SPOILERS for Indigo Park Chapter one! You are warned!!
My Indigo Park discoveries.
1st: upon entering the first section where we meet Rambley, we’re given two bits of info. 1st is that according to the computer, the date is Saturday 7th 20XX (mysteriously left vague) and that the staff need to give the correct coupon/discount for that day. However, Rambley Raccoon the AI mentions at least twice that it’s actually a Tuesday, and he says it's been exactly 8 years (2920 days) since the last person visited Indigo park.
2nd: Something else to note is that, if we go by the very beginning visual recording we saw of Isaac Indigo, and listen to Finley’s chat when we first meet Finley, we discover that The Park, or at least the animated characters/ mascots have existed for 100 years. If we look at a calender to see what fits with these two bits of information, we can come to the very plausible conclusion that Indigo Park started officially back in 1925, and that the CURRENT DATE , the date WE as the main character go in by, is actually Tuesday 7th 2025, meaning that it was 2017 when the last person logged on for Indigo park, which would actually fit with what we’re told.
Solid fact: COMPUTER says sat oct 7th 20xx (doesn’t give proper date). AI RAMBLEY says Tuesday is the day we’re there, at least twice. RAMBLEY claims it’s been exactly 2920 days, 8 years, since the last person came to the park. Therefore in order for the date to make any sense at all, and align with the info we’re given so far, Indigo Park has to have been created back in 1925, the bad event happened around 2017, and we’re going into the park 8 years later in 2025.
3rd discovery: When we first see the Mascot characters checking in on us, the first and most consistent one we see is Molly Macaw the bird. What’s interesting is we find a wrecked and discarded version of an old mascot costume for her in the very first ride. The second most interesting fact we have is that the molly that pursues us, along with the lion as well, are far too real to be people in costumes, and move too fluidly to be AI controlling costumes. This gives me the belief/ theory that perhaps these are actually CREATURES, possibly scientific experiments, that have taken on some of the traits of the mascots we see in the park. This idea is further solidified by the fact that, later in the game, we actually end up decapitating Molly *spoilers*, and real blood comes from her. The same thing could be said for Lloyd when we get jumpscared by him in the theater. He reacts negatively to a noise the critter cuff makes and runs off. At first I thought maybe it was the AI telling him off, saying ‘hey don’t kill that person, they’re a guest’ or something, but knowing now that these creatures are actually flesh and blood makes me wonder if perhaps these were indeed wild animals that somehow became the mascots for the park at some point, and along the way something went wrong. It would sort of make sense, given that later on near the end of the game, if you manage to collect a mascot mask during the molly chase, you’re given some lore from a recording about new mascots arriving at Indigo park. These new mascots were concerning the old workers in this recording, as they worried the new mascots would ‘take their jobs’. Meaning that at some point new mascots came in and the old mascot performers weren't too happy about it. Perhaps one of these disgruntled workers did something to cause the new mascots to go wild, and that caused all the events that led to the evacuation of the park. Which brings me to THAT point.
4th discovery: The Evacuation of Indigo Park, and abandonment of it.
Something I noticed during the entire game was just how ruined everything was. Like, it is completely wrecked, even more so then I would honestly believe for a place that’s been abandoned for 8 years. Some things are still running, and some buildings are still in tact for sure, but there are ENTIRE buildings and walls just… absolutely wrecked, like a wrecking ball smashed through some of them. I’m not an expert on how long buildings take to get to the extent of disarray Indigo park is in when we go there, but it’s just ABSOLUTELY wrecked. Even when we go through a tunnel at one point, there is a collapse that closes the entrance behind us at that point. Sure, its game play to stop us from returning, but from a story standpoint, if you were to look at that tunnel entrance just before going in, it looks perfectly fine. The least you would expect to see is some dust crumbling down, cracks in the wall, stuff like that, as it prepares to give way. But that doesn't happen. No, instead, I suspect that it was actually the new mascots, specifically a character like Finley who has been labeled as rather large and strong, that caused the majority of the damage in the park. My evidence so far comes from two examples. First example is when we first almost get attacked by Lloyd in the theater, and he gets almost flattened by crates. You could make the argument that he was pretty weak, especially since he kinda just gives up and disappears only to try and get us as we leave and then gets scared by the critter cuff. But if you notice, the crate that lands on him is fairly wide and fairly large, and does NOT look light in the slightest. And since he’s meant to be a lion, he should be fairly strong. So, that crate that flattened him but didn't kill him? It SHOULD have killed him or knocked him out had he been a normal human in a costume.
My second evidence to this idea is Molly. We’re talking about a bird that has feathers for hands/fingers. That shouldn't make her strong by any means. And yet, when we get chased by her, the door she comes through to get to us gets pulled open by force by her. Watch that scene again carefully and you’ll see what I mean. True, the door is slowly starting to open, but it STOPS, and then she forces it open with absolute ease! And that was a solid steel door!
And third factor (I know I said two factors but I wanted to point this out a lil too) is the existence of Finley’s real sea-dragon body, seen RIGHT at the end of the chapter. There is no way that is a real human, and definitely no way that's an animatronic either. That thing is real, and its definitely strong.
My guess? These guys are what actually caused the majority of the damage we see in the park. It would explain why the place got evacuated at all, and why police wanted to keep people away from the place so badly.
5th discovery: little things to note.
So in chapter one there’s a few little things of note which might not be huge to the lore, but I wanted to talk about for sure cus they fascinate me.
1st lil note: On the train ride in, if you turn around upon seeing conductor Rambley enter the train, there’s a picture of Rambley and LLoyd shaking one anothers’ paws. I haven’t been able to get a closer look, but I believe there’s also some kind of letter or note in the picture too. I have no idea what this implies, but I found it interesting given that, for the rest of the game, Rambley basically hates Lloyd and resents how much attention the lion gets (despite the fact that rambley is most definitely the one character that gets the most attention.)
2nd lil note: if you pay close enough attention throughout the chapter (after you officially enter, and before you see her in the Landing Pad room) Molly Macaw actually appears a few times. Sometimes physically, sometimes saying things. I think the first time you can officially see her is in the cue for the train ride as she goes around a corner. You can spot her a few times during the train ride as well, and can even hear her saying something after Finley has his little ‘come visit me’ speech. I don’t know exactly how many times she pops up along the ride, but that is very interesting. I also believe she pops up in the theater, both physically and for a brief moment you can hear her too, just before you see Lloyd in the backstage area.
Collectables. Like with FNAF security breach, this game has collectables that reveal a lil more lore, but unlike FNAF, you can only find out info about the items once you reach an info kiosk. For the most part, the info you get if you scan the items seem to be about your character’s backstory, which honestly isn’t… much? But there could be more in the future, who knows. But if you click on them, you can learn more about the items from Rambley, which is where you also get to learn about the secret recording regarding that one mascot mask. They’re part of the game, but I don't think you have to get them? At least, I don't think they unlock anything special if you do get them all. I know nothing changed when I got them all.
Our character's height/age/info. So, when we are first introduced to the character we play as in the beginning opening intro, it's pretty obvious that we’re playing someone who’s either a teenager, or a fully grown adult. They’ve been known for exploring abandoned places before, if we pay attention to the messages they share with an internet friend, and in the game, our arms are quite muscular, meaning we are known for being fairly strong ourselves, and more than capable of running for long distances (which makes sense later on with the molly chase).
However, a couple of things I wanted to note: If this is true, then why are some things in indigo park different heights to us then what they should be? For instance, a normal upstanding bin, with nothing keeping it above ground or adding to its height, is only just below our chin basically. Another example is that some of the desks in cafes or kiosks are higher than us. Yet it's made pretty clear we’re not playing as a kid. I suppose it is entirely possible we could be playing an adult of short stature, but I’m not entirely sure. It is also possible that this was done as part of the game’s physics, to avoid players jumping over things. Story wise, it is a bit inconsistent and I thought that was a little strange. Could be nothing, but could be something.
My current Theory:
So here’s my running theory. I want to point out that this is a theory and not absolute fact, and if you have theories of your own I’d love to hear them. I’m just theorizing according to the evidence I’ve picked up. Here goes.
Sometimes back in the late 2010s perhaps, Indigo park decided they wanted to take things in an exciting new direction. Their ideal thought was always to try and bring dreams to life, of course, and perhaps Isaac Indigo felt that the current Mascots weren’t doing the best job at that. He brings in some scientists and discusses with them a revolutionary idea: turning ACTUAL animals into the mascots for Indigo park. Perhaps he reasons with them by saying things like ‘hey, people want to see and feel the realness of these mascots they’ve come to love, what better way to do it then to give them REAL animals.’
Unfortunately, this means some scientific experimentation. A scientist, we’ll call them Richard for now, gathers up the actual animals that represent the mascots (perhaps getting a lion cub from a circus to avoid being killed by lions in the wildlife)), and starts to run experiments on them by giving them potions that slowly, over time, start to ‘transform’ them into the mascots for Indigo park. However, he gets to the one for Salem the skunk, and since Salem is supposed to be the evil, tricky, clever one, her transformation goes awry, and they break free, enabling the other animals to break free as well. Causing the chaos of the park to ensue, and the eventual evacuation of the park. They decide they want to keep Indigo Park as their home, because they know that the outside world would probably kill them on the spot, and slowly over time become more animal like, but still hold onto some of the old traits they were injected with. The AI known as Rambley was confined to the front desk, most likely because that would be one of the last areas staff went to before fully evacuating. Meaning he was stuck there until we came along. Now he wants to bring the park back to life, because that’s what he’s programmed to want, and to do, but he needs human clearance, which is where we come in. But the animal mascots will probably not like that, because that means we’re bringing back to life the place that condemned them to start with. So they will try to stop us any way they can. Is this right? Again, not sure. It’s just a theory right now. But I’ll be interested to find out what happens in chapter two.
Was there anything I missed? What did YOU think of Indigo park? Got any theories? Let me know and let’s discuss Indigo Park!!

Just finished Malcolm, great watch from beginning to end, we need to get Muniz back on tv!
I knew the twist going in unfortunately, but now that ive seen the context I do feel like ive missed something: Which president is it implied Malcolm grows up into becoming? I was hoping that last episode is where theyd drop the surname on us but no dice!
This was pre Trump of course so am I to assume he's George Bush? George does have four siblings like Malcolm, but I feel Malcolm having to tackle 911 puts a kind of a damper on what was otherwise a lovely ending
Just wondering how other people took it. Could be Bill Clinton of course but i feel if they were going that route we would have gotten a Hillary scene

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

19 May 1762 – 29 January 1814
J. G. Fichte and a priori Providentialism
Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History
Sunday 19 May 2024 is the 262nd anniversary of the birth of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (19 May 1762 – 29 January 1814), who was born in Rammenau, Saxony, then part of the Holy Roman Empire, on this day in 1762.
Fichte is often remembered in histories of philosophy as an immediate successor to Kant in the German idealist tradition. While still a young man Fichte wrote and anonymously published Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation. This was in 1792 when Fichte was 30 years old. Many believed that Kant had written this work, given Kant’s earlier critiques of pure reason, practical reason, and judgment, so when Kant denied authorship and identified Fichte as the actual author, Fichte experienced the philosophical equivalent of being an overnight sensation.
But Fichte’s life was an unsheltered as Kant’s life was sheltered. He was a born trouble-maker and was willing to touch the third rail of Enlightenment politics by writing and speaking openly about matters of religion, as revealed by his work on revelation. Fichte is sometimes called inflexible and rigid, though we could also say (a little more charitably) that he was principled and not inclined to compromise. Partly as a result of this temperament, Fichte became embroiled in a controversy in German intellectual life remembered as the Atheismusstriet, or Atheism Controversy.
During this controversy Friedrich Jacobi published an open letter against Fichte in which Jacobi coined the term “nihilism” to describe what he took to be Fichte’s position:

“Truly, my dear Fichte, I would not be vexed if you, or anyone else, were to call Chimerism the view I oppose to the Idealism that I chide for Nihilism. I have paraded my not-knowing in all my writings; in my non-knowledge I have prided myself so to be with knowledge, so perfectly and completely, that I am certainly allowed to be contemptuous of the mere doubter.—I have wrestled for truth with zeal and fervour since childhood as few others; as few others have I experienced my powerlessness—and my heart has grown tender for that—yea, very tender, my dear Fichte—and my voice so gentle! Just as I have deep compassion for myself, as human being, so I have it for others. I am patient without effort; but that I am truly patient without effort costs me a lot. The earth will be light above me—it won’t be long.”

