So I will share a success story as per the topic of this sub, that I had after I transitioned to carnivore diet, and I'm only in week 3 so far.
 
I have many health issues, which I tried to naturally heal with carnivore diet, but one of the most annoying one is my back and shoulder problems. I have been officially diagnosed with dorsal discopathy (spinal cord discs are too compressed) and osteophytosis in my shoulder (tiny bone deformations) and has been very painful. I could barely sleep on my side, constant pain, discomfort, jolts of pain when I moved my arm, stiff arms and the rest of it. It's an extremely annoying condition because I constantly have to move my body to find a comfortable position to sleep or to sit in, otherwise my muscles get cramped and it would hurt. Now the spinal cord problem is probably not due to diet since I had it from a young age, and went to physiotheraphy multiple times as a kid, it's either genetic or due to my mostly sedentary lifestyle (I literally didn't do any sports until highschool), mostly sitting in front of my computer. However my shoulder problems are somewhat recent and I have a strong suspicion that developed due to my diet.
 
Now before I went to carnivore I was eating a very heavy carb based diet, which initially included meat and fats but later on I messed up my liver and I could eat less and less fat so I almost became a vegetarian by the time I transitioned. On top of that I ate sugar like crazy, every day a can of soda a chocolate bar, and all sorts of sweet pastry, cakes, and I was shoving in chocolate muffins like crazy. So my blood sugar was probably higher than Mount Everest. I also ate junk food all the time, fast food with extreme carbs, and pre-made meals with was more and more vegetarian like mushroom pasta with rice. I was lazy to cook, because at least when I cooked I did from time to time some schnitzels with eggs, but at that point I was basically a vegetarian. My back and shoulder problems was of course getting worse and worse, the aching and constant inflammation was getting unbearable so much that there was a point when I couldn't even lift my arm up above my elbow. Physically there was no more or less injury, it's just the inflammation of my muscles and tendons that made it more painful.
 
It was so bad that I eventually went to the doctor, even though I am skeptical about the medical establishment in general and prefer natural remedies, but I had no choice now because the pain was so bad. So I did all the analyses, radiography, MRI, reflex tests,etc.. And basically that was my diagnosis. The doctor said that my condition is not that bad objectively, so it doesn't require surgery, but there is also not much they can do about it aside from more physio and some anti-inflammation drugs (they prescribed a weak one I should take regularly and a strong one on occasions when the pain is bad). So that was about it.
 
Of course the doctor never asked anything about my diet, they asked about my work history (if I got injured from work or whatnot) and just the standard questions, but never asked as single question about my diet. Now I am not blaming my doctor for anything, they did their job, by the book, and they are specialists in neurology, so it's not really their business to ask about my nutrition. It's just funny how certain doctors focus on 1 thing but don't view this as a holistic problem, as if there is no connection between diet and health, illnesses just fall down from the sky, they don't have causes. I believe it's also not professional to ask about seemingly offtopic things, because it might go against medical code of conduct, like you don't bully alcoholics with questions about why they destroyed their liver, you as a doctor only treat the disease you have, and don't ask questions. Kind of a sad state of things in the official medical establishment. Again I am not blaming my doctor for this, it's rather the system that is the problem.
 
So I became a carnivore, for multiple reasons, but this one was one of it, after I learned about sugar<>inflammation connections. And guess what, my inflammation went down just after the first 5 days. Now I am on the 3rd week and things are looking good so far. Now my illness is not healed, make no mistake, I still have to do physio, and occasionally I still get the never pinch, but as far as the inflammation in my shoulder, it's basically gone, and I haven't took a single pill. All the pills that was prescribed to me were anti-inflamation drugs, taken only when needed, but I don't need them now because the inflammation is gone, so is my gum inflammation by the way. My pain was worse than my actual physical injury, due to the inflammation caused by sugar. I eliminated all sugar and the inflammation was gone.
 
But wait it get's better: SUGAR LITERALLY BLOCKS THE ABSORBTION OF CALCIUM!!!!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6140170/
https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12937-021-00698-1
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5588311/
https://blog.algaecal.com/dangers-sugar-bone-health-addictive-cocaine/
My condition, together with osteoporosis and osteoarthritis were very much linked to diabetes and high sugar consumption! So it's not just that my inflammation and pain was caused by sugar, but the very condition itself and the bone deformation is caused by sugar blocking calcium absorbtion and damaging my bones.

I’m 15 (f) so yes I’m very young and naive. I have this friend 15 (f) who I was really close with. Me, her, her sister, and another friend were all in a group chat where we all became super close until about the middle of May when I found out her sister who we”ll call Sarah, dated my ex. I wasn’t hurt by it I was just a bit shocked. Everything was fine until she started just casually bring it up and joking that we both had him in common that started to rub me the wrong way. Then stuff started to happen between Sarah and the other friend in my groupchat who we”ll call lizzy. Lizzy and I started talking about how things had been going with Sarah lately and both came to a mutual agreement that we no longer wanted any dealings with her, and sarah posting 3 videos of her and another one of my recent exs didn’t help the situation. Me and lizzy left the groupchat, but we feared about loosing our other friend the one this entire post is really about lol, but we originally had a groupchat with the three of us so we’ve been kinda talking in it, but you can see the difference in how our friendship used to be compared to now. Everything was going fine until I posted about 5 new photos of myself on Snapchat (which I never post on), my friend who we”ll call Emma, ex replied to one of my photos saying “Hi Friend”. I thought it was odd but me and him were associates because we shared a mutual friend that we were both super close with so it wasn’t weird for us to talk every now and then. I replied “hi” and the conversation pretty much revolved around that mutual friend we share. During our conversation he called me things like love and ma’am which might seem cringe, but to a developing 15 years old who does nothing but read romance novels it was everything. The conversation continued until we got to the topic of my favorite flowers somehow and he started complimenting my style and taste on flowers, which no guy had ever payed attention too or even asked about. I felt bad and stopped texting him after a while, but later on that night he began texting me again. We talked all night about random stuff but it just felt so soothing I guess? I’m used to talking to guys but this felt different it’s like he was interested in what I had to say, and it felt good. Then what really sent my over the hills is him wanting me to read while he sat on the phone and did absolute nothing. Every other guy I’ve talked to would’ve hung up immediately, but he actually encouraged me to. Then I was sick with Covid and couldn’t go to sleep one night and he stayed up all night with me and played stupid roblox. I feel like a terrible friend cause I shouldn’t even let it have gotten this far in the first place. I know their relationship wasn’t that good but from what I’ve heard I don’t think it was anything he did. She really likes this new boy now, but he recently got a new gf so she’s been hurt over him. Shes encouraged me to talk to this boy in the past but I don’t think she was actually serious. I know we’re all young and childish, but it’s still happening and bothering me. I really don’t know what to do. ( Also please don’t tell me I’m a terrible friend or that we’re all just children and don’t know anything yet, because I’m well aware.)

