emotionally vents about the personal shame he feels. The speech is spontaneous and very genuine. It shocks the audience to such an extent it's picked up as national news. There were reporters recording the speech which only increases the mystique as it ends up broadcast by radio as well. This infuriates Theodore Roosevelt Jr., and he accepts a rebuttal radio interview as a chance to reply. This backfires. The situation is turned on him as the reporter uses it as a chance to publicly press him about the scandals he's involved in, causing Theodore Roosevelt Jr. to clam up for fear of saying something incriminating. The public eats up the drama, and public opinion firmly swerves in the direction of Quentin as "the good Roosevelt".
Problem: The democrats need to decide on a new nominee. And they need to do it now. Furthermore, they must be united. The longer the process drags on, the more their prospects are doomed. They were already bad to start with, but the scandal is almost going to guarantee not just that they will lose the presidency, but that the progressives will overtake the Republicans and finally drive the old guard out. Each faction draws up three plans:

1. Four More Years: Run Herbert Hoover for an unprecedented third term. They can't nominate another old-guard Republican: after the defections, all the best replacements are senators, and they simply can't lose any of the senate republicans who are the old-guard for fear of losing their majority and/or ceding more power to the progressives. Quentin Roosevelt is in the public eye, but he's similarly undesirable because they don't trust his impulsivity. Vice Presidency is offered to Nicholas Longworth, a notable house representative with ties to John Nance Garner who they hope will lure republicans who defected to the democrats back to their side. This plan draws criticism from nearly all sides, even some of the old-guard, for violating the 'two term limit' tradition, but the only other option is trying to nominate a defected republican, and that's impossible. John "Jack" Reed denounces the plan.
   
2. The Grand Bargain: Run unassuming Republican Governor Alf Landon for president. Alf Landon fits a sweet-spot as a candidate. He's a state governor, has the background of being a supporter of President Roosevelt's progressive parties, yet holds a pedigree as a "self made oil man" who "earned" his fortune. In a show of political savvy, Alf Landon approaches Norman Thomas for the candidacy of Vice President. Norman Thomas is known as a progressive 'of character', who is even known to vote against John "Jack" Reed. Landon proposes a campaign with a catchy slogan of: "honesty, integrity, liberty, Landon," to contrast with the scandal caused by Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Landon's distance from Washington makes this argument more credible. The old guard is skeptical, especially because Norman Thomas has the taint of 'progressive' but they decide "kicking him upstairs" to Vice President with a president who is robust and healthy is probably a good idea. John "Jack" Reed privately fumes over this choice, but he can't criticize it without looking like a hypocrite, so John "Jack" Reed simply lets the proposal stand with a vague "good idea, if it works" comment.
   
3. Deal with the Devil: Senator Floyd Olson proposes a plan that shocks nearly everyone in the party: reaching out to the democrats and running on an unprecedented "Unity Party." In a show of political long-sightedness that could reach the level of clairvoyance, Olson says there is an existential threat to American democracy that exists, right now, and it is not any syndicalist takeover. It's the movement of Huey Long. He announces that he's worked the math, and there won't be a chance that the Republican party can win the presidential election over the democrats. However, there is a chance that Huey Long can do serious damage to democracy in America in itself. He therefore proposes that the Democrats officially be offered the chance to run John Nance Garner as Vice President, with Olson himself as president. When the question of why Garner would ever agree to this comes up, Olson says he is willing to pass legislation that will satisfy both parties. All factions are absolutely shocked, but are desperate enough that serious consideration is made of this plan. The old-guard even theorizes this plan could bring previous defectors back into the republican fold. John "Jack" Reed officially offers his support, with the claim that he has seen 'evils of syndicalism' in Long's policies, and that Olson makes a compelling argument. Privately, he's hoping his official support will reflexively make the old-guard suspicious and reject the plan.
   

Result for each choice:
Four More Years: The old-guard attempts to outright bully its way into its proposition, but this backfires. At least half of the old-guard reveals the writing on the wall: Herbert Hoover is unpopular and will never win. And that should mean something. If the old-guard runs Hoover as a nominee, all political credibility of the republican party as the party of steady fiscal conservatism will disappear.
However, this does inspire the old-guard to make a new plan. If they are to run Hoover and he loses, discrediting them forever, what happens if they run a progressive and he loses? The progressives will be discredited instead. The progressive wing, already a small minority of moderates and independents, will be utterly devastated and politically never recover. They therefore callously suggest running the progressives' ringleader as President: John "Jack" Reed. It will mean effectively surrendering the Presidency for four years, but it'll be worth it in the long run.
The old-guard comes out announcing they will support a candidate John "Jack" Reed. The progressives are absolutely shocked. Reed is savvy enough to know this is a political trap, but it could be the opportunity of a lifetime. Reed accepts on the condition Quentin Roosevelt be named his Vice President. The stated reason is that he still has his father's good name and Reed wants to run a campaign of 'popular support'. Privately, Reed plans to use Quentin as a possible scapegoat for his loss, knowing Quentin's tendency for acting impulsively and relative political naivete. Quentin for his part plays the role perfectly by accepting with no reservations, taking Reed's word that he is simply a 'progressive' now and not a Syndicalist.
The Grand Bargain: Realizing this is the best 'middle ground' that they possibly have, and that both individual politicians know each other and share good chemistry, the republican party universally accepts the nomination of Alf Landon with Norman Thomas as Vice President. John "Jack" Reed finally gives his support, ensuring that the party looks absolutely united in both old-guard and progressive.
Privately Reed is cursing his luck, but optimistic about maintaining a 'pressure' role as he is still the most well regarded progressive among unions and can gain credit in 'driving them to victory,' hopefully marginalizing the old-guard as they continue to retire or die out. If this plan is chosen, and the republicans win, Reed will not lead the CSA during the civil war. He will, however, be a minister who cannot be dismissed the entire game.
Deal with the Devil: The old guard decides to risk it and privately contacts John Nance Garner on their own. Garner is at first aghast, then insulted, but after a few days calls back and says he'll take the deal. His stated reason is that he has seen Huey Long's political machine and how infectious his populist rhetoric is and believes him to be a dangerous threat. This is not the real reason for accepting the offer. He is, cynically and callously, counting on the presidential office to take its toll on Olson's ill health and give Garner the presidency he desires after he inevitably succumbs. At any rate, the "deal with the devil" is signed. John "Jack" Reed curses that he's played himself.
However, this allows Huey Long to take over the Democrat party officially. He names himself Presidential nominee, and close friend Seymour Weiss as Vice Presidential nominee. Weiss has little qualifications beyond being Long's trusted puppet. He has only been nominated because Long's childhood friend Oscar K. Allen tragically died of a brain hemorrhage in early 1936.
Summation:

1. At the beginning of the game, the player will be prompted to play as either the Republicans or the Democrats. This unlocks unique focus trees and decisions leading up to 1936's election. It's possible to choose to play as one side and then intentionally lose to the AI side, but it's not recommended as the positive changes done in the focus tree and through decisions will all be undone. The player therefore has incentive to play as the side they want to win the election. Exception: If the player wishes to play the Huey Long secret path, they must start as the republicans and go with Olson, then intentionally lose to Long. The main incentive of playing the Huey Long secret path is creating a very strong AUS at the civil war's start, which will have great advantages over the other factions.
   
2. How to actually win the election mini-game: Each side will have focuses and various decisions that require PP that will do one of two things: a. Campaign in a specific region. b. Lower opponent's influence in a specific region.
   

There will be specific values for region control The party that has over 50% in that region when the mini-game is over wins that region. Each region has a value that contributes to electoral college votes. 266 to win.

1. Huey Long's influence: During the mini-game for the election, there will also be a bar for "Huey Long's influence." This will continually rise during the game. The value at the end will remove electoral college votes from the Democrat party. However, if Huey Long influence reaches 100%, a fail-state will occur. (This fail-state is a bad modifier for both the republicans and democrats, and will continue to haunt the USA for most of the game. It's not bad for a CSA player, though, so a player may want to let it happen.) Both Republicans and Democrats can spend PP on decisions (or take focuses) to lower Huey Long's influence. However, since it benefits the republicans to have Huey Long hurt the democrats' chances, do they really want to? Maybe to prevent the fail state! Who knows. If Huey Long influence reaches zero, Huey Long is officially expelled from the Democrat party. Not only that, but the rest of the mini-game becomes irrelevant. Garner will win the election no matter what. Furthermore, the AUS will not spawn. So, this result should be achievable, but rely on putting all energy on Long, which means wasting PP and doing focuses only related to hurting Long. A human will be able to achieve it. The AI will not, unless specifically set in the starting menu.

Please note that a republican player who is going the Olson route does not have a "Huey Long influence" bar. Olson only needs to campaign. He has a relatively easy win, but the human can intentionally fail the minigame. He's the candidate for if the human can't get the hang of avoiding the fail-state.
What is the fail-state, in terms of lore and mechanics?:
Huey Long's plan is simple: bully electors to vote for him instead of Garner. If he reaches 100% on the bar, Huey Long will try to claim he is the real Democrat nominee, and demand all democrat electors vote for him. In itself, this would do nothing except be more hot air from Long. However, since Long's influence is so big in extent, this will cause mass chaos as voters won't know if voting democrat means they're voting for Garner or Long. The campaign mini-game officially loses all meaning. Neither side will get a majority of electoral college votes and the 12th amendment will kick in. The player can then choose if the republican candidate or Garner won, but the USA receives a modifier that gives them a very high stability hit.
Constitutional Crisis: "Americans believed their constitution guarantees "government by the people". Huey Long has shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that it has loopholes that can subvert that expectation, and faith in it as a symbol of liberty is broken. The mystique of the wisdom of the "Founding Fathers" in creating the document that represents our nation has been permanently tarnished."
"But the 12th amendment was added later in 1804? Why would they think that when it's not in the original text? Fair enough, but this describes public perception. The "zeitgeist" in America is now that their vote doesn't matter. "Constitutional crisis means something else, it means a situation when there's a conflict in government functions that the constitution can't resolve." Yes, I'm aware, I just thought it was a nice pun.
Thank you for reading. If there is support for this, I am willing to write more. Refine. Redraft. However, if not, I'll just... stop.