Nihilism was to go on to have quite a career as an idea after Jacobi’s letter. While for Jacobi, the nihilism he attributed to Fichte was the inevitable outcome of reason, nihilism did not remain centered on Jacobi’s critique of Kantian philosophy, but came to signify belief in nothing at all.
Fichte’s controversial stance created a problem for the authorities at the University of Jena, where Fichte was employed at the time. Fichte wouldn’t budge, and this was one of the episodes responsible for his reputation for inflexibility, so the University of Jena dismissed him in 1799. At this point, with little to his name and few prospects, Fichte walked from Jena to Berlin—Google Maps says it takes 55 hours to complete this walk—and eventually he became part of the philosophical scene in Berlin.
Fichte attempted, semi-successfully, to support himself with popular books and lectures. For a philosopher coming from a background of Kantian philosophy—the most technical philosophy of its day—this was a bold project, but he gamely attempted to bring his interpretation of Kantianism to the masses. One of the outcomes of this effort was Fichte’s short book The Vocation of Man (1800). Fichte’s academic work was riddled with jargon, but The Vocation of Man is written in plain language and was intended for a popular audience. However, it’s still a demanding philosophical argument. In it, Fichte articulated a conception of human destiny that is universalistic, rationalistic, teleological, and even infinitistic:

“Let us not ask of history if man, on the whole, have yet become purely moral. To a more extended, comprehensive, energetic freedom he has certainly attained; but hitherto it has been an almost necessary result of his position, that this freedom has been applied chiefly to evil purposes. Neither let us ask whether the aesthetic and intellectual culture of the ancient world, concentrated on a few points, may not have excelled in degree that of modern times! It might happen that we should receive a humiliating answer, and that in this respect the human race has not advanced, but rather seemed to retrograde, in its riper years. But let us ask of history at what period the existing culture has been most widely diffused, and distributed among the greatest number of individuals; and we shall doubtless find that from the beginning of history down to our own day, the few light-points of Civilization have spread themselves abroad from their centre, that one individual after another, and one nation after another, has been embraced within their circle, and that this wider outspread of culture is proceeding under our own eyes. And this is the first point to be attained in the endless path on which humanity must advance.”

Notice that Fichte implies a distinction between two kinds of progress: there is progress toward the highest degree of excellence, and here humanity may have backslid, but there is also progress toward broadly distributed high culture, and here Fichte thinks that his time definitely surpassed previous history. Fichte also says that progress, by which he means moral progress, is an endless path, and we have already seen that it is possible for humanity to experience retrograde moral progress, so the pathway to man becoming purely moral, as Fichte sees it, is endless, it can incorporate reversals, and it can be striving to new heights or to wider diffusion.
This and many other passages point to the infinite perfectibility of man, which shows us the extent to which Fichte had imbibed the ideals of the French Revolution—or, we might say, he had imbibed the ideals of the French philosophers who were instrumental in laying the foundations of the French revolution, and were later arguably co-opted by the revolution, as in the case of Condorcet, who wrote this paean to the infinite perfectibility of man while on the run from the revolutionary gendarme. But the infinite perfectibility of man as Fichte imagines it is a teleology with a real history: things can go wrong, we can get sidetracked, we might pursue one form of moral excellence or another, and so on.
And Fichte also transmuted the French concept of the infinite perfectibility of man in the image of German idealism, producing a kind of philosophical spiritualism. Part of this transmutation of ideals came about because of the direction that Fichte saw the French revolution take as it developed. Many philosophers at the time initially supported the ideals of the French Revolution, but came to see it in a different light after the Terror and the Napoleonic Wars. Fichte as well.
Seeking to rally his countrymen after defeats inflicted by Napoleon, Fichte gave a series of public lectures later published as Addresses to the German Nation. This was more than a half century before the unification of Germany as a nation-state. In the twentieth century this work was savaged by George Santayana in his book Egotism in German Philosophy, which I mentioned in my episode on Wars and Rumors of Wars. Santayana called Fichte “an uncompromising puritan” and in Santayana’s fever dream of German expansionism he imagined Fichte as the source of it all:

“…Fichte gives us prophetic glimpses of an idealistic Germany conquering the world. The state does not aim at self-preservation, still less is it concerned to come to the aid of those members of the human family that lag behind the movement of the day. The dominion of unorganised physical force must be abolished by a force obedient to reason and spirit. True life consists in refashioning human relations after a model innate in the mind. The glorious destiny of Germany is to bring forth and establish the world anew. Natural freedom is a disgraceful thing, a mere medley of sensual and intellectual impulses without any principle of order. It is for the Germans to decide whether a providential progress exists by becoming themselves the providence that shall bring progress about, or whether on the contrary every higher thought is folly. If they should fail, history would never blame them, for in that case there would be no more history.”

Many others also have seen Fichte’s work through the lens of the wars of their time, which were the world wars of the twentieth century, rather than through the lens of the wars of Fichte’s time, which were the Napoleonic Wars.
Fichte knew that he was putting his life on the line by publicly speaking out against the French, as he at one time referenced the fate of Johann Philipp Palm. Palm, a book seller, was connected to a pamphlet, Germany in Its Deep Humiliation (Deutschland in seiner tiefsten Erniedrigung), that angered Napoleon. Napoleon ordered his subordinates to try and execute Palm within twenty-four hours. Palm was tried on 26 August 1806 by a French military tribunal, found guilty, and shot within hours of the verdict. Four other book sellers also were tried were not executed. Fichte knew that the same thing could happen to him in publicly speaking out on behalf of the German people. We can see from incidents such as this that Fichte was in the thick of the history of his own time, sometimes riding the wave and sometimes making waves.
Roberta Picardi notes both the derivation and dependence of Fichte’s views from Kant, as well as Fichte’s divergence from Kant:

“Fichte explores the epistemic status and method of history with an aim which is clearly taken from Kant: the purpose of introducing a systematic and scientific method in the infinite field of the empiricism, of which history is a part, together with experimental physics. As we can read in The Characteristics of the Present Age he wants to obtain ‘a sure progress according to rule instead of an uncertain groping in the dark’ from history, i. e., instead of the ‘Herumptappen’ (this is the German word for ‘groping’) that in the second Preface to the Critique of Pure Reason Kant contrasts with the ‘secure path of a science’.”

But the secure path of science isn’t always all that secure, given that there are multiple scientific pathways, and not all pathways lead to the same end. This is the distinction within Fichte’s philosophy of history noted by Angelica Nuzzo:

“Fichte builds his idea of a philosophy of history upon a paradoxical argument. He pushes to the extreme the claim of the bare factual nature of history as a realm of irrational, not-conceptual, and thoroughly contingent reality. Yet he also maintains that philosophical knowledge of history is possible—although neither as deductive, nor conceptual, nor genetic knowledge. Against the fictitious notion of historical Wahrscheinlichkeit (plausibility, probability), Fichte holds on to the notion of ‘historical truth’ and to its ‘logic.’ Despite its radically empirical character, history can be construed a priori.”

Some of the flavor of Fichte’s a priori approach to history can be gained from his primary work on the philosophy of history Characteristics of the Present Age (Der Grundzüge des gegewärtigen Zeitalters, 1806), in which he decomposes history into Five Principal Epochs, based not on historical contingencies, but rather upon human destiny and moral development:

“…we endeavoured to pre-figure the whole Earthly Life of Man by a comprehension of its purpose;— to perceive why our Race had to begin its Existence here, and by this means to describe the whole present Life of humankind:—this is what we wished to do,—it was our first task. There are, according to this view, Five Principal Epochs of Earthly Life, each of which, although taking its rise in the life of the individual, must yet, in order to become an Epoch in the Life of the Race, gradually lay hold of and interpenetrate all Men; and to that end must endure throughout long periods of time, so that the great Whole of Life is spread out into Ages, which sometimes seem to cross, sometimes to run parallel with each other:—1st, The Epoch of the unlimited dominion of Reason as Instinct: —the State of Innocence of the Human Race. 2nd, The Epoch in which Reason as Instinct is changed into an external ruling Authority;—the Age of positive Systems of life and doctrine, which never go back to their ultimate foundations, and hence have no power to convince but on the contrary merely desire to compel, and which demand blind faith and unconditional obedience:—the State of progressive Sin. 3rd, The Epoch of Liberation,—directly from the external ruling Authority—indirectly from the power of Reason as Instinct, and generally from Reason in any form;—the Age of absolute indifference towards all truth, and of entire and unrestrained licentiousness:—the State of completed Sinfulness. 4th, The Epoch of Reason as Knowledge;—the Age in which Truth is looked upon as the highest, and loved before all other things:—the State of progressive Justification. 5th, The Epoch of Reason as Art;—the Age in which Humanity with more sure and unerring hand builds itself up into a fitting image and representative of Reason:—the State of completed Justification and Sanctification. Thus, the whole progress which, upon this view, Humanity makes here below, is only a retrogression to the point on which it stood at first, and has nothing in view save that return to its original condition. But Humanity must make this journey on its own feet; by its own strength it must bring itself back to that state in which it was once before without its own coöperation, and which, for that very purpose, it must first of all leave.”

We can call Fichte’s Five Principal Epochs a “stadial” philosophy of history, since “stadial” refers to stages. In this passage we gain an appreciation of the necessity of the five stages of history as a developmental process that cannot be gotten around: there is no royal road to the end of the history.
In the Second Lecture from Fichte’s Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation, he makes explicit both the a priori developmental history of humanity and the utopian picture of the ultimate end of human development:

“…a very great man has said, life in the state is not one of man’s absolute aims. The state is, instead, only a means for establishing a perfect society, a means which exists only under specific circumstances. Like all those human institutions which are mere means, the state aims at abolishing itself. The goal of all government is to make government superfluous. Though the time has certainly not yet come, nor do I know how many myriads or myriads of myriads of years it may take (here we are not at all concerned with applicability in life, but only with justifying a speculative proposition), there will certainly be a point in the a priori foreordained career of the human species when all civic bonds will become superfluous.”