I really think people look down on me or want me to be in a corner crying because I am single and have no support. I mean I filed for child support but it’ll be awhile before I see a payment and my ex hasn’t given me anything but big attitude.
I keep trying to find this ‘sadness’ and ‘guilt’ and I just don’t have it. I was with my ex, he was an asshole so I dumped him at 4 months pregnant. Then he decided to be a subpar dad to be and continued to be a shitty coparent now that my son is here.
People keep shying away from asking if his dad is around. Or when they ask they catch themselves. They try not to look surprised when I say his dad doesn’t ask for photos or milestone updates.
I know I’m supposed to be upset, angry, insecure and in over my head but I am not. I am fully aware that my life is just fine and will be because I just have this peace about it. My peace comes from the fact that what was sent to destroy me actually saved me. It’s extremely clear that I’m an amazing mom, person and professional.
And that’s because I get up everyday and try. I didn’t walk away, i conquered my responsibilities head on. I had a whole fucking baby. Fuck anything that suggests otherwise. I am extremely proud of myself and any woman who’s done it/doing it…
I thought id share because we do not have to adopt stigmas. We should embrace who we are and what we’ve done for our babies. And no matter what happens we have to root our confidence in who we KNOW we are.
Don’t let people, podcasts or statistics waiver who you know you are. Be confident!

I have a UK provisional driving licence. It's now out of date and require renewal with an up to date photo. I am aware of the fine for using a out of date full license while driving. But I can't find anything specifically about a provisional? So my question is. My provisional is out of date. If I plan to never learn to drive, I only got the provisional originally for ID. And put it in a box and forget about it. Never use it. Will I still get fined? Do I have to renew it even if I'm not ever going to use it? I have Googled but it never seens to differentiate between full and provisional. And the recent new articles about fines don't either. Thanks in advance.

PART EIGHT HUNDRED AND FORTY
[Previous Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2]
Friday
Tucker Portsmith’s head pounded so hard he felt like a blood vessel was about to explode behind his eyes. All week he had been dividing his time between trying to find out why he and Helen were no longer permitted to see Alex and doing what was necessary to distance the company from Dyadron to listening to Helen rail about the failings of Pensacola, the US Navy and him as a father and a husband.
He knew he couldn’t contact anyone in the Pentagon for answers. Not after NCIS Director Scott Dyson contacted him via a video call to tell him to his face to stop asking questions that wouldn’t be answered at this time. No matter how hard he tried to word it differently, to get even a hint of what was going on, the director shut him down. Hard. And then, he ended the call with a warning not to interfere. In any way. That they would contact him when they were ready.
Helen, of course, insisted he call the director back and demand the answers she wanted. She hadn’t taken ‘No’ well, but as much as she huffed and puffed, she would not budge him when his actions reflected on his business life. There were times to draw a line for the family and fight for what was right. When the entire US Military was telling you to stand down or risk going to jail and losing everything … that was not one of them.
Last night had been the first real night’s sleep he’d had all week, for they’d severed the last tie with Dyadron and were now completely clear of that nightmare. He might’ve had a drink or ten in private celebration of their achievements and promised Phillipa a steak and lobster dinner once a week for the rest of her life for her part in it. Right after he shook her senseless for not taking better care of herself. She’d been riding his backside about not overdoing it for so long it never occurred to him to do it for her. A mistake he wouldn’t repeat going forward, to be sure.
And now, he had visitors at—he squinted at the glowing timepiece on his side table—WTF o’clock in the morning! The pounding the door to the penthouse apartment took would’ve been heard throughout the building, made worse by the fact it was 5 am. He’d ignored the pounding at first, thinking Helen would answer the door, but when it continued relentlessly, he assumed she had already left to do one of her many daily workouts and dragged himself out of bed.
He tossed on a robe but forwent the slippers in his haste to reach the door. He tied the robe while in motion. “Coming!” he called because, of course, if Helen was gone, Donald would be with her, and he’d be alone. So far, that had suited him, as he’d been able to get a lot of work done without the interruptions.
He looked at the screen and was stunned to see four people crammed into the video image. Two in naval attire (he never did go into the whole who did what rank thing outside of Alex’s rank of Petty Officer) and two ill-fitting suits that made them either detectives or FBI.
The closest in a business suit had his fist raised to pound some more.
“Wait!” Tucker barked, unlocking the door from the inside and opening it just enough to stand in the way. “Can I help you?”
The plain-clothes person that had been beating on his door held up her badge for Tucker to see, along with a piece of paper folded into three, which she pushed into Tucker’s hand on his way past. “Federal agents. We need to conduct a search of your apartment, sir, and you need to step aside. We have a warrant.”
“A warrant for what?” Tucker demanded, opening the letter to skim the contents. In the central portion of the letter was Alexander’s name.
They’re searching for Alex?!
“Are you insane?” he demanded as the rest of them followed the woman’s lead and muscled their way in. “Alex is in a coma! In the hospital! Why …?!” And then his sleep-deprived, mildly alcohol-infused, aching brain kicked in, and he whirled on the people who were sweeping into the living room. “Where is my son?!” he demanded, storming after the four. He caught up with the closest one, who happened to be navy and went to grab her when her partner stepped between them.
“Don’t be touching her, sir. Just stand over there. This won’t take long.”
“Someone had better tell me what the hell is going on! How did you even get a warrant at this ungodly hour?! Based on what? That we’re his parents, and we’re here because he’s in a coma?!”
He watched them head up the hall and try to strongarm the first door, which was locked. “NO!” he shouted, trying without success to push against the man holding him back. “You can’t go in there!”
“That warrant says we can check everything, Mister Portsmith…”
“That room contains access to military secrets that I assure you are NOT on any goddamn warrant, and this says you’re looking for Alexander. That’s fine. I’ll unlock the door, go in first and remove my computer, and you can search to your heart’s content for a comatose patient who isn’t here.”
When the four looked amongst themselves, Tucker straightened and said in his most authoritative voice, “The contents of that room go way above your pay grade, ladies and gentlemen. If you force your way into that room based on the information on this warrant, I assure you, the Pentagon will land on you so hard your families will forget what you look like by the time they see you again.” He stood his ground, knowing he looked as intimidating as a homeless puppy in his robe, but nevertheless, there was a reason he never left that room unlocked.
Finally, the male FBI agent stepped back and gestured at the door. “Unlock it, sir. You may follow me in and collect your computer. I assumed it’s powered down?”
“Of course. My keys are in my bedroom. The master suite, third door on the left in a drawer that can’t possibly contain my son, so you have no reason to open it.” Since the agent was the first to listen to reason, Tucker addressed him. “Let me know when I’m clear to go in there and get them.”
The agent gestured for the sailors to move ahead of them, and when he came back a few minutes later, silently shaking his head, the agent said. “If you’ll come with me, Mister Portsmith.”
Tucker hated being directed like this, but until he could lay his hand on his phone and unleash the avalanche of lawyers that he had at his disposal, he wasn’t sure what was and wasn’t acceptable in this situation. It wasn’t often feds and the military joined forces on things.
He opened the drawer and collected his keys while his other hand holding the warrant palmed his phone off its charging plate. As they went back to the office, he snapped a photo of the insidious document and sent it to his lawyers’ cell phones. Yes, multiple, because it wasn’t just one senior partner that took care of their legal needs but three.
“What did you just do?” the female agent demanded, pulling Tucker’s hands apart.
“I just sent this warrant to my lawyers in New York. You’d better hope you know exactly what you’re doing because…”
His phone immediately exploded with incoming calls, which had him smiling caustically at the woman. Without seeing who had reached him first, he used his thumb to connect the call and put it on speaker.
“Who is executing the warrant?” Julian Santos demanded, his deep baritone voice filling the hallway. The federal agent gave Tucker a disgusted look and gestured at the closed front door.
I don’t think so, junior. “Four, Julian. Two feds and two from the navy. They haven’t specifically identified themselves yet, and they want me to unlock my office door…”
“Don’t you dare! The warrant only demands a search of your present accommodations. It does not include any rooms that fall under the banner of Portsmith Electronics. Those require a very different set of warrants that need to be issued directly from either Washington or the Pentagon, and I doubt you have those at the ready, correct agent?”
“We have the authority to search…” the male agent insisted but was cut off by the three-thousand-dollar an hour attorney.
“Do not unlock that door, Tucker. Even as we speak, I have people in Florida moving to have that search warrant quashed. It’ll be gone in just a few minutes.”
“Until then, this is a valid warrant.” The man turned and quickly gestured for the three with him to fan out, searching the penthouse apartment as fast and thoroughly as they could before the counter-injunction was handled.
Well, well, well. It seemed they were well aware of who they were squaring off with after all.
“Julian, I know Alex isn’t here. He’s been in a coma for over a week, and now they’ve lost him. If I go into my office and remove my computer, is there any harm in letting them search the office for Alex if only to make them go away?”
“Tucker, they’re not going away. The warrant gives them the authority to take you and Helen downtown for questioning.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry. As I said, we’ll have a full team ready to move before you leave the apartment, which isn’t going to happen until more security is on hand for your laptop. Is Donald there?”
“He’s with Helen on her run.” The fact he had been locked inside the apartment for days and only ventured out when he was with Helen and, therefore, Donald was not something he was about to get into.
“Fine. I’ll get your office to organise a security detail for you and your computer. Stay put, don’t answer anything until we get there, and for Christ’s sake, leave me on speaker.” Tucker heard several tell-tale crackles in the line to indicate others had been patched into the call but had refrained from speaking.
It was a strange thing, but in Tucker’s head, he was picturing a virtual reality computer game where the enemy had him cornered until, one by one, his own team spawned around him to level the playing field … and then overwhelm it.
He didn’t hear Julian’s voice anymore and assumed he’d been muted so that the senior partner could bark out orders at whoever else was on the line with him.
“I guess you’re not an honourable man after all,” the male FBI agent said with a tight expression.
“Tell me why you think I’d break into a military hospital and kidnap my crippled son, and I’ll be the first to unlock that door.”
“Tucker!” Julian immediately came back onto the line.
“Relax, Julian. I have no idea what’s going on here, but they have no intention of telling me why they want Alex so badly.” Stiffening, he looked down at his phone. “Actually, make that a priority. There’s only so much the military can hide from us, especially if Alex was using family funds in any way to finance his situation. Have someone call Elias Stoll. He can track down Alex’s accounts and find out what he was up to that way.”
“NO!” the agents and the naval personnel all shouted at once.
“Tucker?” Julian queried, for the man wasn’t used to taking those types of directives any more than he was.
“If I do it, I’ll have to put you on hold,” he explained. The rest of that sentence went unspoken. If Julian wanted to remain an ear in the room, someone else had to do the legwork for him.
“Do not hang up,” Julian reiterated, and once more, Tucker was muted from the attorneys’ conversation.
And so began the dance of the law.
* * *
((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I'd love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))
I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here
For more of my work including WPs: Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.
FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