It's unclear what "extraordinary" means in Carl Sagan's maxim. If it simply means that events that are inherently improbable--perhaps because they are rare, unique, contrary to patterns we take for granted--then it's obviously true. The problem is that, as usually stated, it's just a slogan used to denigrate.
Imagine you believe your ticket contains the winning lottery numbers. In order to have justification you won, you need evidence that would be more shocking if you did not have winning numbers.
(Don't be confused--it doesn't matter that anyone has ever won the lottery, that someone out there wins every time, or that someone must win. That's totally irrelevant to the analogy. Perhaps youre playing a lottery with an unknown number of combinations with an unknown number of players--we are analyzing a very particular contextual probability: given the absurdly high number of combinations, what's the odds you in particular won)
For one, what's the probability you misread your numbers, perhaps blinded by enthusiasm, 3-4 times in a row? Pretty unlikely, but not impossible. To assuage your doubt, you ask a friend to read your numbers for you. Even better if you write them out and don't tell them what they are confirming for you. Now you must multiply the improbability of you misreading your ticket multiple times, and multiply that by the improbability of some third party also misreading it and getting the same result.
Okay, what if it is a prank? You consider that, but imagine you're a pretty low-income person and your friends aren't known for being deliberately cruel or being pranksters. Winning the lottery is pretty crazy though, so it's worth wondering if someone is messing with you; however uncharacteristic that may be of people capable of doing it.
Just in case, you confirm the brand name on the ticket to ensure it's legitimacy. You also know yourself as someone who'd securely keep your ticket in your wallet all day. Now despite these enormous odds of losing, you have every rational right to believe and celebrate your victory!
...
Why? Because highly improbably, rare, anomalous, unique events, and rare events outside our experience are established all the time.
Yes, first consider the inherent or prior probability that you'd come up with winning numbers. That is very low. However, now you must look at the evidence that you won, given that you lost.
What's the probability that, given you lost, you'd be able to confirm your winning sequence 3-4 times--incredibly low! Now, what's the probability an independent person would also confirm your winning sequence? Also, incredibly low. Finally, what's the probability that it is your ticket, not a prank, that won? Incredibly low.
In analyzing probability, now you must multiply the improbability of each event independently, if you lost. That's because each surprising evident you would not expect if you lost carry their own independent force.
So, now multiple the odds of 1) Personally confirming the ticket, 2) having an independent check, 3) the strong memory of holding onto your ticket without prankster friends. The probability that 1-3 would occur, if you were mistaken is astronomically low.
Without getting too much into the math, you have to way the improbability of an event by (A) seeing how probable the evidence we do have supports the hypothesis. In other words, the confirmatory evidence for that individuals lottery victory is entirely expected, I they won.
However, if that individual lost, the you have to multiple each type of unexpected evidence given that this person lost.
...
In the case of lottery winners, someone or some people win. People win lotteries all of the time. But that isn't relevant to the probability that you won. After all the government beauracracy and red tape, you'll have that winning money in your bank.
That said, we can stole hold rare, unique, etc. events. For examples, I believe Dr. Timothy McGrew gives the examples of astronomers dismissing myriads of ancient reports of meteorites because "that just doesn't happen".
Or you could imagine islanders who's whole cultural history took place in a warm climate. If several reliable witnesses went on an epidition and cited that our understanding of the laws of climate were incomplete, would we be forced to rationally reject them?
...
But of course, miraculous events are miracles. I personally fail to see how the logic of evidential situation changes.
First, you're going to want openness to a belief in God who can perform miracles. I'm inclined to use that language, very accurately and technically, to describe the origin of finite existence or infinite contingent existence. I find consciousness equally miraculous, as well as being's ability to manifest to it, and consciousness to be directed at it.
Although I think atheist is not an intelligible view, theists struggle to explain our sense that personal and social justice can only be partly satisfied in this life, and sometimes end in tragedy. Consciousness just is the expectation of continuation, and those who give up on that mentality die first.
Finally, the natural world is in horrible disaray. It is equally beautiful and hideous. Human beings have not lived up to a calling to be "image bearers", which is the solution to all of this.
...
Given these reflections on probability and the religious context of the central Christian miracle, I think it's quite plausible the evidence can be sufficient. That, of course, demands exploration and difficult historical work. That said, it's absurd to dismiss the resurrection using Sagan's slogan.

Is it possible to make it so we can sort posts on the subreddit by In Character vs Our of Character, maybe using flair for the purposes of browsing?
I really don't want to see people complaining about nerfs/buffs or posting the numbers behind planetary conquest. While the game is no doubt solid, it's the kayfabe that made this subreddit my favorite. Everyone is mathing the fun out of a game about shouting slogans and blowing shit up and it's deeply demoralizing. I want memes or, at the very least, complaints that are kept in universe like that Helldiver who made the meme about the Spray and Pray being for "entertainment purposes only"
I've never run a subreddit, I don't know how big an ask this is. I will probably get downvoted to Hell, but we're not HeavenDivers and I really think this could remove 90% of the whining that makes me want to avoid the subreddit.

Hey there,
You have hereby entered my post so feel free to read it and if any of this sounds good to you feel free to message me (I am sure if you are an interesting person we will get along well, yay).
To get the most painful thing out of the way, if you hate math or physics, that'd be a big bummer, because they are my two main passions and I don't think I would get along with you if you did not like them, I apologize :(.
So anyways a bit of information about me: As you have probably read from the title, I am a 17 year old guy from the GMT +1 timezone which means if it is midnight for you, its maybe not midnight for me, i don't know, anyways.
I have a lot of interests so I am sure some of yours will be covered by mine and I would love to hear about your interests and what you do in life, because learning about other people is f u n. My interests include but are not limited to (sounds like an ad slogan, which i mean, this sort of is):
-Physics, Maths, I like both of them, particularly gravitational stuff and astronomy, I am a novice in astronomy -Poetry, I write poems -Reading, I read a bit -Philosophy, metaphysics in particular -Guitar, I like guitar -History, I like history -Movies, series, romance in particular for movies, for my favorite movies you will have to message me -Filmography and music in general are really exciting subjects, if you know anything about that give me info -Learning about other peoples interests -Journalism (I like to do deep dives into various topics)
What I am not particularly interested in is food, I just eat. Thats it, really. I dont know why I mentioned that but whatever its there now. For all of the people out there that like to know what music I always listen to:
-The Beatles, I love them -Nirvana, I love them, not everything from them, but I love them As for Nirvana and The Beatles I also really love their history -Queen, because of course -RHCP, they just make good music I guess
My favorite songs are -A day in the life -Bohemian Rhapsody
The man who sold the world (Not the Nirvana cover but the original David Bowie song, you need to listen to it, its wonderful. Dot.)
If any of that sparked your interested and you read all that stuff, feel free to message me, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

Hey there,
You have hereby entered my post so feel free to read it and if any of this sounds good to you feel free to message me (I am sure if you are an interesting person we will get along well, yay).
To get the most painful thing out of the way, if you hate math or physics, that'd be a big bummer, because they are my two main passions and I don't think I would get along with you if you did not like them, I apologize :(.
So anyways a bit of information about me: As you have probably read from the title, I am a 17 year old guy from the GMT +1 timezone which means if it is midnight for you, its maybe not midnight for me, i don't know, anyways.
I have a lot of interests so I am sure some of yours will be covered by mine and I would love to hear about your interests and what you do in life, because learning about other people is f u n. My interests include but are not limited to (sounds like an ad slogan, which i mean, this sort of is):
-Physics, Maths, I like both of them, particularly gravitational stuff and astronomy, I am a novice in astronomy
-Poetry, I write poems
-Reading, I read a bit
-Philosophy, metaphysics in particular
-Guitar, I like guitar
-History, I like history
-Movies, series, romance in particular for movies, for my favorite movies you will have to message me
-Filmography and music in general are really exciting subjects, if you know anything about that give me info
-Learning about other peoples interests
-Journalism (I like to do deep dives into various topics)
What I am not particularly interested in is food, I just eat. Thats it, really. I dont know why I mentioned that but whatever its there now. For all of the people out there that like to know what music I always listen to:
-The Beatles, I love them
-Nirvana, I love them, not everything from them, but I love them
As for Nirvana and The Beatles I also really love their history
-Queen, because of course
-RHCP, they just make good music I guess
My favorite songs are
-A day in the life
-Bohemian Rhapsody
The man who sold the world (Not the Nirvana cover but the original David Bowie song, you need to listen to it, its wonderful. Dot.)
If any of that sparked your interested and you read all that stuff, feel free to message me, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

Hey there,
You have hereby entered my post so feel free to read it and if any of this sounds good to you feel free to message me (I am sure if you are an interesting person we will get along well, yay).
To get the most painful thing out of the way, if you hate math or physics, that'd be a big bummer, because they are my two main passions and I don't think I would get along with you if you did not like them, I apologize :(.
So anyways a bit of information about me: As you have probably read from the title, I am a 17 year old guy from the GMT +1 timezone which means if it is midnight for you, its maybe not midnight for me, i don't know, anyways.
I have a lot of interests so I am sure some of yours will be covered by mine and I would love to hear about your interests and what you do in life, because learning about other people is f u n. My interests include but are not limited to (sounds like an ad slogan, which i mean, this sort of is):
-Physics, Maths, I like both of them, particularly gravitational stuff and astronomy, I am a novice in astronomy -Poetry, I write poems -Reading, I read a bit -Philosophy, metaphysics in particular -Guitar, I like guitar -History, I like history -Movies, series, romance in particular for movies, for my favorite movies you will have to message me -Filmography and music in general are really exciting subjects, if you know anything about that give me info -Learning about other peoples interests -Journalism (I like to do deep dives into various topics)
What I am not particularly interested in is food, I just eat. Thats it, really. I dont know why I mentioned that but whatever its there now. For all of the people out there that like to know what music I always listen to:
-The Beatles, I love them -Nirvana, I love them, not everything from them, but I love them As for Nirvana and The Beatles I also really love their history -Queen, because of course -RHCP, they just make good music I guess
My favorite songs are -A day in the life -Bohemian Rhapsody
The man who sold the world (Not the Nirvana cover but the original David Bowie song, you need to listen to it, its wonderful. Dot.)
If any of that sparked your interested and you read all that stuff, feel free to message me, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

Short and rapid fire takes on a variety of topics within the space, mostly centered around image generation. All of this has been discussed before, and nothing here goes particularly deep. But I find a lot of discussion these days tends to gravitate back towards any of these things.. so I thought, maybe there is something useful in my short takes here, backed by sources or secondary opinions where appropriate/available. No idea why I'm posting this, hope this is helpful at least as a summary/starting points to some of the debates and the general/reasonable? more pro-ai stance.

AI art is theft.

This is one of those slogans that sounds good on paper.. but on closer inspection you'll find it's very.. "slogan like". There have historically been lots of attempts at framing copyright violations as theft (see e.g. "Piracy is theft", but so far none of them have actually stuck. Copyright violations do not deprive someone of physical goods, and thus not all copyright infringement results in direct monetary loss, unlike actual theft. That said, it feels uncharitable to just leave things at that. Let's steelman this for a bit..