The editor says in a footnote that the “great man” mentioned was probably an allusion to Kant’s Idea of History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View. We saw in my episode on Kant how Kant saw the teleology of humanity as establishing the perfect civil constitution, though I also speculated that, if we take Kant’s later writings on history in the context of his early pre-critical work on natural history, this Kantian teleology for humanity is nested within a larger cosmological teleology. By my reading, then, Kant is actually the more naturalistic position, while Fichte is the more anthropocentric, and his ideal is a purely spiritual ideal, even an a priori idea. For example, Fichte isn’t in the least interested to even give an estimate of the period of time that will be required for humanity to abolish all government, but he only points out that this is the ultimate end.
Marx also predicted the withering away of the state after communism had been achieved, and Marx, too, emphasized definite stages in human development that would lead to this outcome. With Kant, Fichte, and Marx all predicting the end of formal human governments we might take this prediction as a distinctive feature of a certain class of philosophies of history. Toynbee, too, saw not exactly the end of the state, but the end of universal civilizations, which would cede their place to universal churches, which sounds to me a lot like Kant, Fichte, and Marx anticipating the ultimate abolition of government in a perfect society.
This we can understand as a kind of inverse teleology, in which it is not (or not only) the advent of some future eventuality that is foreseen, but the abolition of some present state-of-affairs in the future as the goal of human development. For Kant, Fichte, Marx, and Toynbee, there is a dual teleological movement, in which some novel state-of-affairs is to unfold, while a present state of affairs is to give way and disappear as the new order comes to replace it. We could call this a stadial philosophy of history, but it is as much a substitutional philosophy of history: one social order is substituted for another; familiar institutions are to be replaced by novel institutions that take their place.
As far as the new institutions are expected to be an improvement over the old, this is also a melioristic philosophy of history. All progressivist philosophies of history are also melioristic, but we can distinguish between gradualistic meliorism, in which iterated reform eventually converges on a perfect society, which could be a finite or an infinitistic process, and stadial meliorism, in which there is a replacement rather than reform of a social order, and this replacement is an improvement.
For a non-stadial, non-teleological philosophy of history, we can turn to Leopold von Ranke, who was critical of Fichte’s five epochs:

“One of the ideas with which philosophy again and again confronts history as an irrefutable claim is that mankind is on an uninterrupted road to progress, in a steady development toward perfection. Fichte, one of the foremost philosophers in this field, assumes five epochs, a world plan as he says – reason ruling through instinct, reason ruling through law, emancipation from the authority of reason, reason as science, and reason as art. If this or a similar scheme were to any extent true, then general history would have to follow the road of progress which the human race followed in the indicated direction from one age to the next. The sole subject matter of history would then be the development of such concepts as they appear and manifest themselves in the world of phenomena. But this is by no means the case. For one thing, the philosophers themselves have extraordinarily varied opinions about the nature and selection of these supposedly ruling ideas. But they very wisely focus only on a few peoples in world history while considering the lives of all the rest as nothing, as a mere supplement. Otherwise it could not be hidden for a moment that from the beginning to this day the peoples of the world have been in the most varied conditions.”

We saw earlier that Fichte by no means argued for an uninterrupted road to progress, but we can set that aside as being of secondary importance. The antagonism between Fichte and Ranke runs deeper. Ranke is often associated with the emergence of historicism, and sometimes he is identified as the source of historicism. Ranke even was willing to express his historicism in theological terms when we said that all ages are equidistant from God. With this view of history as consisting of co-equal periods each with their own integrity it would be difficult, though not impossible, to argue for progress. In Characteristics of the Present Age Fichte rejects the view that an age can be assessed on its own terms:

“Should our view of the Present Age prove to have been a view taken from the standing-point of this Age itself, should the eye which has taken this view have been itself a product of the Age which it has surveyed, then has the Age borne witness to itself and such testimony must be set aside.”

Fichte, then, needs some criterion for his view of the present age other than the present age itself, and he finds it in religion:

“…what has been the nature of this theory, considered in its essential elements, and to what chief department of human thought it has belonged? I answer:—It was a Religious Theory; all our contemplations were Religious contemplations, and our view of things, and the eye which embraced that view, were Religious.”

Fichte goes one better and actually gives a definition of religion in the next paragraph:

“RELIGION consists in regarding and recognising all Earthly Life as a necessary development of the one, original, perfectly good and perfectly blessed Divine Life.”

Both Ranke and Fichte, then, invoke theological sanction for their conception of history, though this conception is starkly different, with Ranke taking each age to be sufficient unto itself, and no less related to the divine than any other age, while Fichte took each age to be dependent upon a larger framework for its meaning. While Ranke the historian insists on the individual uniqueness of each age, while Fichte the philosopher sees each age in relation to the whole of which it is a part. It is the task of Fichte’s Characteristics of the Present Age to provide for his contemporaries this larger framework so that they can understand their place in history, which for Fichte means understanding their place in the moral development of humanity.
Even Fichte’s conception of religion and moral development is strikingly abstract, as we find a little further on in the last chapter of Characteristics of the Present Age: “…Religion is nothing external,—it never clothes itself in any outward manifestation.” And, “…True Religion does not manifest itself outwardly, and does not impel man to any course of external conduct which he would not otherwise have adopted, but that it only completes his true Inward Being and dignity.” This is not necessary an orthodox position, and we’ve already seen how Fichte got himself in trouble with authorities with his views on religion.
It would seem strange to call Fichte’s philosophy of history a providential philosophy of history, as it seems to have little in common with, say, St. Augustine, but by Fichte’s own account, his is a pervasively religious perspective, and his philosophy of history is an account of humanity’s progress toward moral perfection. This progress is a purely inward fulfillment, without any observational consequences, again, by Fichte’s own account. I’ve run into this view in one other thinker, and that is Simone Weil. In my episode on Weil I quoted her criticism of providentialism of a kind that I called vulgar providentialism:

“Divine Providence is not a disturbing influence, an anomaly in the ordering of the world; it is itself the order of the world; or rather it is the regulating principle of this universe. It is eternal Wisdom, unique, spread across the whole universe in a sovereign network of relations.”

I think Fichte would have agreed with this, and with the examples of both Fichte and Weil we can see that there is a place within the conceptual space of philosophy of history for what we could call a pure providential philosophy of history, or, if you like, an a priori providentialism.
Ranke’s criticism of Fichte is predicated upon the necessity of a vulgar providentialism that is reflected in the empirical world. But if, as Fichte said, religion is nothing external, and it does not impel man to any course of external conduct, neither should it impel any course of external conduct on the world. This also resolves the paradoxical argument that Angelica Nuzzo found at the heart of Fichte’s philosophy of history, since the bare factual nature of history can be distinguished from the providentialism that can be construed a priori.

Video Presentation

https://youtu.be/T8eIxZi0LrM
https://www.instagram.com/p/C7LPoSKNdPB/
https://odysee.com/@Geopolicraticus:7/j.-g.-fichte-and-a-priori:6

Podcast Edition

https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/73G2BY64JJb
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/a31b8276-53cd-4723-b6ad-a39c8faa4572/episodes/306a6446-d4d7-4e24-a447-c89fd310d7a2/today-in-philosophy-of-history-j-g-fichte-and-a-priori-providentialism
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-today-in-philosophy-of-his-146507578/episode/j-g-fichte-and-a-priori-177816272/
​

'cause they hit like 6-7 hours ago! I thought they'd have been up already, but I guess not. Seems he got himself a 7-minute ovation though, and told the audience he was sorry they had to clap for so long. Real aw shucks sorta feller. Anyway: the reviews!
Robert Daniels, rogerebert.com

As much as Costner tries to play an even hand, attempting to give the Indigenous and settler perspective equal attention, it doesn’t wholly work. Yes, we meet the family of the Apache warriors, but their screen time pales in comparison to their white counterparts. It also doesn’t help that the white women characters are, for the most part, so clean and luminous—nary a speck of dust on them despite their grungy surroundings—that they appear angelic on screen. The score is equally telling: It’s a gorgeous, big, triumphant Old Hollywood score whose most sympathetic notes are reserved for the film’s white characters. Costner does at least include a diverse cast, nodding toward the presence of Black people and Chinese immigrants in the history of the West, tracing across the vast, sumptuously photographed landscape by DP J. Michael Muro.
While “Horizon” teases a kind of conspiracy theory—a mysterious publisher is printing and sending pamphlets promising a land of milk of honey that is only occupied by death—I can’t help but continue to think about the film in relation to “How The West Was Won.” That Western, ultimately, couldn’t overcome the weight of the era it was created in or genre conventions like forced, feeble romances. “Horizon” is arriving in a more “enlightened” time, especially considering the release of Martin Scorsese’s “Killer of the Flower Moon” and other Indigenous-made works, such as “Reservation Dogs,” “Wild Indian,” “The Body Remembers When the World Broken Open,” “Beans,” and more. That presence put even greater pressure on Costner. And so far, he hasn’t completely overcome being the director of “Dances with Wolves.” That filmmaker, for better or for worse, still exists here in every corner of this epic picture.

Owen Glieberman, variety.com

As a stand-alone film (which it isn’t, but let’s pretend for a moment), “Horizon” is by turns convoluted, ambitious, intriguing, and meandering. But it’s never quite moving. It’s too busy laying down narrative tracks and hammering out the minutiae of situations that don’t feel like they’re leading anywhere special.
The real problem is the script (by Costner and Jon Baird), which is shapeless. It doesn’t weave these stories together; it stacks them next to each other like a series of cabooses. Yet I think the idea is that the design of it all will come into focus as we see “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 2” (later this year), and then, at some point, “Chapter 3” (which is now scheduled) and maybe, if all goes according to plan, more chapters. I seriously hope not. I’m not sure how much juice there is to squeeze out of these characters, but even if there is some I don’t want to see movies turn into television. Just about every Western of the studio era came in at two hours or less, and so did most of the revisionist Westerns (and some of those were complicated). There’s a reason for that. It’s all the time they needed.

David Rooney, thehollywoodreporter.com

Running a taxing three hours, this first part of a quartet of films is littered with inessential scenes and characters that go nowhere, taking far too long to connect its messy plot threads. Warner Bros. will release Chapter One in U.S. theaters June 28, with Chapter Two following on August 16 and Chapter Three reportedly going into production. A vigorous montage closes the first part with action-packed snippets from the next installment, adding to the nagging sense that we’re watching episodic TV that lost its way.
What’s most perplexing coming from Costner is the uncomfortably long time the film takes to show sensitivity toward its Indigenous characters. We’re well into Horizon before the perspective on Native resistance is broadened to acknowledge that their murderous attacks on new settlements are a direct response to the occupation of their ancestral lands. It’s very confusing to see a Western in 2024 and find yourself thinking, “Wait, so American Indians are the bad guys again?”