8th of resinates strawberry lotus
Bag Appeal: Medium size frostyish nugs. A little bit of age too them. The picture I took is terrible, it looks a lot better in person. Sorry not a photographer and I got shit to do today lol. Smell: Sweet in a vanilla way, herbal, hints of berry(but it takes some discovery to get them). Pleasant. Smell intensity: 5/10 not the loudest in the bunch Flavor: In my dynavap here are the notes I got per hit. 1. Creamy sweet. 2. Unmistakable strawberry and cream. 3. burnt chocolate + pine (I went a little past full extraction). Fresh pack. 1. Sweet strawberry. 2. strawberry milk shake. Finally a strain that tastes like it should. Seriously enjoyable and I find myself packing bowls for the flavor only to find I am maybe more stoned then I wanted to be :P. Beautiful when vaped. Texture: No boveda in the jar, but still flexible stems. Somewhat sticky for being dry. Not crumbly at all, good nug integrity. Good bud structure, not too dense, definitely not fluffy. Effects: I vape a lot of CBD + THC. I am not sure if this really is a 1:1, but its probably close. Little bit of stress as the effects came on, but once everything settled in it was very manageable. Surprisingly a heavy hitter for <15% THC. Pretty relaxing, a little on the sleepy side after the peak. Mind calmly wandering without a doubt. Good for evening PTSD struggles and some pain relief(probably not if you need high THC for your pain for me CBD + THC is the ticket). Package Date: 1/23/23, yes this is on the old side. You can tell by the coloration in the photo. But, despite that, it's enjoyable. Slightly old nug is nice for me, as it usually has some CBN which helps me out a lot. This wasn't sold to me as slight of hand, I seek out older nugs, and the bud is just fine for its age, its been stored properly. Price Point: 40 an 8th.
Would I buy it again? Yes. But, I would love to purchase it in bulk at a lower price per 8th (160-180/zip would be excellent). It tastes really great, the effects are nice, and 1:1s or even 2:1's are exceedingly rare in the MA market. It's a rare treat, and I had to pounce on it because it had some age too it (again CBN seeking). If I were on a budget I would avoid this and buy an ounce of CBD hemp for cheap and a cheap ounce of something else to mix with, but I had to splurge on the 1:1 and was not let down.
Disclaimer
I don't work in the industry. If resinate is a brand that infuriates you to the point of racist tirades smoke a bowl and find another place to post. All I know is what I got and I like it a lot.

I have a UK provisional driving license. It's now out of date and require renewal with an up to date photo. I am aware of the fine for using a out of date full license while driving. But I can't find anything specifically about a provisional? So my question is. My provisional is out of date. If I plan to never learn to drive, I only got the provisional originally for ID. And put it in a box and forget about it. Never use it. Will I still get fined? Do I have to renew it even if I'm not ever going to use it? I have Googled but it never seens to differentiate between full and provisional. And the recent new articles about fines don't either. Thanks in advance.

I used my drone in March and everything was fine, then at the start of May I went on this trip I’m currently on and my Air 2 has been a nightmare to use.
The problem isn’t flight related, it’s about the camera and the connection. It started to delay by a significant amount of time (sometimes even up to a minute and a half) the action of the photo compared to my input.
It just freezes the actions, but I can still move the camera, drone and everything. I can’t take any action, such as switching the camera, changing camera settings and obviously take other photos.
It never did this. I have an iPhone, and the sd is the same I always used without problems.
I missed many shots because of this, and I haven’t found anything related online.
Anyone knows anything about this?