AI art is copyright infringement

This is already a more nuanced opinion. But it's still too hasty. For something to be infringement it has to be a derivative. Importantly here derivative does not mean that the output of something is derived from all the inputs. In terms of copyright, a derivative is a work that shares "substantial similarity" with the thing that it is now infringing upon. Knowing this we now have to ask ourselves what part of "AI art" is doing the infringement? In the US this is still being battled out in courts, but from these cases we can already see that at least over there it's currently not very likely that in any of those the models themselves are to be the infringing part, since these arguments have been shot down multiple times now. The main question appears to be whether the initial data preparation should be considered infringement (i.e. the initial copying and modifying of the files in order to do training). One could argue that if there is no infringing output at the end such internal use should also be fair use, but we have seen cases where this was judged not to be the case, e.g. here. We can now also look to the EU to see how they have regulated this aspect, and see that the EU considers the creation of such models to fall under the text and datamining laws wrt copyright law. Roughly speaking, what these models are now required to do in order to operate within the EU market, is to respect opt-outs when training such a model and publish some kind of summary that details to some extend what work was used to create these models (we don't know yet how detailed these summaries should be). You can probably expect the EU to set the global standards as it has a tendency to do just that.

But it is copying my unique style

I'd argue these models generally do not perfectly copy most of anything, let alone something as complex as a style but merely approximates these things. There are a lot elements that go into style which go beyond just the visuals of a single work. And i'm not convinced current AI has been able to replicate such nuances. Regardless, styles do not enjoy any copyrights, and they probably shouldn't as this would be hugely stifling to the scene as a whole.

But they do copy things almost verbatim

Yes there are generally a select few individual works that these kinds of models tend to memorize. The most cited work here is probably that of Carlini et al. but you can also for instance see this being verified in the SD 3 paper. However we're talking about a few hundred works in datasets that are usually in the hundreds of millions. And none of that is intended behavior. I think it's quite fair to consider this de minimis as long as reasonable steps are taken to prevent this behavior.
Interestingly enough, these discussions are usually about either individual works or styles, but rarely about characters protected by IP laws (perhaps because most of the opposition does not own any rights to such affected characters). But here we can see an actual issue arising wrt copyright law, originally dubbed the "snoopy problem" by Matthew Sag (he also outlines a compelling legal opinion on why AI training should mostly be considered fair). Characters do not live as individual works but generally have recognizable features across multiple works. And learning this is pretty much the bread and butter of ML. So far this hasn't really been brought up in any of the cases. But i also don't think this would be some kind of insurmountable problem. For example, PixArt-a is an image generator that has been trained on synthetic captions, as such it doesn't really know who Mario is. It does believe that Italian plumbers are supposed to have mustaches, red hats and blue overalls, but that's about where the similarities end. Nor will it know specific artists by name. I think this is a very reasonable approach to these technologies.

How can it create anything new if it only knows its training data?

There seems to be this camp of people that think at worst it's only copy pasting stuff and at best it is interpolating between training points, believing that no amounts of extrapolation is possible with these systems. Although this mostly depends on how exactly you're willing to define inteextra-polating, It isn't true that neural networks can not extrapolate at all. There's a lot of research out there like this where models are perfectly capable of generalizing on certain problems. For diffusion models specifically there is evidence that they converge to learning a sort of underlying language of whatever it is trained on rather simply mushing things together, and are able to learn and combine abstract concepts into never before seen ways. It doesn't really come to a surprise to me that these same techniques are now being explored in e.g. novel protein discovery.

They don't learn like humans

No they don't. They learn, like humans (take note of the comma). At the end of the day these things are all statistical models where the objective is to "learn" (find a set of parameters) how to make correct predictions about unseen inputs using previous observations by learning to recognize and corelate different patterns. I think it isn't unreasonable to call that learning. These things aren't dictated or spelled out, they have to be figured out by the system itself, they have to be "learned". So as a very short laymen explanation, it fits. To me this is also all just a big red hearing for most of the discussion anyway.

AI "art" isn't art

Usually when people try to make the point that it isn't art it boils down to a supposed lack of control or effort that went into the work or that you're just using other peoples/machines works. However there are lots of genres of art were all of these things are present too. Wildlife photography is for instance an example where control is lacking and the work itself is produced by a machine, yes I totally mean this, no that doesn't make those works any less impressive. We have artists like Jackson Pollock with works where most of the control was surrendered in order to create it, entire genres of appropriation and found art with famous artists such as Marcel Duchamp or Andy Warhol. The more you dive into the history of art the sillier I think this argument of "it can't be art" becomes.

AI "artists" aren't artists

This is, in my experience, usually paired with the understanding that all AI works are simply the product of someone without any other artistic skills, types some words that might as well be a search query into some online service, in an attempt to LARP as an artist. But this is ignoring established artists doing creative things with AI such as Anna Ridler or Boris Eldagsen. Or users on this very subreddit that in fact are comfortable and capable of producing works in other mediums. It often also zooms in on people who only use only services like Midjourney that only have a text interface in favor for the vastly more complex things that people have done using purely local and open source solutions.

You just simp for big tech

I'm not that big of a fan of all the closed source solutions out there, and I'm not the only one. Most of us believe that this is coming, it's just a question of in what form. I think fighting this on grounds of e.g. copyright is not only entirely ineffective but is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Doing so there will effectively be a bunch of companies that form some kind of copyright oligarchy (Getty, Disney, etc.). Whom are sitting on tons of work that they own the rights to. They will gladly secure a closed monopoly on these kinds of services without providing much if any compensation. And I'm not the only one saying these things, my opinions here are largely in line with non profits and civil rights organizations such as the EFF or CC and Wikimedia.
A common retort is often that this is still benefiting large corporations because of their pre-established position in the markets. And yeah sure they will benefit, but my objective is not to destroy them. I want to flatten access to these new systems and have everyone be able to enjoy them as free as possible, including those large corporations. I admit that they are in a position to build the best models, but I do not need a Ferrari to drive to work, nor do i want to be forced into a position where i necessarily have to lease one from them. There are also good reasons for large corporations to be more open with their models/research, ranging from free research/labor to more favorable regulation in the EU. And compute costs for training image generators can be surprisingly low right now, with LLMs perhaps following suit to some extend. Ultimately anything that isn't strictly compute bound is quickly conquered and distributed amongst the smaller players, e.g. they have no moat.

They will come for you too, proompting will be automated away/made trivial

This really strikes me as a weird argument. If you actually look at how things have been trending, they have been trending towards more control not less. The ability to provide these models with text was actually a step up in the amount of control we had over them before. This trend has only continued with things like control nets and faster models that allow for live feedback, etc. If you look at e.g. voice generation, we're currently at the point where you can specify text, pitch, breathing pauses, voice-to-voice, etc. Things will hopefully become more intuitive and seamless to control, which yes will make things easier, but that's not the same as being automated away, and I do not at all think that's a bad thing.

The current state of the sub

Although I enjoy this topic, the sub itself has been.. underwhelming as of late. It currently consist mostly of the mandatory weekly post about creativity privilege or some other AI-Bro take, people roleplaying as AI experts because they watched tech youtuber #732, unflattering news article from a certain mod without any further explanation or discussion, artist #856 with a totally new take they came up with after listening to YouTube content creator #412 while procrastinating on their math homework, passive aggressive question that I promise are actually asked in total honesty, some people that think this is a popularity contest and think internet points have meaningful value and are really sad that they aren't getting those points (though I agree the reddit hivemind tends to downvote too much too often), and some weird people trying their hardest to character assassinate the sub instead of engaging with the discussion? Oh right, and the rare and occasional drop of knowledge from a new papeexpert/lawsuit update (thnx Wiskkey).
outside of those little nuggets now and then I'm a bit tired of it all. I am grateful of the couple of interesting voices, on both sides of the isle that i was able to speak to and explore these issues with, but sadly those are few and far between. Maybe I just need to step away from the topic for a bit.
If you think I missed any other low hanging fruit or something.. let me know and i might add it or something..