Gregory Ellwood, theplaylist.com

As “Horizon” progresses, there are numerous new storylines added to the equation. Some are almost trivial, others cliche (even for the genre), and few appear to add much to whatever the whole of Costner’s vision will eventually be. It just feels like very low stakes all around. And when you realize there isn’t even a minor conclusion to any of the narratives, the movie ends with essentially a slew of weak cliffhangers (if they can even be constituted as such), you wonder once again, “Why is this a movie?” This is an ongoing long-form television series propped up on the big screen. It’s that’s appealing you’ll be thrilled to know Costner ends the three hours with an extended teaser that seemingly gives away quite a bit for “Chapter 2” (you’re welcome for the spoiler warning). Thankfully, if you like “Chapter 1” you only have to wait six weeks for that installment to hit your local multiplex.
Besides the debate over whether it is or isn’t a movie, there’s also the question of the depiction of Native Americans in the end product. It’s initially refreshing to hear Gephardt question the settlers as to why of all places they set up camp in Horizon. Did the three graves across the river not suggest perhaps this riverbed was off-limits? Gephardt and Riordan also give much-needed exposition on the other Apache tribes and indigenous groups that are relatively peaceful to settlers if you leave them alone. The conversations within the Apache tribe also depict an old guard attempting to make the argument to an angry, impatient new generation ready that they are safe in the hills. They don’t need to engage with the settlers. The youngsters want nothing of it and demand their land back by any means necessary. In theory, this is a smart depiction of the various viewpoints of this era. But Costner and composer John Debney score the attack on Horizon (and other Indian encounters) with a sweeping and grandiose sympathy only for the settlers (who, again, shouldn’t be there). It almost undoes all of the positive portrayal that comes before it.

Richard Lawson, vanityfair.com

Horizon is far from stately, or even coherent. A jumble of clichéd plots rendered in washed-out color (and washed-out performances), Horizon may rival Megalopolis as the biggest American boondoggle at this year’s Cannes. Sure, what appears disorderly may turn out to be genius by the time we’ve seen the end of the project—but ten hours is an awfully long time to wait to find out.
The three central narratives, as I see it, concern the ragged townspeople of a settlement in the San Pedro River valley (called Horizon) ; a gruff gunslinger making his way across the mountains further north with a woman and a child in tow; and a Santa Fe Trail wagon train snaking its way toward Horizon. (I think?) There is, halfheartedly, a fourth thread, about schisms within the Apache tribes who are native to the territory on which Horizon was hastily built. But the film only pays them lip service. Mostly they function as the brutal antagonizers of the Horizon townsfolk, who are nearly wiped out in a nighttime raid that is one of the film’s very few action sequences—the rest is the dullest and hoariest of talk.
Perhaps all will cogently, even movingly, converge in Chapter 2, but there’s little reason to have faith. This first foray sets a table that seems beyond saving by the end. At least Horizon accomplishes one staggering feat: it makes one wonder if we were maybe a little too hard on The Postman.

Hey! I’m a rising senior in high school, and I’m looking at Duke as one of my reaches. The campus is absolutely beautiful and I like the location. I had a couple questions about your guys’ experience: 1. How is the physics/astro/computer science program, and how does it stack up to similar universities? (JSU, UNC, etc.) 2. How do research opportunities compare to similar schools? 3. What do you like or dislike about your social life at Duke? I’m a moderately introverted person, but I do like making friends and having fun. I love a good food scene 4. Besides quality, how is the physics/astro department at Duke? Is it bigger or smaller than others? I know some departments at some schools have such small class sizes that you kinda become a lil "family" within your majoconcentration's cohort. Is this the case at Duke or not really? Do you feel like you get enough attention from your professors? 5. How's the research? Are the profs easy to contact? For any undergrads doing research rn, how much independence do you have over your projects? How "cutting-edge" is the research? Specifically, if anyone's doing computational physics/astro, do you feel like you're ahead of the game, or at least on-par with other good computational physics schools? 6. What's your favorite and least favorite part of physics at Duke? 7. Why did you personally choose Duke over the other schools you got into?
If you have any other tips or stories to share, please do :)
Thanks!

Hey, so I actually watched fairy tail like 8 years ago or so, and watched in sub because that was just what was available to me. Decided to come back because I missed the whole rest of the show since then.
I’ve always liked sub, but in recent years I’ve been trying my hand at dubs because I do feel a greater connection when I can hear their voice. But I was comparing two early episodes, and couldn’t help but hear quite a few mistranslations that either change the context of a scene (erza being somewhat airheaded and going off topic to talk about the -ebi ending of cancer in sub vs. saying she finds him calling Lucy “baby” disrespectful paints a different characterization in that moment) or just straight misinformation (erza’s black wing armor is stated to just “boost attack” in dub when the sub explains that it’s just for a singular attack, which will sell the wrong idea). These are just examples and it happens in a noticeable amount of scenes
Anyway, I just want to know if this kind of thing is prevalent throughout, or if it improves with the show’s runtime/increasing popularity. I’d love to experience the dub on the rewatch, but I have no memory of the show and don’t want to be fed misinfo and mistranslations that’ll detract from the intended meaning.
Thank you for reading! : )

So I heard a song briefly in a video. I was able to track down the video, amd relevant section. But I can't figure out the name of the song/piece. I'm guessing you guys will probably know it immediately as I've heard it many times. I've just never known the name and would like to share it with my daughter's. The song in question is played starting at 7:24, and ends roughly 7:38.
The video (don't judge based on name, it came on from film review videos auto playing) is titled : Top 5 woke Hollywood disasters of 2023 Uploaded by Nerdrotic
https://youtu.be/GM9H02WvAHs?si=182zWRtIpT85aYBZ
Thank you in advance for the help. And if you happen to know any other good pieces to listen to is love o hear it.

What scene are you super attached to in S3P1??
I ADOOOOORE when Colin comes back from the bar with his “friends” and he removes his boots and then ✨aggressively✨ removes whatever is around his neck and he just lays on his bed with the knowledge he is so in love with Pen like OOOOOO IT HAD ME SCREAMING
Also when Violet smacks Gregory’s hand off the pastries lmaooo
And lastly: the way Pen says - I know him well enough - I know that already Colin Something about the way she whisper yells is so MMM MMM MMMMMM

Shore-ing Up Sides
What kind of a name is this episode? Stupid title. It does give us a clue that this episode will show the demise of friendships and that the cast takes sides. They split up! The casts of NJ are all doing interviews online and on TV. A lot of spoilers are coming out from the cast including who switches sides. I know who. It's all-over social media. I doubt anyone cares if it's spoiled, but you never know. We got a long season ahead. Please! I hope the arguing isn't as bad as last year!
Now, on with the episode...
The cast is still down at the Shore. It looks beautiful and also fun! Of course, they are still divided. Jen and Bill A is with Dolores and Paul. Teresa and Louie went home because Gabriella is leaving for college. Rachel and John are with Adult Jen Fessler and her husband Jeff along with Danielle and Nate. Melissa and Joe are with Marge and her Joe--he really loves her, he's rubbing her feet, very clingy. I would hate it! But that's just me. Most women love to be pampered. Not me.
John asks Adult Jen F about the party the night before. He secretly wants to know why she is hanging around with the enemy, Teresa. Jen states that she never had a problem with Teresa, Rachel looks at her with daggers, she is mad as hell. She states in her talking head that Adult Jen couldn't stand Teresa and that now that Adult Jen has jumped ship, Rachel is done with her. She is very hurt and called Adult Jen F stupid.
Dolores asks Jen A what is going on between Melissa and her. Jen says she is not feeling her and is not a chump. Melissa tells Marge that Jen A spread rumors, so she is not happy with her. The bad feelings is mutual between these two women...
Melissa is throwing a Birthday Party for Joe. It's going to be an Italian theme party. She and Marge discuss what to do about Jen A because she might feel like the lone enemy there without Teresa. Melissa thinks she and Bull should attend. So, with that, Joe Gorga calls Bill and extends an invitation to him and his wife. Bill tells him thank you, but his wife Jen is still not in a good place with Melissa. Jen is not having it. She is still hurt from last year and thinks Joe's invite was not sincere. She is glad that Bill finally stood up for her. She says they are a team from now on. He will stand up for her or he will feel her wrath! Bill just smiles at her no matter what she says. Why is he always smiling?!
Teresa and all her girls are packing up for Gabriella. Gia is crying, all the girls are crying. Gia tells Gabriella that she is so proud of her for getting into the University of Michigan. It's a very had college to get into. Teresa is also crying. Teresa ex, Joe Guidice calls. Teresa can't look at him or she will cry. He tells them all this is a good thing. Louie comes in and tries to cheer them up too. Joe can't afford college, so Teresa and Louie are paying. I doubt Louie is paying, but Producers put Teresa on the spot and asked her if Louie is also paying. Of course she is going to say yes. Pretty sure only Teresa is paying. I saw a preview that Louie went through all of Teresa's money. So, there's that.
Teresa and Louie go outside. She tells him she is in her love bubble with him and no matter what happened at the party or with their enemies she has his love. What does enemies have to do with their love bubble? They are holding hands, clinging to each other while they bring up John Fuda, they rip him apart. Louie called him ugly and a loser. Louie you're no prize in the looks either so no room to talk. Teresa tells him he handled it with grace with John and she is sorry he has to deal with this. He says the same to her, she doesn't deserve any of this. I feel so bad what these two have to put up with. Not! Louie handled it with grace! What the... such an odd thing to say. Louie wrote on Instagram that Teresa has so much grace. I would not describe these two with the word grace.
Joe Gorga's party starts. It looks like fun. The men were doing shots on a blow-up doll's ass that John brought. Ass shots are not my style of fun, but to each their own.
Rachel is complaining about Adult Jen F's betrayal and Marge is talking about Jen A. Marge thinks Jen A should have shown up. Why? I wouldn't if I was her. Rachel agrees with me and says she wouldn't have shown up either.
Back home Teresa throws a going away dinner party for Gabriella at a restaurant. Louie's boys are there along with her daughters. It's a nice family scene. They all reminisce and have a nice time together. Cheers Gabriella! I hope she succeeds in whatever career that she decides to do. I am sure she will.
Back at the party John and Paul joke around with the other men and make up. Oh, and Frank is there. I thought he was off the show for good. He tells Joe that he misses him and that he is Starchy to his Hutch. What?!! Oh, and Frankie Jr. Isn't in Dolores' background family tagline. It's Paul and her daughter. Maybe Frank Jr. had enough of the show.
Marge, Rachel and Adult Jen F sit down. Marge is going to get her. She asks her about Teresa and Louie. Marge is going on and on about it, she is annoyed. Jackie sits down and takes Adult F's side. Marge and Rachel are not having it. Marge tells Adult Jen that she doesn't understand what she is doing, she hated them. Adult Jen is not budging, she now loves Teresa and will be friends with whoever she wants. Rache; starts crying about all of this. Adult Jen feels bad for Rachel, but she loves Teresa now! Rachel feels very betrayed, and Marge is not having what Adult Jen A is putting down. This is messy. Jen F told Marge she is not Marge's soldier, and she will do what she wants and be friends with who she wants. There is a lot of arguing going on and I am sure it will continue. Jackie is comforting Adult Jen and Marge and Rachel are talking about Jen F to Danielle, Rachel is still crying. The betrayal is real. Danielle agrees with Rachel and Marge--she says Adult Jen F isn't loyal and should never do that to her best friends.
Adult Jen F is trying with all her might to tell everyone that she is the best friend anyone could ever have! I don't know about that. What do you all think? Is Jen F a traitor or is Marge and Rachel being unreasonable? If someone does me harm and spread rumors about me. I wouldn't be too fond if my friend befriended that person who she knew for a minute and said she disliked. It's hurtful to do that to a longtime friend who you trusted. That's my take on this.
Oh yeah, and Joe Gorga gets a nice big Italian cannoli cake! Besides the arguing, there were a lot of people there having a lot of fun. Everyone wished him a Happy Birthday and it ended on a happy scene with the delicious cake! Who doesn't love cake?
To Be Continued...