1
We underestimate the trials the dead have gone through.
This obvious mistake leads to avoidable missteps in life. It is still all too common.
When my Grandfather passed away, I inherited a house in the mountains. The view was breathtaking. It had a sweeping vista of infinite pine trees. The place was nowhere near as large as the properties surrounding it.
It was a summer home for him and my Grandma. The interior of it contained many of his items. This included tobacco pipes, cabinets of obscure teas, and cupboards of whiskey bottles.
One Saturday evening I went through the attic and found a dozen stacks of boxes. The majority of them remained unlabeled. Several contained pulp paperbacks and stacks of old photos. Towards the end of his life, he gave up his old pastimes of hunting and fishing. He stayed at home and watched old game shows instead.
I tried to clean the roof space in one day. I found myself unable to complete it before tiring and going to bed.
The next morning I resumed the activity. It was no longer about trying to declutter the area and fill it with my own possessions. It was now a way to learn more about the man.
All I knew about his reputation was how he had served in World War II. My family told me how he was as short on words as he was on patience.
I found an old newspaper article, dated 1983. There were other period pieces around it. The topics varied. This included the US invasion of Grenada and the debut of Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. A device known as the mobile phone received a mention.
Yet what caught my attention was the first piece. I brushed aside cobwebs to find it buried underneath a pile of cardboard with burnt edges.
The picture was of my Grandfather, Roy Davies. He held a check for fifty thousand dollars. This was an amount I later found out equaled to one hundred and fifty two thousand in today’s money. The mystery of how he could afford the place he gave me was no longer one worth pondering.
The wall behind him had an illustration of a ramshackle house on a hill. The title of the write-up was NORTHERN CALIFORNIA MAN WINS IN THE PILOT FOR NEW SHOW ‘THE TRIANGLE GAME.’
I read the five hundred word account. It detailed how he flew to Los Angeles to be a participant in an allegedly syndicated program. There were two other people he competed against. The editorial feature did not go into detail about what the goal of the game was. How to win or get disqualified was unknown to me. Still Still, my Grandfather walked out a much richer man before he flew back home.
It did mention the couple he played against, a man called James Grover and a woman named Daisy Francis.
I flipped the article. I found were words written in orange ink with a marker on the back, CC ENVELOPE EXIT.
I searched online for the triangle game. I found variations on the pastime ‘I Spy’ first. Players would spot triangular items in their immediate vicinity. I discovered a few board games, along with IQ-related quizzes.
No information was available about a television broadcast.
2
It took almost a month of research to find where James Grover lived.
I managed to find his house by paying for a background checking website. He had gotten a criminal charge for running a red light in front of a cop. Otherwise his record was clean. That single infraction allowed me to find him since it put him in that specific database.
I stood outside his red brick house in a suburb. It was a Wednesday afternoon in a neighborhood located in an upscale part of Illinois.
Frost caked the lawns near the heated sidewalk I stood on. I imagined the place to be serene in the summertime, even if it was a vacant-seeming region now.
A stretch of abodes stood before me without their lights on. Nervousness coursed through me. The idea of having traveled all this way for the information to be wrong made me anxious.
I walked along the concrete pathway towards his front door. I stepped on a creaky porch. I set aside my awareness of the likely pending disappointment and knocked.
A shuffling of feet was on the other side of the entrance. as well as A remote control clicked as the volume of a television blaring a news report got turned down.
He answered. The man fit the correct age range I calculated he would fall into. He wore a flannel jacket and slacks, He had on a blue pair of slippers. His gray mustache bristled as he saw me.
“James Grover?” I asked.
“If you’re trying to sell me something I’m not interested.”
“I’m very sorry to bother you sir, and I promise I won’t take up much of your time. I’m here to ask if you would be willing to let me ask you a few questions about something you might know about. See, I make documentaries for a living, and I have concluded that you might be able to help me.”
I could not take a good photograph when asked, but it was a stringent falsehood I conveyed well in the moment.
In reality, I was a podcaster. The term documentarian, though not as modern, seemed more legitimate. Especially to an older gentleman.
“Alright,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “What are you making a movie on? Also, where’s your film crew?”
“I gleaned that you were the type to prefer remaining anonymous. The conversation‘s recorded. This will be with your consent, of course. The subject I want to discuss with you involves the triangle game.”
Grover took a few steps away from the threshold and broke eye contact with me as his lips pursed. His eyes wandered over to the corner of his living room, and he brought his gaze back to mine.
“Why do you want to know about that?”
“Because I can’t find anything about it anywhere,” I said. “I’ve even been to the National Archives of Game Show history in search of it. It’s as though it never existed. I know it did because I found this article.”
As I brandished the piece of writing to him, his eyes bulged as he focused and scanned the text.
“Ahh,” he said as he took in a deep inhalation, “I remember that man. Tell you what, come on in. Would you like some coffee?”
I took a seat in one of his recliners as I asked him a few generic questions about his life.
James spent a considerable time of his youth in North Lawndale, one of the rougher places in Chicago. He escaped his impoverished upbringing by pursuing a career as an inventory clerk. He worked his way up to management in a warehousing company.
“I beat the odds in a big way,” he said as he folded his hands and sat across from me.
“So, what can you tell me about your experience on set that day? Do you know about anything that happened post-production?”
“They made us sign contracts where we would promise not to talk about what we went through with anyone. Still, I’m at the point where I’m not very worried, or I don’t think I should be. I was much younger then, about your age. I lived at the boxing gym and had dreams of going pro. Of course that didn’t happen, but when I wasn’t training I was drinking and doing stupid things that young men do. Bar brawls I didn’t deserve to get away with but somehow did. My mother watched a lot of game shows. Without my knowledge, she submitted my name for consideration to become a contestant. She thought it would make me a better person if I had some kind of hope for helping the family. One besides crushing peoples noses for a living.”
“How did she hear about it?”
“I have no idea. I wish I asked her.”
“How did you find out you were going to go on?”
“Back then, everything was a phone call, so that’s what we got. They flew me out there, I took a taxi to get to the set. It was not a traditional studio. The place was closer to a factory with a fake space ship built inside of it. In the center of the room was a neon triangle with the same spaciousness of a house.”
“How was the game played?”
“Before it started, they told us to write down three things we were good at. I put boxing, organizational skills, and running. Daisy listed hers as poker, math, and long distance swimming. Roy - that was his name, the person in the picture you showed me - put outdoor survival, shooting, and cooking. We would stand at each point of the triangle. We’d get asked a question by the host, and we had three minutes to answer it. If we got it right, they gave us a reward being able to attack one of the other two people using the skill sets we put down. The goal is to make the other two quit by getting enough questions correct. Of course, we went into the game blind to the rule set. Otherwise I may have chosen the most aggressive ability imaginable. Roy won because he chose aptitude with a firearm, which trumps any martial art, whether I like it or not.”
James lifted his pant leg and showed me a scar above his knee.
“At least he was kind enough to not make it a fatal blow,” he said.
I showed him the words written on the back of the newspaper clipping. He shrugged and told me he was unaware, dismissive of it as someone’s scrapped note.
I asked him if he remembered the name of the host or could give me a physical description.
“I don’t remember anything about what we called him, if he even told us what he went by. His hair was black and a pompadour style. He wore a purple suit with a bright orange tie.”
“Two last questions,” I said. “Do you know what happened to Daisy, if she’s still alive? Also, do you recall the address of the place where they filmed the game?”
“I wrote to Daisy twice a year before she vanished. We did have one conversation over the phone, and she told me that bad luck was going to follow the losers of that pilot. There was no media coverage about her passing that I ever saw. As far as the location, sure. I wrote it down in a journal I kept with me even when I traveled. I used to keep track of my workouts and diet regiment back then. Let me grab it.”
3
The location where the Triangle Game took place four decades earlier stood in a squalid part of the city.
I passed the ruins of the old LA zoo on my way to the spot. I contemplated how the sight I was about to take in could not get any stranger. I was wrong.
The building was five stories, but the front only had a trio of stained glass windows. Bullet holes surrounded the casements. The place had a nave roof and flying buttresses on both sides. Multi-colored graffiti littered the outside.
It sat in a neighborhood filled with homeless people who slept on benches.
I went there mid-afternoon. I approached the front and found two locked doors. I scaled around back. I stepped over heaps of trash in the process, and saw an opening in the form of a hole large enough to crawl into.
A surge of adrenaline hit me me as I belly crawled through. I was taking a bet on how there were no cameras, guards or residents who would make a scene out of my trespassing.
It is amazing the rules one will bend for the sake of new content on social media, I opined as I made way into the space.
I turned on the flashlight of my phone and saw nothing but an enormous dusty chamber made of concrete.
I moved into the next room. A hoarders lifetime supply of broken antiques sat. Spray painted devil-horned faces grinned from the ceiling.
What caught my attention the most was a camera’s tripod. It stood alone in the far left corner.
I approached it to get a better look. I kicked aside a bunch of cans. As they clattered away, I looked down and saw a pointed tip of something drawn on the ground.
I removed most of the trash by shoving the majority of it aside and saw what was underneath.
The large triangle, which took up most of the flooring in the chamber, was still there after all these years.
In the center of it was a thin line of blood. I crouched down and peered at it.
The fluid was still wet, and a horrid stench met me. I gagged and recoiled, and in my backing away, my shoulder bumped against a dusty and discarded shelf.
Gunfire rang out.
I did not know if it was outside or near me, but I did not wish to find out. I exited the way I came in with a relentless sprint and drove as far away as I could.
4
A year later, I was finally wrapping up my recording of the podcast. I titled it ‘Three Ways to Die.’
While the name of the series was quite sensational, I felt the story merited a bit of clickbait. I had no followers and was unsure of how it would perform.
I reasoned that giving the story any publicity I could would help me find the lost piece of media. Even if it was on the cutting room floor of that very space I had to leave.
I went to call Grover, to try and collect an email address so I could send him the pre-uploaded production.
A woman answered.
“You’re looking for my father. He lost his life six months ago. Someone killed him. I would appreciate it if you got rid of this number.”
She ended the call less than a second after the last word. She wrote me off as an insurance agent looking to take advantage of a grieving family member.
I paced around my room. Although I did not know him well, I had come to like him, and his gruesome end was not one he deserved. I researched crime news to find out what had happened to him, to no avail.
The newspaper piece I had collected that fateful day sat at the edge of my desk.
I lifted it towards me and flipped it over again. I stared at the words — CC ENVELOPE EXIT.
The sentence was nonsensical. I had applied my own meanings to the gibberish phrase. Like it was a cryptic and silly way of saying ‘outgoing mail.’
I do not know whether it was desperation, a creative inclination or an admixture of both. I decided to run it through an anagram generator I had searched for on the web.
It came up with many phrases, some of them surreal, but the one that popped out to me was EXPECT VIOLENCE.
My stomach turned as I realized how my own personal investigation yielded nothing. I opened the window and was soon exposed to some fresh Sierra air, which was therapeutic but not curative.
I decided to take a long walk. I had been sedentary over the last week due to intensive editing. I figured a jaunt would help me smooth a few psychological knots things out.
I slid my closet door open to try and find a pair of sweat pants.
The sound of thunder reverberated outside. I stared out to find the sky had become overcast.
The closet door creaked even louder than I could remember it having been before.
Orange ties hung on the rack, and a triangle painted a pastel green was visible behind it.