7 agosto 1958
Los Pilares, Tlaxcala, República Popular de México
The curtains fluttered with the wind blowing through the windows of the García Rosa home. It was a blistering day, so hot that not even the air current could provide any respite to the people inside. Typically, Juan would be working the fields at this hour, but he learned the hard way that being subjected to a sun this intense could only do more harm than good.
“Bueno que hayas regado el jardín por la mañana,” Valeria said, talking over the sound of their three niñitos playing with the wooden toys their neighbor made for them.
“Sí, bueno,” replied Juan, his mind elsewhere. He was often preoccupied with thoughts of the past. His family had lived in this area for generations, and – truthfully – he wanted better for his children. He was pulled out of school at a very young age so that he could help his father with work in the field. His extended time at home also put him front and center to watch the drunkard take out his frustrations on Mamá. There were more than enough sleepless nights caused by the thin wooden doors failing to muffle the weekly arguments in the common room. When he had the funds and the courage to finally leave, he loudly told his father that God willing he would get the punishment he deserved and never looked back. That was more than 15 years ago now, and it turned out to be the last thing he would ever say to his father.
“Papá, ¿Podemos jugar con la pelota afuera?”
“No, Quique, hace demasiado calor.”
“¡Pero hace dos días que no salimos para jugar afuera!”
“Enrique, hace más que calor afuera. Por favor, escucha a tu padre y juega con tus hermanos en la casa.”
“Uuuf. ¡Nunca me dejas hacer nada!” said Quique, stomping back to his siblings and plopping himself down on the old carpet.
Juan held back the urge to lash out at Quique’s attitude. He understood the boy’s frustration. He didn’t want to be like his own dad and put him down even more than he already is. He simply sighed and looked to Valeria, similarly frustrated with their children’s restlessness.
“Son las tres, Juan. ¿No quieres traer el agua del pozo?”
Juan looked at his wife, then slowly got up off his chair by the window preparing himself to lug buckets of water back from the well.
“Bueno, dame los cangilones.” Valeria gave him the two buckets and the stick he used to carry them on his back. He put on his sombrero and made his way to the well.
Los Pilares was a small village on the edge of La Malinche, a volcano that has been dormant for thousands of years. Or at least that’s what a traveling university student once told him on his way to climb to the zenith. Los Pilares has always been small. The people living here have had a presence for longer than anyone can remember, but the residents will always claim they have direct ancestry with the Aztecs that lived here thousands of years before. Juan doesn’t buy that story, but he doesn’t bother trying to correct them either. Most of the money made here comes from selling the crops from the local ejido to the government, though they don’t have much of a choice in that matter. Some people, including Juan, hoard part of the harvest for themselves so that they don’t have to buy it back from local markets. It is officially a crime to hoard ejido harvests, but the alcalde has traditionally forgone reporting people he doesn’t especially dislike.
The well was in the center of the village square, right in front of the town hall. It was more lavishly decorated than the average building in Los Pilares, but still humble compared to other towns in the area. On the front was hung a large red banner with the words “TIERRA Y LIBERTAD” written in white. It was the banner of the revolution. His great uncle fought in Zapata’s Ejército Libertador del Sur and died fighting for that slogan. He really believed in the ideals of the revolution. Almost 50 years later, Juan wondered what his great uncle would say about this image.
The old well was probably the first thing built in this village. The wooden bucket hadn’t been replaced for over 6 years at this point and it showed. As Juan pulled the water out, he had to quickly pour it into his own buckets before all of it leaked out of the bottom. Lower the bucket down, wait for it to fill, then as fast as possible reel it back in to pour what remained into the buckets for home. After a significant effort on his part, Juan filled both buckets with the cold water graciously given to him by the earth. He took a drink through his hands with what remained in the last bucket up from the well, hooked his buckets onto the hauling stick, stuck it on his back, and began the trek back home.
There was nobody outside. Typically, there were kids playing fútbol in the street and people talking with their neighbors about the drama with this cousin and that ex-girlfriend, but today it was just silent. The Nahua worshipped Huitzilopochtli as the god of the sun, and it isn’t hard to see why he was one of the most important to the Aztecs. They believed that blood sacrifices were required to ensure that Huitzilopochtli had the strength to continue his journey across the sky, and that otherwise he would grow weak and destroy the world.
Perhaps they were right, Juan thought. It never used to be this hot.
It was still warm at twilight, but it was cool enough to stomach being outside for longer than 10 minutes. Juan sat outside and watched the kids play with the ball in the street. A cool breeze passed by every now and then, flipping the pages of Juan’s book. His home was positioned in the center of a perpendicular intersection of his street with another, something which happened to give him a grand view of La Malinche. He had read about the real La Malinche before; a Nahua woman that translated for Hernán Cortés’ army and served as his consort on the campaign. The mother of México, yet also the worst traitor México had ever seen. She perfectly describes México as a country, Juan thought.
“¡Niñitos, los espera la sopa de tortilla!” Valeria brought five bowls and spoons outside and put them on the table. She then went and brought the pot of sopa de tortilla from inside, made with the water that Juan retrieved from earlier that day. The kids excitedly sat down, ready for mamá’s ‘famous’ cooking. Each person got a healthy helping of soup and crunchy tortilla strips for garnish and pickled pimienta on the side. Before long everyone enjoyed their comforting food together.
“Muy bueno, mamá. Super buen trabajo.” Jose said with a smirk to Valeria.
“Pero ya lo sé, estoy famosa por mi comida.” Replied Valeria, smiling back with a playfulness in her eyes.
Jose met Valeria in Puebla shortly after he left his mother and father. He lived there for a time working in a bar where he started chatting her up when she visited after her university classes. She was studying mathematics at the time, but the catastrophe shook up the country to a point where she couldn’t continue studying, to her endless disappointment. Juan admired this about Valeria. He thought it was good that at least one of the kids’ parents have a good education, even if it was the mother. She tutored them in math when they had trouble with their homework and made sure to help as much as possible with their other subjects. Whenever one of the kids started being stubborn, Valeria made Juan an example of someone who didn’t have the chance to go to school at all. This of course hurt Juan, but he understood that his children deserved a future better than his own. Whenever he saw her helping the kids with school, it made him feel as though the world was at least a little bit just.
It was late now. The kids tired themselves out with their late play session and were fast asleep in their shared room. Valeria and Juan laid outside on a blanket and faced up towards the night sky. The nicest part about being this far away from a large city was seeing the absolute beauty of the stars without the light pollution.
“¿Y cuál es la vía láctea?” Asked Juan.
“Pues, todo lo que ves es la vía láctea.”
“¿Enserio?”
“Enserio. Se llama la vía láctea porque las estrellas parecen como leche en el cielo.” She pointed to the densest part of the galaxy. “Leí en la universidad que en el centro tiene que haber algo que cree una fuerza gravitacional tan fuerte para sostener toda la galaxia.”
“Guau, realmente sabes de lo que dices.”
“Me encanta la astronomía. Si no hubiera estudiado matemáticas habría estudiado astronomía o física.”
The two laid in silence for a while, taking in this moment of peace together.
“Espero que los niños sean inteligentes como tú.”
“O, Juan. Tú eres inteligente también. No crees suficiente en ti mismo.”
Juan smiled. Valeria pulled his arm under her head and laid her leg on top of his. There couldn’t be a better way to end this scorching day.
“Tenemos que irnos a la cama, Vali.”
She shuffled herself closer to him. “Mm. Tres minutos más.”
 
 
^{please forgive any weird spanish. Im just a gringo :3}

Credit to for the NOP universe.
Hello all, I hope life's treating you well.
We return today to a catch up with Bernard and one of his students, who has a question for him some might find funny and others may hate that I brought into this future setting, let's find out!
A thank you to all the authors who I asked to let me reference their stories for this chapter, Troublemakers by u/SepticSauces, Living in Harmony by u/Awesomesauceninja, and Letter of Marque by u/Liberty-Prime76. Also thanks to u/Acceptable_Egg5560 for being generally cool with references to Tarlim from The Nature of a Giant and so much more, he's just ubiquitous with NOP and it's well deserved.
[First] [Previous] [Next] April Fools Chapter
Memory transcription subject: Dr Bernard MacEwan, Professor of Zoology
Date [standardised human time]: 7th September 2136
"Ahhh, what a gorgeous day."
Wandering through the winding pathways and occasional green spaces that made up the patchwork exchange grounds, I took in the day's air with a contented sigh. As always the ever present Sun of Venlil Prime shone down upon the world below; its rays melding with a light breeze to hit that delightful sweet spot of comfortable springlike warmth.
Pleasant as it was, I did have to be mindful of the sunlight itself unfortunately.
Despite many a joke having been made to the contrary, thanks to my home's overcast and drizzly climate, Scotland's inhabitants were not in fact vampires at risk of bursting into flame at the slightest exposure to sunlight. This particular Scotsman though, as pale as I was, needed to be careful. I had neither the time nor patience to deal with sunburn of any degree; regardless of whether it was a simple irritation of the skin or an actual painful burn. Therefore, along with routinely applying a reasonable amount of sunscreen, I had taken another sensible precaution to protect myself from the light that shone down 24/7.
Or would that be 20/5 for the Venlil? Hmmm.
My musings on a Venlil equivalent for the common idiom were abruptly interrupted as my new sunhat got caught in the branch of a low hanging tree, the wide brim snagging and pulling my head back as the toggles around my neck went with it.
“OH! Damn it!”
Coming to an unceremonious halt at an uncomfortable angle, I quickly freed myself from the clutches of my arbour assailant, straightening myself out and glancing around in the hopes that no passersby had witnessed my fumble.
“Okay. The large brim is good for shade but not so good for visibility. Just like it was in the Amazon.”
Chuckling at the recollection of several similar incidents from the time I spent traipsing around the rainforest in search of Pygmy Marmosets, I went back to absentmindedly observing the world around me. I was eager to see if I could spy another native animal that might frequent the hustle and bustle of city life. Anything would do because, quite frankly, I could do with the distraction.
I guess it was too much to hope for peace in the end.
War was on the horizon, if not already in full swing. After Marcel and Slanek returned, bringing with them the brutal reality of how humans would be treated by anyone other than the Venlil, the whispers of conflict had grown into a full chorus calling out for retribution for the cruelty visited upon the poor man.
Of course I agreed that those responsible for the monstrous acts must be held accountable, but a full fledged interplanetary war? Against a species with centuries of battle experience fighting an enemy as merciless as the Arxur?
I knew full well that we humans loved to paint ourselves as fairly tough, but I feared we may be biting off more than we could chew if it came down to a true all out clash. The amount of suffering such an engagement would ultimately cause scarcely bears thinking about.
So many people are going to suffer because of this. Tragically, it’ll likely be the most vulnerable amongst us that bear the brunt of it all.
I huffed forcefully, trying to shake my thoughts free of the depressing weight of my worries, "Enough of that Bernard, think of brighter things to match the sunny day, hm?"
Indeed I had many options to choose from to help take my mind off such dreary concerns. Most notable among them were recent reports from the team at Sands Edge, composed of Doctor Mei Khan, Atama Oliver, and Lance Cross. Accompanied by a group of Venlil researchers, the trio had been tasked with taking a first look at the aquatic ecosystems of Venlil Prime. From what little I’d seen it was clear they’d already made astounding progress with their initial surveys.
The fact that the Venlil themselves had never made the effort to investigate the watery reaches of their home still boggles my mind. But on the plus side, it meant that there was a veritable wonderland of the unknown beneath the waves just waiting to be explored.
Aside from a brief introduction with Doctor Khan over video call on the second day of the programme, I hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting them all in person. Her reputation had preceded her at least. An expert in the field of animal behaviour and psychology, she held a position as a professor at the Mongolian University of Science and Technology. I was greatly looking forward to hearing any insights she may have about discoveries made during her time here.
Mr Oliver and Mr Cross were unfamiliar names but even a brief look at their qualifications, coupled with the handful of snapshots displaying the specimen samples they’d retrieved, had me very impressed, as well as giddy with excitement to see what else they might fish from the depths.
Disappointingly their efforts had been waylaid in the last week thanks to the increasing tension brought on by the Gojid’s aggression. It wasn’t so bad for humans like myself who were stationed in large cities close to UN facilities, but the Sands Edge team were way out in the sticks and had therefore been restricted to their small compound out of fears for their safety, should a Venlil with less sense than lighter fluid get any unsavoury ideas about what humans may get up to when under intense stress.
As my mind slowly began to creep towards yet more unsettling thoughts I was grateful to be distracted by an alert from my phone. Checking it, I saw that Alejandro had messaged me.