I am not The OOP, OOP is u/brokenheartedsister
My (26F) fiance (28M) slept with my sister (32F). Heartbroken and devastated. I can't move on.
Thanks to u/Choice_Evidence1983 for suggesting this BoRU
TRIGGER WARNING: infidelity, betrayal, self harm, depression, property damage
Original Post Nov 27, 2015
Hi Reddit. I'm posting here in the hope that someone can give me some advice, share their experiences, I don't know. I'm just completely at a loss. I feel like my heart has been ripped out.
My fiance (let's call him Jake) and I have been together for 7 years. I don't know a life without him. I met him at university, we stayed together past graduation, and moved into a flat which we bought together 2 years ago. He proposed last summer and we were set to wed in July 2017. We have had very few problems until now.
My sister (let's call her Sara) is an extremely volatile person. Growing up, I doted on her completely but she had a lot of personal issues that made our home life turbulent. Her childhood was very different to mine. My parents had very little money, they were on the brink of a divorce, my dad was physically violent on a number of occasions. Whilst things improved drastically in the years after I was born, she has an abundance of problems that stem back to this. My parents feel a lot of guilt about Sara's upbringing, and used to let her get away with some shocking behavior.
Sara had the same boyfriend for as long as I can remember (they dated from when they were 16), and their relationship was toxic. They habitually broke up and got back together; when they were good, they were crazy in love. But more often than not, she would have these insane arguments (sometimes physical) with him then take out her frustrations and despair on myself and my parents. I remember spending many nights lying by her side in bed while she cried so hard she would retch. After their arguments, she would throw plates and glasses at the wall, hit herself. Sometimes she would hit me and my parents too. It was like he was a drug to her, and she was emotionally stunted and didn't know how to see anything past their relationship.
2 months ago, her boyfriend called things off for good. I don't know what gave, but after nearly two decades together, he finally had enough. He booked a one way ticket to another country, changed his number, deleted all social media profiles, and essentially disappeared from Sara's life. To this day, she still won't explain what caused this, but it was long overdue.
To say Sara was devastated is an understatement. She moved out of their shared rented apartment, and in with my parents. I would visit her most days after work, where she would flit in between explosive rage to an almost catatonic silence, staring at the wall with tears streaming down her face. At one point, we were all extremely worried she might seriously harm herself and organized for her to see a therapist (something I had suggested for years). Of course, she backed out days before her appointment, and there were no consequences. She is, after all, a grown woman. She just hasn't changed emotionally in the entire time I've known her, and still acts like a teenager.
2 days ago. I went to visit Sara, who was in bed in her darkened room. I let myself in and attempted to speak to her, telling her about my day at work. She immediately exploded, screaming at me, throwing her pillows across the room, crying uncontrollably. She told me life was unfair. That I had everything and she was left alone to "rot". That everything wrong in her life was because she was a bad person. She hurt her boyfriend, she drove him away, she's ruined our family, she fucked Jake and didn't even feel guilty at the time. I initially thought I'd misheard her, but then she said it again. It was like she had poured a bucket of ice water over me.
I silently left, shaking. When I got home, Jake was there watching TV. It came out of my mouth the second I saw him, and I could see in his eyes it was true. He broke down, and told me it had happened 3 years ago. Sara had had another blazing row with her boyfriend and decided to drive round to Jake's looking for me. I was at our parents at the time and Jake attempted to pacify Sara. He comforted her while she sobbed in his arms, and one thing led to another. They had sex.
I packed an overnight bag while he followed me from room to room, sobbing and telling me it was the worst mistake of his life, that he still has no idea how it happened. That he felt unbelievably guilty the second it was over, that it feels like it wasn't even real. I left him in the doorway begging me not to leave.
I've checked into a hotel and have switched my phone off. I don't know what to do, who to tell, where to begin. I feel sick, like this is a bad dream. My heart feels like it's been ripped into a million pieces. For all of Sara's faults, I love her more than anything. It's the two people who are more to me than anyone else in the world.
How the fuck do I move on from this? I feel like I'm in a bubble. I don't know what's going on in the outside world. All I do is cry and sleep in this room. Someone please help me make sense of this.
tl;dr: My volatile sister recently went through a break up after a 16 year relationship with the love of her life. She is severely depressed and almost catatonic; I went to visit her one day only for her to explode and tell me she slept with my fiance 3 years ago. He admitted it was true and I haven't spoken to a soul since. I have locked myself in a hotel room with no plans of ever coming out. My heart is shattered into a million pieces and I don't know what to do.
Update Nov 29, 2015
Hi everyone.
I logged on this afternoon to find 300 + replies and messages to my post. I am unbelievably touched by the all people who reached out to me, particularly fractalfay's incredible response which spoke to me on a level I didn't think possible from a stranger. I'd like to thank each and every single person who took the time out of their day for me; I was so overwhelmed that I've not responded to a single one as of yet but it is truly truly appreciated.
Now onto the update.
It has only been a day or so since I made my post, but it feels like I'd been in that hotel room for weeks, crying in the dark buried under the covers. At some point this morning, I decided to draw the curtains open and let the sunlight in. I went and sat on the balcony and switched my phone on for the first time. It started ringing within 30 seconds. It was my mother, who burst into tears as soon as I answered. Her and my parents had obviously been desperately worried (this is the longest I have ever gone without contact) and had even contemplated calling the police had I failed to contact them by this evening.
My mom informed me that as I was walking out of Sara's room, down the stairs, and out the front door, Sara was screaming and wailing that she's sorry. Funnily enough, I didn't hear this. I don't know how. I think I was in such a state of shock that I couldn't process anything around me. Honestly, I can't even remember the drive home. After I shut the door behind me, my mom (who was the only other person at home) rushed into Sara's room to find her trashing her room and attempting to slash her wrists with a blunt lino cutter of all instruments (Sara used to do a lot of art). Obviously, this barely caused a scratch but jump started my mom into action. She drove Sara to the hospital, where I understand she underwent some sort of assessment and was kept overnight. She has, incredibly, agreed to undergo treatment for whatever it is that is wrong with her. My mom was surprised she was so complaisant on the drive down, willingly entering the car and saying nothing other than asking where I am.
Sara seems resigned and completely deflated; my mom spoke to me at length for the first time in my life about the hardships they had undergone during Sara's childhood. I am unwilling to go into detail and am still in shock about some of the things I heard. Sara is not devoid of responsibility; she has long surpassed the age where she can blame her childhood for her behavior, but my mom admitted through tears that not sending her to therapy at an early age was the biggest regret of her life so far.
I asked my mom if she knew why I had left; she admitted that she had known SINCE SARA'S EX LEFT TWO MONTHS AGO. At this point, I had to struggle not to hang up and I suddenly felt myself going back into that pit, but she begged me to listen. After her ex Harry (I am too drained to invent a name...hi Harry) left, Sara told my mom exactly what had happened. It was not the reason for Harry's departure, although he did know about it. Rather, he had had enough of being Sara's carer, and years of begging her to seek help had fallen on deaf ears one too many times. When Sara informed my mom, my mom told Sara I have to know immediately. Sara refused to tell me, and I still don't know why she changed her mind in that moment. My dad doesn't know for anyone wondering, and thinks I've left as I've also finally had enough of Sara's behavior.
Now here is where the home truths came out. I asked my mom if she knew the details. She was reluctant to tell me anything, stating that it had happened and that was all I needed to know. But I told her I refused to step foot in the house until I knew everything. She then proceeded to tell me that a few months before they slept together, Sara and Jake had kissed at my dad's 60th birthday party. It was a large family gathering with a lot of alcohol involved. I remember Jake getting very drunk with my cousins. Sara had a crying tantrum prior to arriving as her and Harry had an argument and he refused to come (she called me sobbing before she arrived). At some point during the night, Jake asked her if she was okay and hugged her, and once again "one thing led to another" and they shared a kiss in the kitchen. Sara told my mom that they were both immediately remorseful and vowed never to speak of it again, but Sara deliberately sought him out the night they slept together knowing he was unlikely to turn her down. She openly admitted she did it to get back at Harry, who had cheated on her during one of their many infamous breaks. I don't think I even entered her thoughts.
At this point, I'd heard enough. We'd spoken on the phone for over four hours and I felt mentally drained and physically sick. Any hope I had of salvaging my relationship with Jake has completely gone. I feel the last 3 years have been tainted by their betrayal, and the many years before that I wonder: did he like Sara this whole time? Part of me doesn't even want to know.
It's worth noting he has made absolutely no attempt to contact me other than a single TEXT stating "I'm sorry. Take as long as you need". As if it's inevitable I will come back to him.
Things are still up in the air. I don't feel ready to check out of the hotel as I don't know where I'm going to go next. I feel my relationship with my mom has been rocked by these revelations. I don't know what's going to become of Sara. I have no idea what I'm going to do about me and Jake's flat, where I'm going to live. I don't even know if I have a job anymore. I just haven't showed up to work.
But I know the truth and the smallest part of me is grateful for that. The rest of me is consumed by a pain I never imagined possible.
I guess there's nothing else to do now except wait and see how things unfold. But reading through your comments and messages have been more help than you can imagine, thank you thank you thank you.
And for anyone who has have ever experienced symptoms like Sara's, or has been around someone who is so visibly troubled, I beg of you: seek help before it's too late.
tl;dr: I had a four hour conversation with my mom, who not only knew about Sara and Jake, but informed me that they had shared a kiss a few months prior to the event. I am still in the hotel, still heart broken, and have no idea what to do next. The only saving grace is that Sara has agreed to treatment and will not be in my life for the foreseeable future.
Final Update Dec 26, 2015
Hi everyone!
I thought I would make a final update (to my original post and update) as I received a lot of messages over the last few days wondering how I am over the holiday period.
Once again, I'd like to thank you all for the outpouring of support I've received over the last month. The number of messages, links to help, and offers for a shoulder to cry on were overwhelming and touching. I apologise if I never got round to replying to them all, the last few weeks have been a blur. But I am eternally grateful nonetheless.
So, after my conversation with my mom (where I found out she had known about Jake and Sara) I went back to square one. I switched my phone off again, and retreated back into my hotel for a further 5 days. From the comments on my last post, I should clear up one thing: my mom hadn't known about Jake and Sara from the very beginning. Rather, Sara had told her about it at the time of Harry's sudden departure (meaning she had known a couple months before I did).
Eventually, I decided enough was enough and decided to call work. My boss wasn't angry, or even surprised, to hear from me. My mom had called him after our conversation and told him there had been a family emergency and I would be unavailable for the forseeable future. He advised I take to the end of the week, but would have to come to a meeting if I required any more time off work than I had already given myself. So my job was safe(ish) and I'm back at work and trying to get on with things.
After this, I went back to my parents. Sara was also home but holed up in her room. I went in to see her and she was up painting. As a number of you guessed, it is likely she has BPD, although my parents are waiting on a second opinion. She is going to counselling weekly, and seems slightly better. She broke down in tears when she saw me and we had a long long talk, where she spoke to me in depth about how truly consumed she was by her and Harry's toxic relationship. She understands it's for the best that it's over, but she describes the pain as "unrelenting: it hurt when he was with me, and it hurts now he's gone".
I know alot of you will feel disappointed that I haven't cut her or my mom out of my life for good. I still feel resentment in the pit of my stomach when I think about it, but truly, I blame Jake more than anyone else. Jake was with me for long enough to see some of Sara's behaviour. She's not well and he still chose to do what he did. It is a slow process, but she's my sister and I can't cut them out of my life forever. It will never be the same again, but maybe that's a good thing.
My dad, who had been newly informed on the proceedings, drove to my apartment and gathered some clothes and an overnight bag. Jake was not home, and my parents have not heard from him since I left. I have no idea where he is, and neither he nor his family have attempted any contact with me since this came out. His social media profiles have disappeared, and I have not attempted any contact with him, his family, or his friends. I began the slow process of telling my friends last week. I did not explain what happened, other than to say Jake was not the person I thought he was. They have all assumed cheating, but there is no reason for them to know who was involved.
I have switched back and forth between staying with my parents and sleeping at my apartment. I sleep on the sofa bed as the memories are too painful at the moment. I am in the process of looking into selling the place, however, this means contacting Jake at some point in the near future as the apartment is joint owned. I will cross that bridge when I feel a bit stronger.
Christmas day was a strange and sad one for both myself and Sara. But we spent it as a family, and for the few hours we were sat around eating and watching movies the pain was dulled even a small bit. As we were flicking through the various movies and TV episodes we'd recorded, I came across a scene that stuck with me, a scene that ended with the words: "la familia es todo".
I still spend most days with a hole in my heart, it hurts more than anything I've ever felt in my life...but it's getting better. I know I've got a long way to go, but for the first time I'm confident I'll get there.
Thank you for reading and here's to 2016.
tl;dr: Jake has disappeared without a trace. Sara is in treatment. My heart still hurts but I'm finally starting to get better.
THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP
DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP's OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7