1
We underestimate the trials the dead have gone through.
This obvious mistake leads to avoidable missteps in life. It is still all too common.
When my Grandfather passed away, I inherited a house in the mountains. The view was breathtaking. It had a sweeping vista of infinite pine trees. The place was nowhere near as large as the properties surrounding it.
It was a summer home for him and my Grandma. The interior of it contained many of his items. This included tobacco pipes, cabinets of obscure teas, and cupboards of whiskey bottles.
One Saturday evening I went through the attic and found a dozen stacks of boxes. The majority of them remained unlabeled. Several contained pulp paperbacks and stacks of old photos. Towards the end of his life, he gave up his old pastimes of hunting and fishing. He stayed at home and watched old game shows instead.
I tried to clean the roof space in one day. I found myself unable to complete it before tiring and going to bed.
The next morning I resumed the activity. It was no longer about trying to declutter the area and fill it with my own possessions. It was now a way to learn more about the man.
All I knew about his reputation was how he had served in World War II. My family told me how he was as short on words as he was on patience.
I found an old newspaper article, dated 1983. There were other period pieces around it. The topics varied. This included the US invasion of Grenada and the debut of Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. A device known as the mobile phone received a mention.
Yet what caught my attention was the first piece. I brushed aside cobwebs to find it buried underneath a pile of cardboard with burnt edges.
The picture was of my Grandfather, Roy Davies. He held a check for fifty thousand dollars. This was an amount I later found out equaled to one hundred and fifty two thousand in today’s money. The mystery of how he could afford the place he gave me was no longer one worth pondering.
The wall behind him had an illustration of a ramshackle house on a hill. The title of the write-up was NORTHERN CALIFORNIA MAN WINS IN THE PILOT FOR NEW SHOW ‘THE TRIANGLE GAME.’
I read the five hundred word account. It detailed how he flew to Los Angeles to be a participant in an allegedly syndicated program. There were two other people he competed against. The editorial feature did not go into detail about what the goal of the game was. How to win or get disqualified was unknown to me. Still Still, my Grandfather walked out a much richer man before he flew back home.
It did mention the couple he played against, a man called James Grover and a woman named Daisy Francis.
I flipped the article. I found were words written in orange ink with a marker on the back, CC ENVELOPE EXIT.
I searched online for the triangle game. I found variations on the pastime ‘I Spy’ first. Players would spot triangular items in their immediate vicinity. I discovered a few board games, along with IQ-related quizzes.
No information was available about a television broadcast.
2
It took almost a month of research to find where James Grover lived.
I managed to find his house by paying for a background checking website. He had gotten a criminal charge for running a red light in front of a cop. Otherwise his record was clean. That single infraction allowed me to find him since it put him in that specific database.
I stood outside his red brick house in a suburb. It was a Wednesday afternoon in a neighborhood located in an upscale part of Illinois.
Frost caked the lawns near the heated sidewalk I stood on. I imagined the place to be serene in the summertime, even if it was a vacant-seeming region now.
A stretch of abodes stood before me without their lights on. Nervousness coursed through me. The idea of having traveled all this way for the information to be wrong made me anxious.
I walked along the concrete pathway towards his front door. I stepped on a creaky porch. I set aside my awareness of the likely pending disappointment and knocked.
A shuffling of feet was on the other side of the entrance. as well as A remote control clicked as the volume of a television blaring a news report got turned down.
He answered. The man fit the correct age range I calculated he would fall into. He wore a flannel jacket and slacks, He had on a blue pair of slippers. His gray mustache bristled as he saw me.
“James Grover?” I asked.
“If you’re trying to sell me something I’m not interested.”
“I’m very sorry to bother you sir, and I promise I won’t take up much of your time. I’m here to ask if you would be willing to let me ask you a few questions about something you might know about. See, I make documentaries for a living, and I have concluded that you might be able to help me.”
I could not take a good photograph when asked, but it was a stringent falsehood I conveyed well in the moment.
In reality, I was a podcaster. The term documentarian, though not as modern, seemed more legitimate. Especially to an older gentleman.
“Alright,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “What are you making a movie on? Also, where’s your film crew?”
“I gleaned that you were the type to prefer remaining anonymous. The conversation‘s recorded. This will be with your consent, of course. The subject I want to discuss with you involves the triangle game.”
Grover took a few steps away from the threshold and broke eye contact with me as his lips pursed. His eyes wandered over to the corner of his living room, and he brought his gaze back to mine.
“Why do you want to know about that?”
“Because I can’t find anything about it anywhere,” I said. “I’ve even been to the National Archives of Game Show history in search of it. It’s as though it never existed. I know it did because I found this article.”
As I brandished the piece of writing to him, his eyes bulged as he focused and scanned the text.
“Ahh,” he said as he took in a deep inhalation, “I remember that man. Tell you what, come on in. Would you like some coffee?”
I took a seat in one of his recliners as I asked him a few generic questions about his life.
James spent a considerable time of his youth in North Lawndale, one of the rougher places in Chicago. He escaped his impoverished upbringing by pursuing a career as an inventory clerk. He worked his way up to management in a warehousing company.
“I beat the odds in a big way,” he said as he folded his hands and sat across from me.
“So, what can you tell me about your experience on set that day? Do you know about anything that happened post-production?”
“They made us sign contracts where we would promise not to talk about what we went through with anyone. Still, I’m at the point where I’m not very worried, or I don’t think I should be. I was much younger then, about your age. I lived at the boxing gym and had dreams of going pro. Of course that didn’t happen, but when I wasn’t training I was drinking and doing stupid things that young men do. Bar brawls I didn’t deserve to get away with but somehow did. My mother watched a lot of game shows. Without my knowledge, she submitted my name for consideration to become a contestant. She thought it would make me a better person if I had some kind of hope for helping the family. One besides crushing peoples noses for a living.”