While I found it odd that Alejandro was asking for a meeting on a day he knew I had off from my official duties, I certainly wasn’t opposed to his request. On the contrary, having not made any plans for how I was going to spend my day, aside from relaxing, I was more than happy to have an impromptu chat with him.
He’s always come across as such a genuinely kind person. Tolim is lucky to have him.
I smirked at the thought, finding the reminder of my silent promise to secrecy about their relationship rather comical in retrospect. While they hadn’t gone as far as to openly declare their budding romance to the world they hadn’t been particularly sly about it either. It’d swiftly become the worst kept secret on campus, with most people easily clocking the consistently smitten expressions adorning both administrators whenever they were in one another's company.
Still smiling beneath my mask I typed up a brief response, saying I’d be delighted to catch up and confirming that we’d meet in his office at the requested time. With that settled, that still left me with roughly half an hour to continue my stroll before I’d have to head over.
Sadly I didn’t catch sight of any unfamiliar local wildlife during the next 30 minutes. I was momentarily accosted by a small flock of flowerbirds at one point, who spent some time darting around me loudly tweeting demands for seeds I didn’t have. Much as I’d come to understand why the Venlil saw the little feather balls as annoyances, I couldn’t help but find the bird's attitude humorously endearing.
Watching the fearless brightly hued plumes of indignation hop about around the feet of a creature that dwarfed them by an order of magnitude had a way of warming the heart. A David and Goliath comparison may not be the most apt perhaps, but I still appreciated their steely determination against seemingly insurmountable odds.
Or maybe they’re just too birdbrained to recognise the disparity. Either way, they’re cheeky little scamps!
Realising that I wasn’t going to give in to their squawking insistence the flock eventually dispersed, leaving me to wander the last leg of my journey alone.
Or so I thought.
Rounding a corner I noticed the familiar figure of Kailo pacing about a little way ahead of me. Judging by his twisting tail, lopsided ears, and the furrow creasing his brow, he appeared to be struggling with something that was taking up quite a bit of space in his head.
Hmmm, interesting.
Softly so as not to startle him from his thoughts too harshly, I called to him as I approached, “Kailo, how’re you doing this fine day?”
He shook a bit as my greeting hit his ears, blinking back to the world around him from whatever it was he’d been so wrapped up in seconds before.
An eye quickly directed itself to me, a tail flick of acknowledgement following soon after as Kailo hurriedly collected himself, though a semblance of tension still clung to him despite his best efforts to dismiss it, “Doctor uh- hello, good paw. I’m doing well, thank you. How are you?”
Now I wasn’t usually suspicious of cordial greetings but, considering who I was speaking to, I was rather surprised by Kailo’s out of character overly stilted politeness.
Something’s clearly bothering him. Hmmm.
I’m going to take a chance here.
Forcing a bit more cheer into my voice than was already present I answered him, “Oh I’m splendid Kailo, absolutely splendid. But, and I don’t mean to pry, are you sure you’re doing alright? You seemed rather worked up about something?”
A flash of discomfort swept through Kailo’s tail. Whether it was due to the topic that was on his mind or because I’d noticed he’d been grappling with it was unclear. But seeing as how his ears had just pinned against his head in an expression of irritation I’d become all too familiar with, I was certain I was about to be on the receiving end of yet another one of his hallmark outbursts.
Bracing myself for the oncoming flare of Kailo’s anger, I was surprised to instead see it dissipate entirely just as swiftly as it’d arisen, replaced with a look of sheepishness that would feel more at home on Rysel.
“Doctor?”, he began, his apparent embarrassment further solidified as he twisted the ends of his two index claws together whilst looking down at his paws, “This is going to sound really stupid but I have a question… about humans.”
Kailo’s sudden change in tone was unexpected, but any thoughts as to why were thoroughly tossed aside by the immediate joy I felt at the realisation that Kailo was concerned about something and that, out of all the people he could be asking, he was willing to express his worries to me.
I wonder why he hasn’t asked Doctor Gallagher his question? Oh no matter, I’m happy to help whatever the reason!
Trying to keep the happiness out of my voice so that it didn’t seem like I was making light of Kailo’s apprehension, I nodded back at the expectant Venlil, “Absolutely Kailo! I'm happy to answer any questions you may have about humans, provided it’s something I can answer of course.”
Kailo’s features softened at my assurances, the stress twisting along his tail relaxing ever so slightly, “I see, thank you Doctor. Well it’s about something Roisin told me. I think she’s lying to me honestly, she seemed too insistent about it for it to be a joke. But it just sounds too absurd to be real!”
Hm, that’s odd. I wouldn’t think she’d be the type to mislead someone. It’s probably just a misunderstanding.
Kailo carried on with his question, ears flicking outward in outright quizzical exasperation, “Do some humans think their planet is flat?”
Something struck me in that moment. Something that deafened me to everything around me and left me dumbfounded in its wake. The ambient noise of far off traffic, chatter from passersby, and the gentle trickle of a nearby fountain all blended together into a formless blur of sound as the question bludgeoned my consciousness.
Out of all the things he could’ve asked. Out of every facet of human society, culture, or behaviour he could’ve been interested in, this was what he was asking me about.
This.
After trying and failing several times to mount a proper reply, I finally managed to stutter a brief response, my brain barely able to keep itself together through the near overwhelming psychological blow, “Wh- ah… w-what?”
Kailo pressed on, my reaction clearly inciting further eagerness for an answer as he padded closer to me, his tail whipping demandingly, “Do some humans think the Earth is flat like a disc? Roisin says they exist but that’s crazy!”
Damn it Gallagher! What are you telling him about us? Nonsense clearly!
Groaning in equal parts frustration and shame over my species' infinite ability for stupidity I looked down at Kailo, thankful that my mask was hiding my scrunched and reddening cheeks, “Regrettably Kailo, they do indeed exist.”
It was Kailo’s turn to stew in bewildered silence as he stared at me in disbelief, his good ear falling flat while the scarred one twitched as he struggled to comprehend the madness I’d just imparted upon him.
This didn’t last long, for his confusion soon cycled over into a single despairing cry, “Why!?”
All I could do was shake my head and shrug defeatedly, “I wish I knew. Sometimes people choose to believe in the strangest of things and there’s little we can do to change their minds.”
Kailo’s eyes bulged in wide eyed shock, his mouth falling open in slack jawed incredulity at my dispassionate explanation, “But- but- How!? You have spaceflight! Commercially available spaceflight! You went into space almost 200 years ago and you’re the first species since the Kolshians and Farsul to figure out FTL without outside help! And even ignoring that, Roisin told me humans have known the Earth was spherical for thousands of years by using maths. How can anyone think the Earth is flat!?”
Huh, I’m amazed he knows that. Gallagher’s not just filling his head with nonsense it seems.
“All good points Kailo, all good points. Be that as it may for one reason or another the belief has, endured.”, The word rolled bitterly over my tongue, the reminder that such a bullheaded anti-science position had been in the spotlight for far longer than most reputable schools of science tended to instiled a poor taste in my mouth.
Nevertheless, as much as it pained me to continue talking about this obscene topic, I felt I should nip this in the bud before it got out of hand. I could hardly imagine that Kailo was going to be patient zero of a Venlil Prime conspiracy regarding whether or not their own planet was a globe or not, but having gotten a first hand experience of their approach to ecology over the past few weeks, I was completely unwilling to take such risks.
Just before I could pick the conversation back up Kailo got in ahead of me, his bewilderment having fallen back into a tight-knitted scowl of concentration as he mulled something over. He spoke quietly, muttering just under his breath, but a lifetime of listening for even the slightest hint of animal life meant that my hearing was still as sharp as it was when I was twenty.
“So they believe weird things that don’t match reality? That makes the ‘birds aren’t real’ thing make a lot more sense now.”
Yet again, Kailo caught me unawares with another blisteringly stunning statement, “I’m sorry, what? Birds aren’t real?”
Kailo’s snout snapped back up at me, his wool ever so slightly flaring in surprise, confirming my suspicions that he’d not meant for me to hear that, “Ah uh- it’s nothing. Well, not nothing, it's just… There was an incident a while back between a Krakotl exterminator and a human. They got into an argument because the human kept saying the exterminator wasn’t real because they were a bird. Is that another ridiculous human belief?”
Rather than be hit across the head with another searing pang of angst over aggravating conspiracy theories, a jovial bubble of laughter burst from me without warning startling Kailo, who jumped back a step at my sudden inexplicable outburst.
“What? What is it? Oh Inatala don’t tell me this is something you believe in!?”
Still chortling away I waved a hand and shook my head in the negative, taking a breath to settle the abrupt chuckle fit Kailo had inadvertently ignited within me, “No- Ha! No, certainly not. Birds very much exist. But, interestingly enough, that is not a conspiracy theory like the flat Earth nonsense. It’s actually a counter protest group from quite a long time ago that has long since gained meme and joke status even to this day.”
Kailo’s head tilted inquisitively, my explanation seemingly not making a whole lot of sense to him.
“Ok, so. A little over a century ago the group was founded as a way to protest political positions they felt were, in a word, absurd. They’d go to rallies that supported these positions and hold up signs and chant slogans that said birds weren’t real in an effort to ridicule the people they were against because of course such a belief would be ridiculous.”
A flap of understanding passed through Kailo’s ears before they quickly switched back to twitching in curiosity once again, “Ok that’s weird, but not as weird as not believing birds are real altogether. How’d you learn about it?”
“I have a friend who’s an ornithologist, it’s a specialty of my own field of study that specifically researches birds. She found out about it and thought it was hilarious so bought herself several shirts, badges, and even coffee mugs all emblazoned with the phrase ‘Birds aren’t real’.”, I chuckled merrily at the fond memory of walking into her office one day to find that, among the many diagrams, pictures, and models of various extremely real avians, there hung a banner right above her desk that boldly declared ‘BIRDS AREN’T REAL’.
Conscious that I was still in company, and as such I couldn’t get too wrapped up in my own memories for the time being, I turned my attention back to Kailo with my own questioning stare. He’d mentioned an argument between a human and an exterminator after all, and since the news hadn’t yet worked its way to me through the grapevine of gossip, I was interested to hear more about it.
“So Kailo, what was that you were saying about a squabble? I hope no one got into any serious trouble?”
“Hm?”, Kailo absentmindedly replied, apparently having been caught up in his own thoughts while I’d been spending a moment reminiscing, “Oh yeah! I mean no, no one got hurt. From what I heard the exterminator eventually got fed up and stormed off which ended the whole thing. Still, it helped that Tova was there keeping the rest of her squad in check. Who knows how it could’ve escalated without her there to keep a handle on things.”
Now that’s a name I’ve not heard before. Clearly an exterminator like Kailo. Maybe a well known one in their circles?
Curious to see if my suspicions were correct, and more than a little interested to see if I could get Kailo to offer up some information on the personality types of famous exterminators, I asked, “Who’s Tova?”
The reaction was as immediate as it was astonishing. Kailo’s demeanour did an instantaneous 180 from indifference to ecstatic, excitement gleaming in his eyes. Tail whipping behind him and ears twirling giddily he opened his mouth to answer, but just as suddenly as it’d come on his enthusiasm drooped into nervous fidgeting and he looked off a little ways down the street.
Eventually he settled down, looking back at me with what I could’ve sworn was a disappointed head tilt, “I uh… I actually have to go meet Blim soon over at the admin buildings. I don’t think I have any more time to talk without being late.”
Ah! He’s got a meeting too? How fortuitous!
I was pleased to hear I had a chance to walk and talk with Kailo about something he was passionate about; even if it was exterminators of all things. But, just before I could ask to accompany him to our shared destination, he spoke up again, a familiar fire blazing through every word that left his snout.