I am not The OOP, OOP is u/IcemanEx54
GM Locked Me Out Of Interacting With Other Players Because I Got Confused
Originally posted to rpghorrorstories
TRIGGER WARNING: manipulation, controlling behavior, sexism
Original Post March 6, 2024
I'm a player in a tabletop RPG campaign and I just wanted to vent about this session. The GM uses a "rules light" homebrew system and it's his homebrew world as well. He's been doing this campaign for years now, but I just joined through a mutual friend after another player left recently.
When I joined the campaign, the GM had told me he wanted me to be from a particular country as a prince, and since it was his homebrewed world, I went with it. The country I'm a prince of is a massive empire that has conquered many lands. I wanted to be a morally good character so I made up a backstory where my prince had a secret romance with a commoner so it gave me more empathy and understanding than my other royal peers would have. Then in session 1, he had the commoner immediately break up with me since the players were all leaving the city session 1.
Several sessions later, there is a carnival being hosted in the empire and all the players are attending. The players split up and my part began with my character watching as a mentally handicap child was put in the dunk tank and was being dunked against his will. So I had my character help the child and stop the game (This isn't relevant to the larger story but I thought it was really weird). Then I am told I have to go to the "main stage" which is just a strip club seemingly. And of course, walking around topless serving drinks is my character's commoner love interest that I made in session 0. The GM laughs a bit and comments, "Isn't it funny? Look at what your ex has to do without you." I have my character give her the shirt off his back and we go to the outskirts of the carnival to find a quiet place to talk, but then the carnival was ambushed by some enemies as arrows and fire rained down on the parade.
Suddenly, my character and his ex are teleported back to the main stage and the GM starts jumping back and forth between all the player characters asking what we want to do without any sort of initiative and if we don't respond quickly enough he skips to another player. I ask, "What direction are the arrows coming from?" GM, "You can't tell". "Which direction to the palace?" I ask. "You don't know," he tells me. I'm honestly genuinely confused about what to do here and my mind goes blank, but then the GM has my bodyguard (a Brienne of Tarth type) tell me to follow her so I do. As he cuts back and forth, another player loses his mom in the chaos, I tell GM, "I want to help him find his mom." "You can't see him" GM tells me. Then I ended up surrounded by 12 ambushers in the "Pleasure Gardens". GM asked what I would do. I say since the carnival is burning, I look for a piece of wood on fire and since it's the pleasure gardens maybe there's some oil I can spill and light on fire to separate myself, my bodyguard, and ex who are all with me from the ambushers. He tells me there's no oil and then I'm held down by the men. I tried to escape, but he says I failed (he just did a dice roll behind his screen and didn't tell me the results). I am then hogtied by the ambushers with my bodyguard and ex and thrown in a cart. Meanwhile, the other two players have stolen a cart and are escaping. I try to do a goofy wave as my character is tied up towards my companions and he just says, the carts never pass each other so the other players don't see you. Before the session ends he tells me my bodyguard is dead.
After the session, I think my body language showed I was a bit bummed. So GM pipes in, "You want to know why you failed that encounter?" He proceeded to tell me it was because I followed my bodyguard and there was no way a woman could have protected me and I needed to make the choice instead. Some of the other players chimed in and said it was surprising my bodyguard failed since in the lore she was a 20-year veteran who survived "The Great War". The GM keeps defending his choice. Then he started making self-deprecating jokes about how he just sucks then and he's the worst GM ever until the other players all reassure him it's fine. I kind of just sat there shell-shocked.
His system reduces dice rolls to a rarity and he does them all himself as a "way to keep tension". I'm honestly more about hanging out with my friends than judging the quality of any campaign or system but this was my first "combat" of any sort in the campaign and I just felt so helpless in this system and it was frustrating. Plus there are no insight or persuasion rolls, just what the GM claims "my character would know" and "how his NPCs would act". So I'm not sure how I was supposed to handle this encounter. Being a GM myself, I thought he was using my bodyguard character to get me back on track, but I thought wrong. I honestly wouldn't have minded if he was just railroading me for a plot point, but him trying to manipulate me and saying his hands were tied when he essentially locked me out of interacting with the other players for the rest of the session is what bothers me the most.
Edit: Changed gaslighting to manipulating since I was using the term wrong and don't want to dilute it's meaning.
Update: GM Defends Style And Told Me He Owns My Character March 20, 2024
This is an update from my post a couple of weeks ago.
One of my friends in the group reached out to me and asked me to not leave the group. He told me there were only 2 sessions left and asked me to stick around as a favor to him. I told him I'd reach out to GM and see if we could get on the same page. So I texted the GM and told him I wanted to talk because I had some concerns after the way everything went down last session. He was down and we talked on the phone a couple of days later. To my surprise, the first thing he did was profusely apologize. I hadn't been responding in our group chat, partly because I was mad and partly because my partner had a death in her family. I guess me not responding caused him to dwell on the last session a bunch. He said he was going to retcon my bodyguard's death and keep her alive. I even told him that the treatment of women in the campaign was bad and that it was making the story worse, he told me that it is something that he can work on being better about too. I was surprised, but all this gave me a lot of optimism for this conversation.
I was honest and I told him that his homebrew system is very difficult for me since I don't have a character sheet. So my character doesn't have abilities, he doesn't level up, and I can't do things like roll investigate or perception rolls which makes it hard for me to make informed decisions. I told him it makes me very risk adverse because I don't have things like HP to even know if I'm in danger. He responded to this by telling me I shouldn't worry about that because his GM style rewards me if I roleplay well enough. He went on to say he hates systems with things like perception rolls because that's "Not how real life works".
I also lamented the fact that I also don't get to interact with the other players much. I didn't mention this in my first post, but he plays with all of us in a Discord call but he only plays with us one at a time, and the two of us who aren't playing are expected to listen and record notable quotes for his notes. He'll switch between characters where each player gets 2-3 "scenes" in a 3 hour session. He has our characters all spread out across the country Game of Thrones style and I've only gotten to play with another player in 2 sessions so far. This was also why that carnival scene was so frustrating because all 3 players were finally in the same place and we were trying to find each other and he just kept saying, "You don't see them".
He told me that he doesn't do party-based adventures because you can't get character growth that way. I pushed back and said I've seen awesome character growth in traditional DnD style games in the past, it just depends on the group. I also said he's just making things harder for himself by trying to run three campaigns instead of one. And if we don't have character sheets and aren't in a party then this is all more dramatic improv than a tabletop RPG.
He responded by saying his way is better because it creates a real story and that I should be happy because he made me the main character. (I guess that is what me being the prince means?) He then went on a rant about how much he loves the game world he created and he's very grateful that our characters brought it to life. But then he says that since it's his world, he feels like he owns our characters now and that after the campaign he wants us all to sign off on him using the characters to write books and a screenplay. And if we don't he'll just change their names and do it anyway. He then thanks me and tells me that this campaign is the main thing that has been stopping him from self-harm and going to dark places. Then he says he has to go and he rushes to hang up before I can say anything else.
I'm dumbfounded after that rapid-fire series of bombshells. I've known since the first few sessions that this was barely a TTRPG, but I got to hang out with my friends so I didn't care what it was. It was nice to hang out with old friends a couple times each month. Then the story got weird, and there was so much misogyny, and then I had the horrible session that caused my original post. Then in this conversation, he throws up even more red flags that I'm not blind to, but he is also planting a seed that he may harm himself without the campaign which is not something I want on my conscience. I'm just exhausted at this point.
TLDR: GM says that abilities and parties make TTRPGs worse and he wants to use our characters to write books/movies after the campaign because he owns them since we're playing in his world. He says he may fall back to self-harm without the campaign, making me feel guilty for wanting to leave.
RELEVANT COMMENTS
ShitThroughAGoose

Any update to this?

OOP

I ended up doing one more session for the finale. There was some drama during that session and when I mentioned that I didn't want to play in the next season of the campaign. I wasn't sure if I wanted to post about it again. I might still, but I think I want to take some time and reflect on everything.