“How did she hear about it?”
“I have no idea. I wish I asked her.”
“How did you find out you were going to go on?”
“Back then, everything was a phone call, so that’s what we got. They flew me out there, I took a taxi to get to the set. It was not a traditional studio. The place was closer to a factory with a fake space ship built inside of it. In the center of the room was a neon triangle with the same spaciousness of a house.”
“How was the game played?”
“Before it started, they told us to write down three things we were good at. I put boxing, organizational skills, and running. Daisy listed hers as poker, math, and long distance swimming. Roy - that was his name, the person in the picture you showed me - put outdoor survival, shooting, and cooking. We would stand at each point of the triangle. We’d get asked a question by the host, and we had three minutes to answer it. If we got it right, they gave us a reward being able to attack one of the other two people using the skill sets we put down. The goal is to make the other two quit by getting enough questions correct. Of course, we went into the game blind to the rule set. Otherwise I may have chosen the most aggressive ability imaginable. Roy won because he chose aptitude with a firearm, which trumps any martial art, whether I like it or not.”
James lifted his pant leg and showed me a scar above his knee.
“At least he was kind enough to not make it a fatal blow,” he said.
I showed him the words written on the back of the newspaper clipping. He shrugged and told me he was unaware, dismissive of it as someone’s scrapped note.
I asked him if he remembered the name of the host or could give me a physical description.
“I don’t remember anything about what we called him, if he even told us what he went by. His hair was black and a pompadour style. He wore a purple suit with a bright orange tie.”
“Two last questions,” I said. “Do you know what happened to Daisy, if she’s still alive? Also, do you recall the address of the place where they filmed the game?”
“I wrote to Daisy twice a year before she vanished. We did have one conversation over the phone, and she told me that bad luck was going to follow the losers of that pilot. There was no media coverage about her passing that I ever saw. As far as the location, sure. I wrote it down in a journal I kept with me even when I traveled. I used to keep track of my workouts and diet regiment back then. Let me grab it.”
3
The location where the Triangle Game took place four decades earlier stood in a squalid part of the city.
I passed the ruins of the old LA zoo on my way to the spot. I contemplated how the sight I was about to take in could not get any stranger. I was wrong.
The building was five stories, but the front only had a trio of stained glass windows. Bullet holes surrounded the casements. The place had a nave roof and flying buttresses on both sides. Multi-colored graffiti littered the outside.
It sat in a neighborhood filled with homeless people who slept on benches.
I went there mid-afternoon. I approached the front and found two locked doors. I scaled around back. I stepped over heaps of trash in the process, and saw an opening in the form of a hole large enough to crawl into.
A surge of adrenaline hit me me as I belly crawled through. I was taking a bet on how there were no cameras, guards or residents who would make a scene out of my trespassing.
It is amazing the rules one will bend for the sake of new content on social media, I opined as I made way into the space.
I turned on the flashlight of my phone and saw nothing but an enormous dusty chamber made of concrete.
I moved into the next room. A hoarders lifetime supply of broken antiques sat. Spray painted devil-horned faces grinned from the ceiling.
What caught my attention the most was a camera’s tripod. It stood alone in the far left corner.
I approached it to get a better look. I kicked aside a bunch of cans. As they clattered away, I looked down and saw a pointed tip of something drawn on the ground.
I removed most of the trash by shoving the majority of it aside and saw what was underneath.
The large triangle, which took up most of the flooring in the chamber, was still there after all these years.
In the center of it was a thin line of blood. I crouched down and peered at it.
The fluid was still wet, and a horrid stench met me. I gagged and recoiled, and in my backing away, my shoulder bumped against a dusty and discarded shelf.
Gunfire rang out.
I did not know if it was outside or near me, but I did not wish to find out. I exited the way I came in with a relentless sprint and drove as far away as I could.
4
A year later, I was finally wrapping up my recording of the podcast. I titled it ‘Three Ways to Die.’
While the name of the series was quite sensational, I felt the story merited a bit of clickbait. I had no followers and was unsure of how it would perform.
I reasoned that giving the story any publicity I could would help me find the lost piece of media. Even if it was on the cutting room floor of that very space I had to leave.
I went to call Grover, to try and collect an email address so I could send him the pre-uploaded production.
A woman answered.
“You’re looking for my father. He lost his life six months ago. Someone killed him. I would appreciate it if you got rid of this number.”
She ended the call less than a second after the last word. She wrote me off as an insurance agent looking to take advantage of a grieving family member.
I paced around my room. Although I did not know him well, I had come to like him, and his gruesome end was not one he deserved. I researched crime news to find out what had happened to him, to no avail.
The newspaper piece I had collected that fateful day sat at the edge of my desk.
I lifted it towards me and flipped it over again. I stared at the words — CC ENVELOPE EXIT.
The sentence was nonsensical. I had applied my own meanings to the gibberish phrase. Like it was a cryptic and silly way of saying ‘outgoing mail.’
I do not know whether it was desperation, a creative inclination or an admixture of both. I decided to run it through an anagram generator I had searched for on the web.
It came up with many phrases, some of them surreal, but the one that popped out to me was EXPECT VIOLENCE.
My stomach turned as I realized how my own personal investigation yielded nothing. I opened the window and was soon exposed to some fresh Sierra air, which was therapeutic but not curative.
I decided to take a long walk. I had been sedentary over the last week due to intensive editing. I figured a jaunt would help me smooth a few psychological knots things out.
I slid my closet door open to try and find a pair of sweat pants.
The sound of thunder reverberated outside. I stared out to find the sky had become overcast.
The closet door creaked even louder than I could remember it having been before.
Orange ties hung on the rack, and a triangle painted a pastel green was visible behind it.