“This isn’t me trying to avoid the topic by the way. If I had the time I’d love the chance to properly teach you about all the good exterminators can do, especially the best of the batch! I know how you feel about what we do, but officers like Tova are prime examples of why we’re so respectable and important to the continued safety of the herd!”
In times not long past, such a speech from Kailo about his chosen profession would’ve been laced with a venom so potent it’d put a Black Widow to shame. To my astonishment however, the goading boastfulness I’d come to expect was nowhere to be heard. Instead, Kailo struck a pose of determined professionalism. Straight backed and proud, he puffed out his chest and flicked his ears up in a show of sincerity that I’d rarely seen from him.
Scratch that, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that from him. Disparaging, sulky, and apprehensive perhaps, but never this.
In contrast to my internal monologue and to Kailo’s own credit, I did recognise the recent efforts he’d made towards making a positive change to his attitude with regards to the classes. He’d started to actively participate in the lectures now, rather than interrupt them just so he could stand atop his soap box and decry the dangers of predators at every opportunity.
He still had the bad habit of glaring at people like he wanted to bore a hole through their heads from time to time, but he was making progress in the right direction, and I for one was intent on encouraging this shift in behaviour.
Smiling warmly at the still proudly posing Venlil, I replied to his declaration, “Well Kailo, today might just be your lucky day! As it happens I’m also heading that way to a meeting of my own. Why don’t we walk together and you can tell me all about the officers you hold in high regard, hm? It’ll be our own mini lecture with you as the teacher!”
Kailo’s eyes went wide and his tail spun frantically, “Really!”, he excitedly blurted out, a little louder than he probably intended.
“I uh- achem. I mean, is that so? Then sure, I’ll tell you all about some of our best. It’s about time you saw my side of things! Come on then.”
With that he turned towards the offices and walked off at a steady pace, flicking his tail at me in what I assumed was a ‘follow along’ kind of gesture. And follow I did, doing my best to stifle the chuckle brought on by Kailo’s abrupt burst of enthusiasm.
Just like Rysel is with animals. Though I doubt either would appreciate the comparison.
“So then, we’re starting with Tova?.”, Kailo rhetorically asked, his ears standing stalk straight as he strode forth in deliberate almost marching like fashion, “Her story, like far too many, is tragic. As a pup she was on a ship that was attacked and boarded by the Arxur. However, despite being young, she was determined to fight back and protect the people onboard. In all the chaos she managed to create a trap and lead the Arxur into it, killing them in an explosion and saving everyone who was still alive! She became an exterminator not long after, and ever since then she’s protected the people with just as much fortitude!”
Uuuuhhhh…
Whether Kailo was expecting a response was unclear, but it wouldn't have mattered either way. As his short recounting of Tova’s origin story came to an end, I found my mind swamped by a fog of stunned horror.
A child, a literal child, had rigged up an IED trap and then managed to lure the raiders into it. Short of looking up the incident myself to check the veracity of Kailo’s tale, the only source to hand was the young man himself. He didn’t appear to be lying, he seemed too enamoured with the story himself for him to be making it up on the spot. But even so, regardless of whether the account was completely factually or even slightly embellished, it was a tough pill to swallow.
“Hey doctor, are you listening?”, Kailo’s verbal prod pulled me from the worst of the roaming intrusive thoughts flashing across my mind in reaction to what he’d told me, though a few disquieting ones still lingered on the edges of my awareness.
“Oh! I am indeed Kailo. I was uh… just considering your story. Tova sounds rather… formidable.”
Right now was another moment in which I found myself grateful that I still had to wear my mask when outside. It was impossible for me to know whether or not Kailo could pick up on my discomfort through my voice alone, but if my face had been visible I was sure he’d catch on pretty quickly.
Thankfully Kailo either couldn’t tell or was too caught up in my perceived complement to notice anything was off, because his tail flourished in satisfaction, “Formidable is right! Not only is she highly regarded for her work and her commitment to her duties, she’s also easily one of the largest Venlil you’ll ever see! Not as big as a human probably, but still pretty large for one of us!”
“But she’s not the biggest fullstop is she? I know that there's a Venlil called Tarlim who’s easily two feet taller than most humans. Didn’t he have a lot of trouble with the exterminators?”
WHY!?
The statement and follow up question was out my mouth before I could stamp it out, my decades honed instinct to counter a point of discussion rearing its head at the worst of times. In spite of the very real questions I believed needed to be tackled at some point, this was not the moment I would’ve chosen, especially not when I was finally building a rapport with my most difficult student.
Glancing at him it was plain as day to see that Kailo’s spirit had fallen considerably, my untimely criticism laying low any of his previous giddiness.
He suddenly came to a halt, his short wool frizzing out as he rounded on me with an oranging snout brimming with ire. In the split-second of silence that followed I prepared myself for the oncoming storm of rage I’d faced time and again. But in a moment of astonishing serendipity, what erupted from Kailo wasn’t a slew of vitriol levelled at me.
Instead, a grumbling bray of tired aggravation flowed from him, tail and ears deflating to match this new mood, “Ugggghhhhh… Please doctor, I’m begging you. Please don’t bring them up.”
Intrigued by his reaction, and again failing to quiet the goading murmurs telling me to push the point a little bit further, I replied, “And why’s that? Not a fan of those exterminators like you are of To-”
I didn’t even get to finish my question.
Kailo angrily stamped his foot and his tail lashed off the ground, interrupting me with a vicious tinge lacing his words, “By Inatala no! They’re a disgrace to the badge in my books. They botched their scans for PD, hid the fact from everyone until it was brought out in court, and then still clung to their story that he could be dangerous. And you know why they thought he was dangerous? Because he’s big!!!”
Once again Kailo stunned me, though for a different and far preferable reason. Tarlim and his case had come up in passing conversation with other humans who’d in turn heard the tale from their exchange partners. It was a ghastly story, one fraught with horrifying implications for all manner of reasons. From what little I’d learned about the controversy, many exterminators who’d been outspoken on the topic backed the actions of the Dawn Creek office; if not standing behind the officers themselves, who were fired from what I'd seen, then at least acknowledging that the poor man could still be a threat simply for his size.
Usually this would be the part where I’d try to give my own two-cents to the conversation, but despite having earlier asked not to talk about the issue, Kailo was far from done voicing his indignation, “It’s insane! Big! BIG!? Mazic are big. Takkan are big. Are we rounding all of them up for PD scans or putting up signs saying ‘Beware, Large Species Around’? Iftali are big as well! They dwarf the other species that live on Jild, but the Suleans aren’t scared of them are they!? Speaking of, the Suleans have antlers that could easily gore someone if they’re not careful. Should all Suleans wear foam on the ends of them for the herds' safety? NO!”
A part of me was tempted to let Kailo continue his rant for as long as it took to peter out, fascinated to see just how far he might go in diverging from what appeared to be a norm for the exterminators. I was not that nefarious however, and I was conscious that our meetings were getting steadily closer with the two of us still having a ways left to travel before we arrived at the offices.
I need to get him moving again, maybe get him back onto talking about the exterminators he likes. But how? Oh!
The idea struck me like lighting, a grin quickly spreading across my face as I looked down at the still seething Venlil.
This should work.
Taking the opportunity to slip into the conversation once Kailo eventually stopped to take a breath, I stated quite plainly, “It’s good to know there’s someone like yourself wearing that badge then. Someone who recognises that we can’t go around demonising people because of their differences. It’s an excellent mindset to have, both in general and most certainly in a job that requires you to care and protect your community. You should be proud of yourself for it.”
Whatever gripes Kailo may have been about to further shout out into the world fell silent as he processed my statement, my hunch that appealing to his ego might stymie his frustrations striking true. Honestly, I meant every word of it. Even if the things he did believe in still stung to hear about, it was a relief to know that Kailo didn’t toe the line completely when it came to exterminator doctrine.
My interruption appeared to jolt Kailo out of the tunnel vision his rants often drew him into, reminding him of where exactly he was.
After a brief scan of the surroundings he hastily composed himself, clearing his throat and returning his focus to me, “Achem. Well, I um… thank you doctor. I think so too. It’s not right to judge people like that just because they look different. How can exterminators properly fulfil their duties if all they’re doing is profiling people on physical differences after all.”
I did my best not to let it show in my posture, but the irony of what was coming out of Kailo’s mouth was battering my psyche like nothing else. Not only because of how he’d treated humans since he’d met us, which I could somewhat overlook and forgive due to cultural trauma at the claws of the Arxur, but because I knew full well that exterminators didn’t just profile people due to explicitly physical differences.
Following my first exposure to the guilds existence, I’d made a point of learning about them at any spare opportunity. I’d been horrified by the way they treated innocent creatures for their appearance and diet. But what I found behind that? That was infinitely worse.
Predator Disease. A sickening repression of the concept and understanding of the neurotypical in any sense festered throughout the Federation. People who skewed anywhere from the pseudo scientific ‘baseline’ the supposed professionals had cooked up were hauled away to facilities that bore a monstrous resemblance to the old asylums that once existed aplenty across the Earth.
Conflict raged within me as I stared at Kailo, one side screaming at me to lay the sordid nature of so-called predator disease bare while the other begged me to stay silent and maintain this fragile rare instance of peace that’d sprung up between the two of us.
Only seconds passed in the real world as I wrestled with the cacophony swirling around my head, but I eventually made my choice, as selfish as it might’ve been.
“You’re quite right Kailo.”, sighing as quietly as I could I took a step forward, pushing myself onwards and forcing a little bit of cheer back into my voice, “Now then, we really should be off if we’re going to get to the office in time. Why don’t you tell me about another exterminator, hm? Any others aside from Tova you think are particularly commendable?”
Far easier than I’d done Kailo bounced back into a jovial mood almost instantly, ears perking and tail swishing happily as he bounced along beside me, “Of course there are! I could spend all paw talking if you let me! There’s Rensa from Heartwood. She’s retired now sadly, a work accident, but she was one of the best in her time along with another officer from the same town called Shenod who’s still active.”
Beeping away merrily, Kailo gushed over every exterminator he admired that he could think of while we walked, his pace never slowing and his enjoyment never waning. Aside from a few verbal acknowledgements and the occasional ‘Oh is that so?’ I remained largely quiet, choosing to appreciate this unanticipated but refreshing change of pace to our usual back and forth.
The glee with which he talked about people who’d gladly burn animals alive was something I’d never get used to, especially seeing as how many might be inclined to do the same to a human if given the opportunity.
Nevertheless, right now, I could look past that discomfort and accept that finally, after weeks of trying and failing to find an inroad with him, Kailo and I were actually spending time together and having a pleasa- pleasentish conversation. That alone was enough to lift my heart high from the morose haze that’d been clinging to me as of late, the ever expanding list of bad news continually adding to the depressive atmosphere.
I will have to properly thank Doctor Gallagher at some point, she really seems to have helped Kailo loosen up. Maybe all he really needed was one good friend in the end. Hm, isn’t that always the way?
Dismissing my musings so I could pay proper attention to Kailo, whose font of knowledge for famous exterminators was apparently endless, I beamed beneath my mask, glancing up at the bright blue sky and allowing the tension I’d been feeling to relax from my shoulders as a cool breeze swept over me.
Ahhh, what a gorgeous day indeed.