Final Update May 11, 2024
[Final Update] Moving On From My Toxic DM And Losing A Friend In The Process
This will hopefully be my last post on this sub for a long time, but I’ve been using this place to vent about my toxic situation for a while so I figured I might as well post how everything concluded and what happened when I left. I’m going to reflect on everything and recap the important parts so no one has to read 3 posts.
It all started when I decided to start DMing to keep in touch with some college friends after graduation. During my first campaign, one of the players, Pirate, asked if his friend, Colorado, could join. I didn't really know Colorado, but I figured, "the more, the merrier."
Colorado had some issues early on, giving unsolicited advice to everyone on how to play and viewing newer or shy players as “side characters”. However, he frequently missed sessions, only showing up for less than half of them for the first few years so nothing came to a head early on. Then, Colorado decided he wanted to bring back his tabletop campaign from his college days and started trying to recruit players after my sessions. Pirate suggested I join the campaign, promising that Colorado was a better DM than player. Since I had been the Forever DM up to that point, I agreed to give it a go.
I created a character who was part of the royal family but enjoyed interacting with commoners in the slums, even having a secret girlfriend from that background. After that, Colorado also started hitting me up to help with the campaign. I ended up photoshopping character art for a bunch of his NPCs and I even drew his world map for him. I didn't mind doing it, as I do that kind of stuff for fun.
For our first session, Colorado had already created character sheets for us based on our backstories, but only he could see them. Colorado would also roll all the dice himself so “all we had to focus on is roleplaying”. We played one on one in different "scenes" that could last around 30 minutes to an hour each. We usually had around 2 to 4 scenes per session, depending on what Colorado thought was important. During the game, Colorado asked us to write down quotes from him and the other players when it wasn't our turn.
I had to wait for well over an hour before I could finally play. My first session was on rails. I mostly just had to repeat after Colorado during a ceremony. Afterwards, I got to sneak out of the castle and meet with my commoner girlfriend, but Colorado immediately had her break up with me. Then I was told that I had to leave the city. I was essentially locked out of my hanging out in the slums and commoner girlfriend subplots. NPCs generally disliked my morally good character, especially my sister who was depicted as purely evil towards me. Despite my efforts to mend the relationship, she never changed her mind and Colorado never rolled any dice to determine that. Later Colorado revealed to me the character was based on his ex-girlfriend, who was originally intended to be the player character from my country before they broke up.
Eventually, I finally got to interact with another player, Soldier, who I had really good chemistry with and we had a really fun scene. Which Colorado exclaimed, “See! This is why I keep you apart. It makes these moments so much more epic!” But I’m just thinking that if we were in a party, every session could be this epic.
Then Colorado got busy. He went to some alternative medicine nature retreat and didn’t pay his rent the whole time he was gone so he got evicted. At that point, the campaign went on hiatus as people got busy and Colorado was couch hopping. It was during that time I considered the campaign over and made my first post because I thought it fit the sub. Then a year after the last session, Colorado started trying to organize the group to do 3 more sessions to finish the campaign. I just ghosted the group chat for a while, but Pirate’s roommate is a player in the campaign I DM so Pirate started hopping on the call asking me to come back for the finale. Pirate told me that it would be different this time because all of our characters were going to meet up for the finale and he really wanted to play with me. I naively agreed to give the game a second chance.
The first of those three sessions led to this post and this follow up.
[TLDR - I never got to meet up with the other characters. Colorado made my ex a stripper and I was captured by invaders with no dice rolls to prevent it. I had a conversation with him about my concerns after the last session. He apologized and agreed to make changes saying he needed the campaign for his mental health.]
Colorado decided to have a single super finale session, which I reluctantly attended because of sunk cost fallacy. I was imprisoned, beaten and whipped, separated from my girlfriend and recently resurrected bodyguard. A deus-ex ninja offered to help me escape, but I wanted to save all the prisoners. So I helped the commoners escape with the ninja before saving my girlfriend. My bodyguard got captured, but I made sure my girlfriend escaped and then I went to save my bodyguard because I wasn’t letting her die after she just got resurrected. I tried to find my bodyguard but every door was locked and I was forced into a long one on one fight with a guard that would make John Carpenter blush. I lost the fight due to an unknown -2 modifier on my fighting rolls, leading to my re-imprisonment.
Pirate tried to board a boat to reach my location, but was unsuccessful. Colorado informed him that the sailors refused to let him on the ship because they didn't like his tone. Fortunately, Soldier saved me and we agreed to stop the big bad and rescue my bodyguard together. With a squad of Soldier's peers, we pursued the big bad into the woods. Without any rolls, all the other soldiers were sniped by archers.
Finally, the two of us reached the clearing where the big bad and his followers were. We were outnumbered about 30-2. My bodyguard and the other commoners were tied to a tree. Soldier was the same race as the villain so he approached while I stayed hidden. He delivered an awesome passionate speech against the big bad's actions saying that it wasn’t what their ancestors would want. I’m sitting there waiting and hoping for a persuasion roll… and nothing. Colorado says the big bad doesn’t change his mind and he sets the tree on fire, causing my bodyguard and the commoners to burn to death. Soldier and I retreated into the woods to end the campaign.
Pirate was supposed to have a scene after us, but he fell asleep because it was past 1am. Colorado kept trying to call Pirate on the phone. I joke, “Hey, we’re old now, being up past midnight isn’t as easy as it used to.” To which Colorado replies, “I just thought Pirate had more respect for me than this.” The Discord call becomes quiet and after Colorado starts focusing on Soldier and I. He wants to know why we’re not discussing the ending more. I remarked that it was a bit of a downer and I’m tired. Then Colorado starts spiraling, saying that RPGs are just another medium that he failed at just like film and music. HE STARTS CRYING and hangs up from the Discord call. Soldier and I stayed on and had a short “That was awkward” conversation. I don’t know Soldier well so I didn’t say much about my grievances with the campaign and eventually we ended up just talking about Baldur’s Gate 3 for an hour.
The next day, I wake up to a barrage of texts from Colorado apologizing, mansplaining how hard it is to be a DM as if I’ve never done it myself. He then starts sending me messages with all his ideas for my character in the next season and how he promises I’ll have more freedom next time. I wouldn’t understand, but he NEEDED to do the prison sequence and my bodyguard to die for my character growth, but next season will be different. I tell him I’m not doing another season. Colorado replies saying that he thought I’d say that because Pirate (who was apparently not sleeping) told him Soldier and I were bitching about the campaign after the session. Colorado said that once I get over it, we can start talking about season 3. I reaffirmed my stance. Then Colorado texts me one last time and asks if I’ll still make his maps and character art even if I don’t play. I said no again.
It's been two months since I last heard from Colorado or Pirate. We used to play games and talk about pro wrestling all the time, but now there's been no contact. A lot of the comments on my posts helped me realize I was prioritizing Colorado’s mental health over my own and I felt like it was my responsibility to support his campaign because he constantly referenced how important it was to his mental health. Intentional or not, he preyed upon my empathy. I’m not his Giving Tree and I shouldn’t be left a stump for a campaign where he doesn’t even want us to affect the world.
I sometimes worry Pirate is going through a similar situation to me, but for a longer period of time. Pirate introduced me to Colorado, and he's really loyal to him. I think that slowed down my exit from the group because I trusted Pirate to be my friend as well. I remember opening up to Pirate about a panic attack I had while Colorado was spiraling one day, and he just shrugged it off as me being dramatic. It's frustrating. I want both of them to be happy, but I can't make that happen for them, especially if it comes at the expense of my own well-being.
I ended up venting to some of my irl friends and they really supported and listened to me which is why I didn’t feel a need to vent here. I learned a lot about what not to do when DMing from this campaign and it made me reevaluate my approach to playing RPGs. Now I'm in a group with my irl friends and it's a blast. I can relax and just have fun playing again.
TLDR - I started DMing to stay connected with college friends who were scattered across the country. One player, Pirate, introduced me to Colorado, who eventually took over as the DM. Colorado had some unconventional methods, such as not using character sheets and controlling all the dice rolls. The game became focused on his storyline and my character had limited agency. Despite this, I gave the campaign a second chance. In the final session, things went poorly, and Colorado had a breakdown. Despite his apologies and promises for the next season, I decided not to continue playing. I have not heard from Colorado or Pirate since. I now play with my real-life friends and it's much more enjoyable.
RELEVANT COMMENTS/ADDED INFO
TicketPrestigious

Glad you're doing better. That does sound like quite a toxic situation.
If I've understood it right, the stuff with Pirate 'falling asleep' but actually listening in to you and Soldier talking feels like a massive red flag to me. I understand worrying about him since you were/felt like you were friends, but if he's enabling Colorado with that sort of stuff then it's probably best to move on.

OOP

Yeah even the best case would be that Pirate woke up after Colorado left the call and just overheard Soldier and me talking without us realizing because his mic was muted and we assumed he had passed out and then he snitched after which is still a bad look tbh. I had been distancing myself from Pirate since he invalidated my panic attack prior to this. It's just hard to be vulnerable with someone again after that.

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP
DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP's OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7

Does anyone else share my immense love for the last scene in episode 3 when they are at the ball? I swear I love it more and more every time I watch it. There's so many important moments and character development all within only 8 minutes.
This is probably the biggest character development moment for Penelope so far this season (minus the carriage). For the first time, Penelope gathers the courage to be honest about who she is and what she thinks. She finally lets go of how society and her mother tell her to act in order to attract a man, and instead acts based on her own intuition. And Debling loves it. He's attracted to her intellect and whit and honesty, so much so that from that moment onward he is only interested in Penelope. This moment gave her so much confidence and happiness. You can tell in the way she takes the floor and dances with a smile, only looking at Debling, even though the whole room is clearly taken aback. And she doesn't look at Colin AT ALL, even after something was clearly off with him and he never got to ask his question. Old Penelope would have been stealing glances at him while dancing, or maybe even refused the dance until they were done talking.
At the same time, we have Colin unable to take his eyes off of Penelope for longer than a few seconds. The talk he has with his mom is so sweet and I love that he took her advice right away and walked up to Penelope. The look in his eyes was so tragic. It wasn't a look of love, it was a look of need. He NEEDS Penelope in his life, and he needs it to be as more than just a friend. But at the same time, you can see the worry and hesitation as he questions whether she feels the same way, and if not, what will happen to their relationship. When Debling comes and takes Penelope away, I could literally feel his heart breaking as he watches them dancing.
Colin is hitting his low at the same time as Penelope is reaching her high. And it was depicted in such a beautiful way. I felt so many conflicting emotions watching this scene. Cheering for one character while mourning for the other. Being proud of Pen for letting Colin go, while also knowing that they belong together. Glad that Colin has to experience what Penelope has been enduring for years, all the while my heart was breaking for him.
The acting, the cinematography, the music, it all came together in the most perfect way. I adore this scene so much and want to give the biggest round of applause to everyone who had a hand in making it. I encourage everyone to watch it at least twice, as there's so much happening. So far this is definitely my favorite scene out of all the seasons.