I am actually expecting a lot backlash for this since the majority of the fandom loves the twist lol

Part I: Characters

I.a Sunny
Sunny is the main characters, we spend a good portion of the game exploring his dreams, and even the real world is explored through his perspective.
Sunny tends to dissociate, even before Maris death, as is evident by the excerpt found in the lost library:

"This year, ☐ was lucky enough to get assigned to a desk next to the small window."
"Every day during class, ☐ would gaze listlessly through the opening... at the shadows of the trees, the clouds creeping overhead."
"His mind drifted elsewhere... into his own worlds, his own stories, his own adventures."
"He had a habit of doing this.It was easy for him to get lost."
"Today was the same as any other. ☐ stared vacantly out the small window as the clouds passed one by one."
"Suddenly, a hand playfully slaps his back, snapping him out of his reverie. ☐ looks away from the opening."
"☐☐☐ smiles. He motions that class is over and that it's finally time for lunch. It's pizza day today, and theyneed to bolt to the cafeteria before it's all gone."
"☐'s stomach growls. He looks at the small window one last time."
"He would have to continue his adventure another day."

The dissociative tendencies are very clear, described as his mind being elsewhere.
However, the excerpt also shows off another key-trait: Imagination.
Sunny has extraordinately vivid imagination, as displayed by the entirety of Head Space, as well as his liking of imagining himself and his friends going on adventures, even in the real world, as well as both before and Maris death.
The situation described by the Lost Library is pretty much identical with the real world event involving fighting the recycultists.
One more important, but less dicussed point, is his excellent memory. Sunny can recall the correct order of Basils photographs without failure, even after 4 years of staying inside.
And speaking of the album, he can also accurately recreate their content in Head Space, shown by the HS version containing pretty much the exact same content as the real one, just with the aesthetics adjusted to Head Space. Furthermore, the scribbled out version found in Black Space are 100% identical with the reeal ones, just blacked out with marker.
Considering this, I'd say good memory is an understatement.
I'd go as far as attributing him with Photographic Memory.
But despite this, Sunny forgot something, 4 years ago he repressed something.
And he is aware of this. Dialogue from various HS characters allude to this, and urge him to try and remember:
Stranger:

STRANGER
The truth that you've locked away... You must find it no matter what.
STRANGER
You have to... for the both of us.

Faceless:

FACELESS
Even if you hide something, it will always be there.

Bullet points for Sunny: Prone to dissociation; extremely vivid imagination; amazing memory; knows he forgot something and believes he can recover it
​
I.b Basil
Basil is a very controversial character, receiving a lot of hate, but also a lot of love.
Basil-haters often attribute him with traits such as 'obsessive' or 'manipulative', even though none of these are accurate on closer inspection.
I'll just list of a few of his traits, which will be highly relevant for the crux of this theory, though just indirectly.
- Basil has abandonment-issues. These are repeatedly displyed by franctic pleas for someone to not leave him.
- Basils view of other characters are mostly based on idealization. It is seen through assgining flowers with highly positive meanings to his friends, while ignoring any negatives they might hold.
Furthermore, this behaviour is very prominent in his complete refusal to accept what Sunny had done.
- Basil is also deeply troubled, with latent suicidal ideation and tendencies. The by and large biggest red flag is encountered on '3 Days left', where he says this to Sunny...

BASIL
It's nice to see that you're still around...even if it's only for a little while.
BASIL
Here. Take my PHOTO ALBUM... I want you to have it.

...Basil acts like he is saying goodbye to Sunny, and hands off his most precious sentimental belonging...
...Despite not even knowing that Sunny is moving away.
​
- Basil is highly emotional. He displays extreme emotional reactions when put under pressure or faced with emotional hurt.
The previously mentioned instance of learning of Sunny moves triggers him to run to the bathroom, where he has a mental breakdown.
Judging by dialogue like...

POLLY
BASIL's been going to the bathroom a lot lately. I hope it's not my food...

...and...

AUBREY
And when we got to his room, I tried to talk to him... but he said he had to go to the bathroom and ran off.

...this seems to be his go-to coping-mechanism to deal with stress, and doesn't even seem to be limited to interactions with Sunny.
Furthermore, at the lake-scene, Basil hysterically screams for help, despite the hooligans actively attempting to calm him down, not at all acting hostile towards him.
- Although rare, there is at least one instance of him acting extremely angry, particularily the scene before his boss-fight, and he seems to have huge trouble to contain his anger, actually having to resort to delusional behaviour to quell it.
- Basil displays severe dissociative and psychotic (hallucinations and delusions) symptoms. The dissociation in particular is shown in what appears to be fuzzy memory:

BASIL
A lot has happened since these pictures were taken.Sometimes, it feels like it was all a bad dream.
BASIL
It's hard to remember now, but... I think... at the time...I took photos of what I was most afraid to lose.

Additionally, certain dialogue alludes to severe psychological issues being present prior to joining the friend-group:
Processing img s4afsed5ef3b1...
From the points listed above, the only one I consider to be debatable is the anger-issue. However, the other 5 traits are genuine canon.
Processing img q8mx1difef3b1...
Great, so now we have established for Basil to canonically suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder.

II Plot

II.a Sunnys case

Does Basil have his own White Space and Black Space?
OMOCAT:
The idea of the White Space is based on the ability of some people to completely isolate themselves when a traumatic happens. They isolate their mind and travel through the White Space to relieve their memories. From my personal experience, not everyone it able to do it. If Basil would have had his own White Space it would've been full of disturbing imagery, and, unlike Sunny's, it wouldn't be static but really dynamic with a lot of fast changes. Therefore I don't think Basil would be able to escape his own mind like Sunny does. And that's why his problems manifest in the real world. After all, something exists because of Basil’s idea that it exists in the first place.

Source: OMOCAT interview from Cydonia streaming translated in english : OMORI (reddit.com)
Pay close attention to the part that I highlighted.
OMOCAT openly states that Something exists for the simple reason that Basils believes it to exist to begin with. But if Somethings existence is based on Basils belief, then this raises the question why Sunny can see it, too.
I believe that this cutscene is the answer:
​
Processing gif 5q8azvo6jf3b1...
It seems to me that Sunny only began to be haunted by his Something due to this conversation, in which Basil asks Sunny to remember Something while simultaniously already suggesting what Sunny is supposed to remember.
Essentially, Sunny sees Something because of Basils suggestion of it existing to begin with.
This sets an interesting precedent of Basil unintentionally influencing Sunnys psyche by merely asking a suggestive question.
Another thing to note that this is just a short snippet of this conversation, and that there are more black-and-white cutscenes that display different parts of this particular encounter.
Another one is this:
​
Processing gif 83ofu1h8sf3b1...
This is clearly the first creation of White Space, right?
Wrong.
You see, there are certain special characters explaining the lore of Head Space, one of them being Daddy Longlegs.
He actually has dialogue explaining the creation of Head Space:

DADDY LONGLEGS
You have reached the end of the LOST FOREST... but the beginning of the truth.
DADDY LONGLEGS
I will tell you a story that has been lost through time... a story about the creation of this reality.
DADDY LONGLEGS
In the beginning, there only existed two... the DREAMER and his room.
DADDY LONGLEGS
The DREAMER grew weary of his room and created a door that led to many different worlds.
DADDY LONGLEGS
Walking the path as a visitor to these worlds, the DREAMER would come and go as he pleased.
DADDY LONGLEGS
Slips and falls, tumbles and drops... the DREAMER's curiosity and clumsy exploration eventually led him to a certain world.
DADDY LONGLEGS
One not like the others... one painted with chaos and bathed in darkness.
DADDY LONGLEGS
The DREAMER slowly became filled with dread. Quiet as they may have been, words of malice quietly crept into his mind. Whispering lies, secrets, and truths.