Record numbers of pupils in England were absent for long periods last year, with one in 50 missing at least half of their lessons, according to official data showing absences remain far higher than pre-Covid levels. The updated Department for Education figures show 150,000 children at state schools were classed as severely absent in 2022-23 – 30,000 more than the year before and 150% higher than the 60,000 who were severely absent in 2018-19, before the pandemic. The overall attendance figures showed small improvements compared with 2021-22 but school leaders and experts said much more needed to be done.
Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “Advertising slogans and attendance hubs are just not going to make a tangible difference to pupils who are missing days or weeks of school at a time. We have to be far more ambitious.
“We need greater mental health support for children who are suffering from anxiety and depression. There needs to be a network of support available to allow all pupils to feel able to attend school regularly, and this can only be achieved if public services are funded appropriately.” The number of pupils classed as persistently absent – out of school for 10% or more of sessions – fell compared with 2021-22, from 22.5% to 21.2%, but remains substantially higher than before 2020, when about 11% of pupils were persistently absent. In secondary schools, 26% of pupils are persistently absent compared with 16% in primary schools. Disadvantaged children or those with caring responsibilities had acute levels of absence, with pupils receiving free school meals twice as likely to be absent than their peers. The Carers Trust said 39% of young carers were persistently absent and missed an average of 23 days of school last year. Andy McGowan, the Carers Trust’s policy manager, said: “These figures should ring alarm bells in government, showing all too starkly how being a young carer can have a devastating impact on children’s education and future prospects. “There are 1 million young carers in the UK – that’s two in every classroom – including at least 15,000 children caring for over 50 hours each week. By selflessly looking after loved ones they’re saving the state millions in social care costs and deserve targeted support.” The national absence rate fell year on year, from 2.4% to 2.1%, with illness the most common reason given. But there was a slight rise in the percentage of unauthorised absences, including those on unauthorised family holidays. Concerns over absence are prompted by evidence that pupils who are repeatedly absent get lower exam grades. The Department for Education’s data shows only 11% of severely absent and 35% of persistently absent pupils gaining grades 4 or above in GCSE English and maths, compared with 68% of all pupils.
Earlier this year the DfE announced funding for “attendance mentors” offering support for pupils and their families in 10 of the worst-affected areas, as well as increasing fines for extended absences. A classroom with empty school desks and chairs Fines for unauthorised absence from school in England to rise by 33% Read more But an independent evaluation of one mentoring pilot operating in Middlesbrough found mixed results after its first year: while attendance improved for half of pupils taking part, it worsened for 36%. Catherine McKinnell, the shadow schools minister, said: “We seem to be in a downward spiral when it comes to persistent and unauthorised absence, with worrying numbers of children missing vital time at school.” McKinnell said Labour would tackle absences through a combination of funding mental health professionals in secondary school and free breakfast clubs in primary school. Schools in Scotland have reported even higher levels of absence, with figures published earlier this week revealing that 41% of secondary school and 32% of primary school pupils were persistently absent in 2022-23.