WARNING FOR: cults, real life cults, child sexual abuse, brief transphobia, child loss.
This was around a year or so ago, so I was freshly 19 at the time. I was an experienced player already, having DMed and been in several campaigns throughout high school, but I no longer had time for longer campaigns or the planning that comes with them. To solve this, I joined a local game guild that hosted weekly one-shot nights. I was fairly close with a few of the regulars since I came almost every week during the summer.
The main players in this story are DM—a guy I had played with once before, a generally good storyteller who specialized in Call of Cthulhu and Pulp Cthulhu—and Friend—an older woman who I had played with several times before and was fairly close to. Friend was very close with DM, and actually introduced us in the first place. Now, onto the game in question.
We were playing a modern realistic setting in the city most of us were from. I knew the story would involve a mysterious cult, and prepared myself, since I knew that it would touch on some sensitive subjects for me. For a bit of context, I’m a cult survivor in real life, something that was majorly traumatizing for me. DM and Friend both knew this, though I hadn’t gone into much detail about it. However, I’m usually fine with cults in ttrpgs, and sometimes I even enjoy them, since it’s very cathartic to take something painful and turn it into a beautiful story. That, and I deeply trusted Friend, and Friend trusted DM, so I trusted him too.
Well. It turns out that the cult that we’d be going up against was a real life cult that practiced in said city. Meaning, DM would be roleplaying as a real life group that has done real life crimes. That caught me a bit off guard. Maybe I should’ve expected it, since it was a “realistic setting”, but I had hope nonetheless. Friend and I exchange looks immediately, but hey, we both trust that DM will handle this tactfully.
He doesn’t. The game starts with us approaching a few members of the cult to gather information before the plot starts. The DM takes this moment to describe in detail that there was a child with them, and how that child was bruised and cut on their legs, and how afraid they seemed, going on to describe the rumors of how the cult abuses children. These were real accusations leveled against the real cult. There was even a scene of the adult members talking to the child badly, fully roleplayed out. The scene goes on for far too long, and it hits me so much harder than I expected, especially since it was incredibly realistic. He hadn’t given any trigger warnings, or even mentioned that this would be a part of the game.
I barely remember the following scenes of investigation, since they were mostly just conducting interviews and investigating a disappearance related to said cult. Apparently, I had a thousand yard stare through most of this. Friend kept trying to check on me, but I don’t even remember it happening. Graphic child abuse was not something I had predicted, and I was honestly half-in-half-out of focus for a bit.
Eventually, it was decided that we’d have to infiltrate the cult by posing as prospective members. We arrived to the location, and the party was split into men and women, since only women were allowed to get close enough to what we were hoping to find. My character was meant to be a transgender man, since that’s what I am, and most of the players were also queer in some way so it was normal for us. Unfortunately, this meant that my character would have to present as more feminine for this portion, so that he’d get mistaken for a woman and brought in. I tried to push back on that idea, but we were running low on time and I was really not present anymore.
I’ll be very vague about this section because it’s bad. There was more child abuse happening at the cult compound. There was sexual abuse happening at the compound. My character was singled out as the most “faithful” and targeted as a prospective member. There were implications about what might happen to my character. Thankfully, Friend—who I noticed at this point was also looking very unwell—mentioned that a storm was rolling in IRL, so she wanted to leave early to beat it. I jumped at the chance to also leave.
Friend and I leave the store and sit outside to wait for our rides to get there. It was at that point she confessed to me that she had experienced child loss, and had previously specifically told DM that she didn’t want to play games with graphic harm to children. He hadn’t warned her either, and she was upset about it too. At the time, I felt so dramatic and ridiculous for being upset. Sure, roleplaying child sexual abuse in the context of a real life cult is horrifying, but I also should’ve expected this or should’ve been more vocal. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone at all, since I could’ve guessed that I might be upset by the subject matter. Still, hearing that Friend had also previously communicated boundaries and was ignored made me feel a bit more justified in my anger.
We both eventually got home, and Friend had a long and apparently nasty conversation with DM. His excuse was that he was going through a hard time of his own and just wanted to have that cathartic release. I don’t love that it was at the expense of two people’s triggers that he was aware of previously, but at least I can understand the impulse. I get it, kind of. I’m still conflicted. Was I really just being sensitive?

I devoured the Fourth Wing and Iron Flame last week and haven't really stopped thinking about them. This is my first romantasy series and I have so many thoughts haha. Two theories I have (which I know are far fetched) I haven't see others post. I would love to hear your thoughts!

1. Naolin is still bonded to Tairn. It's already a popular theory that Naolin is alive, so this theory builts off that. One of the epigraphs was about dragon bonding, along the lines of "we don't know why dragons don't bond two riders instead of one... but that's just the way it's always been done." I know I am completely butchering the exact quote here. What if dragons can bond multiple riders, they just chose not to. Afterall, no human is supposed to be able to bond two dragons either. My wild theory is that Naolin is still alive, gave up his humanity/riderhood to become venin in order to save Brendan (and is either a sage or the general), Tairn just shielded that bond. We know so little about Brandan/Naolin resurrection.Tairn never talks about the pain of losing a rider -- in fact, he just says "we shall not talk about the one that came before you." He has kept secrets from Violet for her protection. We know he is incredibly strong to the point that using magic to hold Violet in her seat only uses "a fraction" of his powers -- the way he said it made it sound negligible, so I think he would be strong enough to shield another rider.
2. Violet, Mira and Brennan will fulfill the fable of the three siblings who wield, which means Violet will have to sacrifice either her siblings to save everyone or sacrifice herself to save her siblings. The idea of siblings and the love Violet shares with Mira and Brennan is mentioned frequently in both books. The venin fables are also mentioned often. The epigraphs have also featured the stories of the three siblings (one was jealous of the other two and drained the Barrens). As far I remember, the Sorrengails are the only three-sibling family we meet that is still in tact. I think this is meaningful somehow. We already know how much Violet loves both of them and would do anything to keep them save and vice versa. Obviously, Violet with her lightning powers will be key in defeating/curing the venin, but one of the epigraphs mentioned that the one sibling who rained pure power from the sky and defeated the evils that plagued Navarre did so at a "great and terrible price." I think Violet will have to give up either her siblings, or herself (and thus the Tairn, Sgaeyl, Xanden chain) eventually to end any war with the venin.
3. Violet's second signet is predicting the future /seeing the past as a powerful form of truth-sayer. I'm fully on board with this great theory write up from u/notooryous thatViolet's second signet is truth-sayer, which is said to be "more terrifying than an intrinnsic." Since Andarna's breed as not been since in 650 years, Violet's second power has be special. There is a scene in Fourth Wing when JFB makes fun of Violet in Battle Brief by saying "I'm not the one who thinks precognition is a thing.... God help us if that one ever gets on a a dragon." I operate under the assumption the JFB is wrong about everything, which points to precognition/predicting the future is a very real thing. Plus General Melgren's power is a limited version of seeing the future already since knows how every battle (except with the marked ones) end.If we extent the premise that the most important thing to Violet is the truth -- well, what is more true than how the future turns out and what really happened in the past? This also gives a "time-travel" element to her powers which baby Andarna gave her. Knowing what happened in the past with venin would be hugely helpful to Violet and knowing critical elements/hints about the future might key to preserving the lives Violet values. We know from Fourth Wing that Violet wants her power to be useful (something she wrongly laments her lightning power is not when she first gained it). Seeing the future and/or past would be both useful to society and what she needs most at this moment.

I hope someone else feels as unhinged as me. The book hangover is very real for me.

Todd came into Valeriescateyescream live tonight. Tidbits:
-Acknowledged he became Lane love interest solely because Dave/Seth left
-Has a Hep Alien tshirt (snagged from "tour"
-Grant wrote the commotion/hit song
-He would come back from AYTIL2, if there is one
-Fav scene: Lane first kiss with Brian on his shoulder
-He's Team Logan

Hello lovely people! I'm female in my late 20s looking for other writers at least 21+ for a good Star Wars plot. The Old Republic is one of my favorite eras, but I've got plenty of inspiration for the Imperial and post-civil war era too. If you aren't familiar with the Old Republic era but might be interested, I would love to infodump on you - the very brief tl;dr is the galaxy is at war between the Republic and the Sith Empire, and there's about as many Sith as Jedi.
I prefer to write Imperial characters, but have a handful of Republic and unaffiliated/underworld OCs, too. I also love, with the help of an RP partner, to fill in the world around our mains with an interesting supporting cast.
I'm hoping to find someone who loves helping to plot and plan, and is willing to help with fleshing out the world around our characters. I'm fairly laid back about reply length and speed, and prefer quality over quantity always: sometimes dialogue or a fight scene only takes a paragraph to drive action forward, but a new setting and character intro requires a dozen. Give me enough to work with and move the plot and I'll usually roughly match length. I'm also entirely ghost friendly. Communication is always appreciated, but this is a hobby, we're adults here, and sometimes real life happens or you lose the inspiration.
I love slow burn romance and enemies to lovers, but prefer not to force chemistry that isn't there and don't require romance in an RP. I also don't write smut. MxF preferred for romance, but any sort of pairing is welcome if we're not going that route. I also dearly love unlikely allies, morally gray characters (but also genuinely good characters - I adore Jedi characters who are truly devoted to the Jedi code, even the "uncool" parts), strongly held ideals (whether good or bad), characters who do good things for bad reasons or bad things for good reasons, realistic strengths and weaknesses and characters who do fail and fall and struggle but get back up.
If any of this appeals to you please shoot me a message with just a little bit about yourself and some character and/or plot ideas! I've got plenty of ideas as well and an exhaustive list of OCs, but I'd really love to create something new with a partner and make these ideas our own. I can't wait to hear from you!

Hello lovely people! I'm female in my late 20s looking for other writers at least 21+ for a good Star Wars plot. The Old Republic is one of my favorite eras, but I've got plenty of inspiration for the Imperial and post-civil war era too. If you aren't familiar with the Old Republic era but might be interested, I would love to infodump on you - the very brief tl;dr is the galaxy is at war between the Republic and the Sith Empire, and there's about as many Sith as Jedi.
I prefer to write Imperial characters, but have a handful of Republic and unaffiliated/underworld OCs, too. I also love, with the help of an RP partner, to fill in the world around our mains with an interesting supporting cast.
I'm hoping to find someone who loves helping to plot and plan, and is willing to help with fleshing out the world around our characters. I'm fairly laid back about reply length and speed, and prefer quality over quantity always: sometimes dialogue or a fight scene only takes a paragraph to drive action forward, but a new setting and character intro requires a dozen. Give me enough to work with and move the plot and I'll usually roughly match length. I'm also entirely ghost friendly. Communication is always appreciated, but this is a hobby, we're adults here, and sometimes real life happens or you lose the inspiration.
I love slow burn romance and enemies to lovers, but prefer not to force chemistry that isn't there and don't require romance in an RP. I also don't write smut. MxF preferred for romance, but any sort of pairing is welcome if we're not going that route. I also dearly love unlikely allies, morally gray characters (but also genuinely good characters - I adore Jedi characters who are truly devoted to the Jedi code, even the "uncool" parts), strongly held ideals (whether good or bad), characters who do good things for bad reasons or bad things for good reasons, realistic strengths and weaknesses and characters who do fail and fall and struggle but get back up.
If any of this appeals to you please shoot me a message with just a little bit about yourself and some character and/or plot ideas! I've got plenty of ideas as well and an exhaustive list of OCs, but I'd really love to create something new with a partner and make these ideas our own. I can't wait to hear from you!

Hello lovely people! I'm female in my late 20s looking for other writers at least 21+ for a good Star Wars plot. The Old Republic is one of my favorite eras, but I've got plenty of inspiration for the Imperial and post-civil war era too. If you aren't familiar with the Old Republic era but might be interested, I would love to infodump on you - the very brief tl;dr is the galaxy is at war between the Republic and the Sith Empire, and there's about as many Sith as Jedi.
I prefer to write Imperial characters, but have a handful of Republic and unaffiliated/underworld OCs, too. I also love, with the help of an RP partner, to fill in the world around our mains with an interesting supporting cast.
I'm hoping to find someone who loves helping to plot and plan, and is willing to help with fleshing out the world around our characters. I'm fairly laid back about reply length and speed, and prefer quality over quantity always: sometimes dialogue or a fight scene only takes a paragraph to drive action forward, but a new setting and character intro requires a dozen. Give me enough to work with and move the plot and I'll usually roughly match length. I'm also entirely ghost friendly. Communication is always appreciated, but this is a hobby, we're adults here, and sometimes real life happens or you lose the inspiration.
I love slow burn romance and enemies to lovers, but prefer not to force chemistry that isn't there and don't require romance in an RP. I also don't write smut. MxF preferred for romance, but any sort of pairing is welcome if we're not going that route. I also dearly love unlikely allies, morally gray characters (but also genuinely good characters - I adore Jedi characters who are truly devoted to the Jedi code, even the "uncool" parts), strongly held ideals (whether good or bad), characters who do good things for bad reasons or bad things for good reasons, realistic strengths and weaknesses and characters who do fail and fall and struggle but get back up.
If any of this appeals to you please shoot me a message with just a little bit about yourself and some character and/or plot ideas! I've got plenty of ideas as well and an exhaustive list of OCs, but I'd really love to create something new with a partner and make these ideas our own. I can't wait to hear from you!