A deep examination about the rise of psychoanalysis as a powerful means of persuasion for both governments and corporations, and how it later helped influence the contemporary society of lifestyles and marketing.
Initial release: March 17, 2002
Director: Adam Curtis
Distributed by: BBC Four
🎞️ The Century of the Self (TV Mini Series 2002)
Here are they key quotes from this amazing documentary:
---
Bernays was the first person to take Freud's ideas about human beings and use them to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations for the first time how they could make people want things they didn't need by linking mass produce goods to their unconscious desires. Out of this came new political idea how to control the masses. By satisfying people's inner selfish desires when made them happy and thus docile. Start of all consuming self.
🎞️ The Century of the Self (TV Mini Series 2002)
---
CBT is the default and automatic therapy for social anxiety. All self-help books and medical articles about social anxiety are based on CBT and DSM. Yet, in the same time - we are not being told the whole truth. We are not being told the history of CBT and its roots, and how psychiatry was weaponized - for marketing. About the same time as scientists discovered quantum physics - I always wondered how come scientific findings did not follow the same one in other areas. In the past, as industry developed - so it was reflected and mirrored in medicine, art, paintings, books. Well - Freud discovery of unconsciousness is the equivalent of Double-slit experiment. When we observe something - it acts differently than when it is not observed. In the same manner, when we are not aware of our trauma and ACE and ACoA roots - these voids inside us will govern our decisions in life.
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. C.G. Jung
---
Freud began to write about group behavior. About how easily the unconscious aggressive forces in human beings could be triggered when they were in crowds. Freud believed he had underestimated the aggressive instincts in human beings. They were far more dangerous than he had originally thought. Freud did not believe that man can be improved. Humans enjoy torturing and killing and Freud did not like men.
🎞️ The Century of the Self (TV Mini Series 2002)
---
This is information that we won't find in self-help books about social anxiety. I had a theory of my own - that CBT is a form of lobotomy. It's task is to lobotomize us. And this is based on Freud beliefs that in a group settings - we are prone to peer pressure. We are easy manipulated and control merely through a peer pressure. Now the corporations in America extracted this discovery and used it for marketing - shopping and selling us stuff that we do not really need.
That are the roots of CBT. That is why CBT and DSM are not interested in trauma nor healing trauma - but only in making us obedient sheep which will work for their masters and then buy products to handle the uncovered trauma.
---
Walter Lipman argued that if human beings were in reality driven by unconscious irrational forces, then it was necessary to rethink the democracy. What was needed was a new Elite who can manage what he called the bewildered herd. This would be done through psychological techniques that would control unconscious feelings of the masses. People were driven not by their minds but by their spinal cords. Animal drives,lurking beneath. Goal:social control
🎞️ The Century of the Self (TV Mini Series 2002)
---
CBT is a form of social control. It is not interested in explanation what is social anxiety - but only that we spend our money on exposure, parties and then being in Rat Race to pay off credits for all exposure and parties. The main "advice" in self-help books for social anxiety is "to talk to a cashier". So we are told to spend money and that we become zombie consumers. Nothing changed since 1930s - and CBT never explains us their own past and what they are doing really.
---
Both Bernes and Lipman concepts of managing the masses takes the idea of democracy and turns it into palliative, feel good medication. That will respond to immediate pain or an immediate yearning. But will not alter objective circumstances one iota. Idea of democracy was about changing power and their was maintaining power. If you can keep stimulating irrational Self then leadership can basically go on doing what it wants to do.
🎞️ The Century of the Self (TV Mini Series 2002)
---
When we look at CBT - it is an ableist therapy that does not explain why we have social anxiety, but it is only invested in blocking and denying our anxiety and that we cover it up and not think about it too much, while we focus on being an obedient sheep in some corporation, where our only task is to face fears - but never actually spend time uncovering the reason why we have fears in the first place!
---
What was implicit in Freud's argument was the idea of individual freedom which was at the heart of democracy, was impossible. Human beings could never be allowed to truly express themselves because it was too dangerous. They must always be controlled and would thus always be discontent. Man doesn't want to be civilized and civilization brings discontent but it is necessary for survival. So man must be discontent, to keep within limits.
🎞️ The Century of the Self (TV Mini Series 2002)
---
This control is visible in DSM - where social anxiety is explained away as a mere "fear of criticism and negative evaluation" - while in reality, social anxiety is also a fear of expressing OUR OWN criticism and OUR OWN negative evaluation. Basically we are instructed by CBT and DSM to be victim, to have victimhood mentality of being afraid of other people and that we invest our energy into believing that toxic people do not exist and that our fears are imaginary and product of cognitive distortions. We are never been told that perhaps toxic people are triggering our social anxiety and that we actually can start to criticize the critics back. Basically CBT and DSM are brainwashing us to be silent and controlled.
---
American government as a result of war (WW2) became convinced that there were savage dangerous forces hidden inside all human beings, forces that needed to be controlled. Terrible evidence from the death camps seemed to show what happened when these forces were unleashed. Politicians and planners in post war America would come to believe that hidden under surface of their own population were the same dangerous forces.
🎞️ The Century of the Self (TV Mini Series 2002)
---
This is exactly the conclusions that I came across 2 years ago, without watching this BBC documentary: and that is CBT and DSM are Ludovico Technique from Clockwork Orange (1972) - it is a method of suppressing our dark shadow, so that we become people pleasers and that we fawn to everyone. Because this way we are under control and we will never become the problem ourselves. This is the same as for any member of toxic family that is scapegoated:
A scapegoat is a person or group you place blame on. When scapegoating children, the child is blamed or shamed for all the issues that arise within dysfunctional households. Here's how scapegoating works: The parent with NPD blames their child (or children) for family issues. (psychcentral)
---
They would turn to Freud family to help control this enemy within. And ever adaptable Edward Bernes would work not just for American government but the CIA. And Sigmund Freud's daughter Anna, would also become powerful in USA. Because she believed that people could be taught to control the irrational forces within them. Out of this would come vast government programs to manage inner psychological life of the masses.
🎞️ The Century of the Self (TV Mini Series 2002)
---
I have my own theory that during Operation Paperclip immediately after WW2 - Americans stole not only rocket scientists that helped them with Apollo mission, but also pretty much based CBT and DSM on Nazi investigation of propaganda and mass control.
---
The Army turned to the new ideas of psychoanalysis. It was the first time that anyone had paid such attention to the feelings and anxieties of ordinary people. They became convinced that breakdowns were not the direct result of fighting. The stress of combat had merely triggered old childhood memories. These were memories of the men's own violent feelings and desires which they had repressed because they were too frightening. Proof of Freud theory.
🎞️ The Century of the Self (TV Mini Series 2002)
----
Shell shock from WW1 was trauma from the war - and this is what it was discovered after WW2 - that PTSD is real. Yet it took 40 years to make it fully official.
The term "post-traumatic stress disorder" came into use in the 1970s, in large part due to the diagnoses of U.S. military veterans of the Vietnam War. It was officially recognized by the American Psychiatric Association in 1980 in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III). (wiki)
---
Anna Freud developed a theory of how to control the inner drives. It was simple. You taught the children to conform to the rules of society. But this was more than just a moral guidance. Anna Freud believed if children like the Burlingham strictly followed the rules of accepted social conduct then as they grow up, conscious part of their mind, the Ego, would be greatly strengthened in its struggle to control the unconscious.
🎞️ The Century of the Self (TV Mini Series 2002)
----
When we see CBT and social anxiety - it is a method of social control. We are not being told the crucial information about trauma and ACE, while in the same time we are being told that we are to blame, that our brain is abnormal because it is filled with intrusive thoughts - and our job is to become silent and obedient.
----
But if the children did not conform, their Ego would be weak. And they would be prey to dangerous forces of the unconscious. They felt being homosexual was abnormal, it wasn't a normal way to develop. They want him to develop what society recognized to be normal. Because if they didn't then you're going to be under control of forces that you don't understand, that you're not even aware of.
🎞️ The Century of the Self (TV Mini Series 2002)
----
This is how I see CBT and self-help industry - it is motorized to group think and herd mentality and that we conform to social norms - which belong to conservatives and right-wing moguls who's ethical and moral standards include chronic, pathological lying and making money profit on people's lack of education and their trauma.
---
They just felt that the road to happiness was in adapting to the external world in which they lived. That people could be uncrippled from their own neurotic conflicts and impulses. That they would not engage in self-destructive behavior, that they would in fact adapt to reality. They never questioned the reality. That it might itself be a source of evil. Or something to which you could not adapt without compromise, suffering, or exploiting yourself in some way.
🎞️ The Century of the Self (2002)
---
The purpose of CBT psychology is not to help us at all. It is designed to keep us conformed to the rules of elite and those who have money, corporations.
---
They promised to show companies how to make millions by connecting their products with people's hidden desires. Dichter himself became millionaire, famous for creating slogans like Tiger in your tank. Even the marketing of the Barbie doll came from a children's focus group. The environment could be used to strengthen the human personality. And products have the power both to inner desires and give feeling of common identity, stable society: "Strategy of desire".
🎞️ The Century of the Self (2002)
---
While we are being lobotomized and controlled and squashed into square so that we fit into brick wall of corporations - those same psycho-analyst helped corporations to get rich by telling them how to exploit our traumas and our unconsciousness.
---
How to alter and control the inner drives of human beings. The most notorious of these experiments was run by the head of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr Ewen Cameron. Like many psychiatrist of that time, Cameron was convinced that inside human beings there were dangerous forces which threatened society. But he believed that it was not only possible just to control these forces, but actually remove them. To monitor political activities,knew what was good
🎞️ The Century of the Self (2002)
---
CBT and self-help books never talk about Dr Ewen Cameron and his experiment. This is taboo topic. We are also not being told that Marilyn Monroe was the victim of the same mentality that CBT and DSM stand on. With CBT we are basically being told that our brain is abnormal and that we cannot trust our brain, that our decisions are tinted with distortions. This way we are being lobotomized - if we believe in this crap - and we become depended on authority to explain us who we are and what we want and need in life. We are basically being manipulated and controlled by the elite.
My argument with so much psychoanalysis is the preconception that suffering is a mistake. Or a sign of weakness. Or a sign even of illness. When in fact, possible the greatest truths we know have come out of people's suffering. That the problem is not to undo suffering or wipe it off from the face of the Earth, but to make it inform our lives. Instead of trying to cure ourselves of it constantly and avoid it, seems to me like controlling man rather than freeing him.
🟦 Arthur Miller (1963)
---
Herbert Marcuse said that the very idea that you needed to control people was wrong. Human beings did have emotional drives. But they were not inherently violent or evil. It was society that made this drives dangerous – by repressing and distorting them. Anna Freud and her followers had increased that repression by trying to make people conform to society. In so doing, they made people more dangerous, not less. Individual was adapting to corrupt and evil.
🎞️ The Century of the Self (2002)
---
CBT and self-help books never talk about the other side of coin for DSM. This Herbert Marcuse guy talked about the danger of psychiatrist in 1960s - yet I never ever heard about him, even though I spend reading psychology related books for 20 years. There was no mentioning of control.
---
Opponents of Freuds who said Freud was wrong about human nature: The inner self did not need to be repressed or controlled, it should be encouraged to express itself. Out of this would come a new type of strong human being and better society. But what in fact emerged from this Revolution was the very opposite: an isolated, vulnerable and above all greedy Self. Far more open to manipulation by both business and politics than anything before. In power would feed it
🎞️ The Century of the Self (2002)
---
So basically what we see in sexual revolution in 1960s - was the fight against CBT and DSM. But nobody explained it that way. The freedom in media, civil rights - it was all by-product of fighting the imposed social norms - by people in authority who are hardly saints.
---
To make products for people who wanted to express themselves would mean creating variety. But the systems of mass productions that had been developed in America were only profitable if they made the large numbers of the same objects. The expressive Self threatened this whole system of manufacturer. An entrepreneur had invented a way of mass producing this new independent self. Seminar training to be taught how to be themselves. Human potential movement.
🎞️ The Century of the Self (2002)
---
This is where corporations adapted to the new norm - they realized that the revolution can also be profitable, too - if manipulated once again.
We are talking here about toxic society. We live in toxic society - so when we struggle with social anxiety - it is not our imagination. The toxic is really toxic and it is the source of social anxiety, social element is the cause of anxiety. We are living in the system where narcissists and psychopaths adapt to learning how to exploit us. Predators. It is not wonder we feel anxiety from society - since predators are in power positions, hanging above our heads.
If you took these layers off, you wind up with the kernel, innately self-expressive. People took last layer and found nothing. The recognition was that it's really all meaningless and empty. That's existentialism's end point. A step further: people recognize it was not only meaningless and empty, but it was empty and meaningless that it was empty and meaningless. And in that – there's enormous freedom. All rules you placed on yourselves – are gone.
🟦 Werner Erhard
This explains my bewilderment about toxic people found on social anxiety forums. Predators will simply adapt to any groups - and find a way how to sell us what we need. They will fill our voids. This is how narcissistic abuse works. Toxic people during honeymoon phase collect data about us - and then they present themselves as the exact thing that we need - and we pour our trust into them - and find out their real face later on, after we invested our time and money into them, and when we signed contracts that bind us to them. I experienced this on my own skin. That is how predators operate. We can test this on you tube - search social anxiety - and you will discover all kinds of coaches for social anxiety and books that help us in 30 days to remove anxiety and other magical promises.
And what you're left with is nothing. And nothing is extraordinary powerful place to stand. Because it is only from nothing that you can create. And from this nothing people were able to invent a life and allowing them to create, invent themselves. You can be what you want to be.
🟦 Werner Erhard
---
We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested. Edward Bernays
Any person depends on public approval. Edward Bernays
---
Problem comes how to be self expressive. And it was at this point that American capitalism decided it was going to step in and help these new individuals to express themselves. And in the process make a lot of money.
We were asking people to think about things that they had never taught about before and they liked thinking about them. Like what motivated them, what was important to them.
🎞️ The Century of the Self (2002)
---
Social anxiety is a trauma. It is not a cognitive distortion and it is not a fear. It is Stimulation overload, Sensory overload - it is based on ACE and ACoA. And the thing is - if we do not grasp this, we will run around like a goose in a fog, flapping our wings hysterically - and in such state we are extremely easy to manipulate and control. We will seek answers and this way we will encounter car salesmen who will make profit on our genuine confusion and genuine need to find answers. This means - healing trauma must be free. Any money payment to heal trauma is a huge red flag - that this is a hoax.
CBT and self-help industry will never tell us this quote from their Godfather:
Those who manipulate the organized habits and opinions of the masses constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. Edward Bernays - public relations pioneer
Someone wrote satirical text regarding peer pressure and it is something that we need to be aware of:
"Damn bro, you need to get OUT more!" (as in going out to buy more beers and shop)
Shiat dawg, u been studyin' math all day - all them numbers. What a loser! Fk'n Nerd ass punk!" (we discourage the study of mathematics and science since they promote critical/logical thinking skills)
We realize that people are not "free" - they are deterministic beings driven by physiological needs to survive. They are also social beings driven by psychological needs to belong. As such, as long you feel insecure, anxious, ugly, fearful, fat, marginalized, etc., then we are able to sell you products to relieve those feelings.
, we ourselves as advertisers induce these negative emotional states into the consumer! We MAKE you feel inadequate and self-conscious.
https://www.filmboards.com/board/t/Confess
----
People want to go where they wanted to be led.
🟦 Edward Bernays
---
The full documentary is available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
This documentary helped me to see angry and hysterical people from a totally new light, from totally different angle which I was not aware of before. Whereas I saw them as dangerous and someone to be afraid of (the same way as Freud seen human race due to Nazis) - now I see angry and loud and emotionally expressive people as people who are fighting against the social restrictions. It does not apologize for their misbehavior - but they feel less scary than before.
Narcissists - they are rebelling against their cruel parents, and they are stuck in child age mentally where they keep on discarding people and humiliating them and then going to honeymoon phase - now their mysterious and strange behavior finally makes sense. They are spoiled 4yo brats that are rebelling against the strict authority - and this explains their chronic anger and mood swings. Where - suppressing emotions will not help. And people in medical profession that are suppose to help them are more interested in making money profit from traumatized emotions, rather than helping healing them.
Anna Freud that stroke Faustian deal with corporations - that forged CBT and DSM - kept the secret that she never married and she died a virgin - because her father asked her about masturbation since childhood. Sigmund Freud traumatized her - and her trauma made her stigmatize all of humanity by the help of corporations - by teaching us to suppress our emotions and through self-blaming ourselves for feeling trauma. Also, CBT and DSM do not tell us that Freud's relatives were alcoholic and one of them committed suicide in their London house. So marketing psychology did not help the creators of modern psychiatry. These facts are kept away from us, we do not learn this when we read medical resources about social anxiety.
In the same manner - rebellion is also exploitable -and predators will adapt to new mentality and new discoveries and present their products as the best solutions.
We need to be aware of these car salesmen mentality hidden behind the help, so when we seek help for social anxiety - we will most probably encounter the same people who traumatized us in the first place: narcissists and psychopaths and sociopaths. The best clue/red flag is either money or cult-like worship.