The 'DREAMER and his room...' clearly refers to Sunnys White Space.
Meanwhile, the world 'painted with chaos and bathed in darkness' very clearly refers to Black Space.
This means, according to Daddy Longlegs, that White Space existed way before Black Space. Furthermore, he states that only after Sunnys first encounter with Black Space did he 'slowly became filled with dread', which seems to imply that Sunnys most severe issues started at a later point in time than the creation of White Space.
Now, since White Space already existed prior to Black Space, this creates a problem:
As stated by OMOCAT, White Space exists to provide relief of memory - meaning that Sunny had already repressed memories at this point.
However, if we assume the cause of supression to be 'the truth' about Maris death, both Something and Black Space, and the Black Lightbulb should have already been a thing from the very beginning.
However, this is not the case. The black door as well as the lightbulb make their first appearence in this cutscene.
What this implies to me is that, just like Something, Black Space was created due to suggestions Basil made in this conversation, and subsequently the Black Lightbulb was created to supress Black Space.
In fact, Black Space can be further linked to being the product an external source:
Processing img sjtem9akhg3b1...
White Egret Orchids, at least in this game, represemt the phrase: 'My thoughts will follow you into your dreams.'
Furthemore, Black Space in general is strongly linked to Basil, both due to the overwhelming presence of Stranger as well the fact that it is always Basil that will find the path to 'the truth'.
​
This entire dynamic is very interesting.
Appearantly, there was a period of time in which Sunny was completely free of the influence of both Black Space,'the truth' it contains, and Something.
This might sound crazy, but this seems to imply that all three of Black Space, 'the truth' and Something can be traced back to this conversation, but not any further.
This becomes even clearer when you line up the three cut-scenes in the order they appear in the game:
​
Processing video aed5qnn9ov3b1...
​
The implication here is that this conversation is what triggered Sunnys Hikkikomori-lifestyle and caused a sharp shift in Sunnys behaviour.
This may be hard to accept, but what is being implied here is that this is the starting point of Sunnys 4 years of agony.
This is extremely weird, since 'the truth' about Maris death is supposed to be the source of his suffering, yet it started only about a few months after her death.
Why did Sunny only become haunted by 'the truth' after this point?
It can't be explained by repression either since a) the Black Lightbulb is required to repress it and b) the Black Lightbulb is what caused his Hikkikomorism to begin with, yet Sunny is stated to have gone to school up until this point and was actually willing to let others reach out to him.
This is a stark contrast to his behaviour after this conversation.
​
The only answer that makes sense is the following: 'The truth' simply didn't exist up until this point, not even in a repressed form.
This scene depicts the literal creation of 'the truth'.
'The truth' in it's entirety is an idea that Basil put into Sunnys head.

BRANCH CORAL
A hanging black light bulb... the repression of an idea.

It is openly stated that the Black Lightbulb is not the repression of a memory - that is White Spaces purpose - but in fact the repression of an idea.
Additionally, there actually is dialogue hinting at the replacement and subsequent repression of memories:

BLANK Your memories are not free. To gain a memory, another must be shrouded. And yet... All memories will eventually fade.

What I propose is the following: Basil wanted to talk to Sunny about 'the truth'. Now, the problem is that Sunny had already repressed the memories of Maris true death - suicide.
So, when Basil realizes that Sunny doesn't remember... he fills him in, similar to how he recounts the events of Maris death prior to his boss fight.
This is also the reason for the photo at the treehouse: Since Basil believes that Sunny had already 'forgotten' the truth at least once before, he decides to leave him a physical reminder - a photo and the key to the toy-chest.
This is supported by the 'Don't forget... it's in the toy-chest'-message - there is no reason to write a message urging Sunny not to forget about it unless Basil has a reason to believe Sunny might forget about it to begin with.
Now, Sunnys got a huge problem - since he already had repressed his memory at this point he had no way of falsifying Basils account. And since he trusts Basil, he makes the wrong choice and believes him.
Subsequently, this triggers the creation of both Something and Black Space.

Quiet as they may have been, words of malice quietly crept into his mind. Whispering lies, secrets, and truths.

This is referring to Basils words during this conversation.
Even though Sunny tried to repress them, the only thing he achieved is pushing them to his subconscious - where they then rampaged rampaged and grew in strength over the next 4 years.
In essence, this constitutes a case of both False Memories and Shared Delusional Disorder.
​
And it makes sense. You remember the characterization of Sunny at the beginning of this post?
Well, check this out:

Greater creative imagination and dissociation are known to relate to false memory formation. Creative imagination may lead to vivid details of imagined events. High dissociation may be associated with habitual use of lax response criteria for source decisions due to frequent interruption of attention or consciousness. Social desirability and false memory have also been examined. Social desirability effects may depend on the level of perceived social pressure.
Individuals who feel under greater social pressure may be more likely to acquiesce. Perceived pressure from an authority figure may lower individuals' criteria for accepting a false event as true. The new individual difference factors include preexisting beliefs about memory, self-evaluation of one's own memory abilities, trauma symptoms, and attachment styles. Regarding the first of these, metamemory beliefs about the malleability of memory, the nature of trauma memory, and the recoverability of lost memory may influence willingness to accept vague impressions or fragmentary images as recovered memories and thus, might affect the likelihood of accepting false memory. For example, if someone believes that memory once encoded is permanent, and that visualization is an effective way to recover memories, the individual may endorse more liberal criteria for accepting a mental image as true memory. Also, individuals who report themselves as having better everyday memories may feel more compelled to come up with a memory when asked to do so. This may lead to more liberal criteria, making these individuals more susceptible to false memory.
There is some research that shows individual differences in false memory susceptibility are not always large (even on variables that have previously shown differences—such as creative imagination or dissociation), that there appears to be no false memory trait, and that even those who have highly superior memory are susceptible to false memories.

How convenient. This is literally Sunny. Sunny displays all of these traits.
Sunny is morbidly predispositioned to aquire False Memories, especially due to his great trust in Basil, his best friend.
Additionally, 'recovering repressed memories' is notorious for confabulating False Memories:

However, when memories are "recovered" after long periods of amnesia, particularly when extraordinary means were used to secure the recovery of memory, it is now widely (but not universally) accepted that the memories have a high likelihood of being false, i.e. "memories" of incidents that had not actually occurred.

And there actually are fairly strong hints that can be interpreted as Sunnys recovered memories being memories that were imagined at Basils suggestion:
​
Processing img 6whr115l7n3b1...
Processing img 13x2utk98n3b1...
A basic, common yet effective technique to determine memories as either dreams or imagined events is to look for inconsistencies, either with reality or among the memories in question.
And there are several inconsistencies to be found in those photos.
The problem with this procedure though is that such inconsistencies can be dismissed as simple oversights on the developers side, meaning that this is 100% percent dependent on ones willingness to interpret them either as inconsistencies or a developers oversight.
But for the purpose of this theory I'll continue under the former assumption.
And these are the inconsistencies I found:
​
Processing img vdlj795han3b1...
Truth Photo: Only lower level has vine-pattern, no table bellow the window, hanging photos (Note: The table bellow the window is actually gone in RW present time, but in the past there was one.)
Real World: Both levels have vine-pattern, table beneath the window, photos are on a sideboard.
​
Processing img m6az3bavbn3b1...
Processing img j1l9myucjn3b1...
​
Processing img 8vh1lqzcpn3b1...
Well... no. In reality, it is a sliding door:
​
Processing img 0otxujv6rn3b1...
​
Processing img lfq7am4wzs3b1...
Left photo: Left tree has no branch, right one has one on it's right side.
Right photo: Left tree has one branch on it's right side, right one has none.
​
Processing img aum9y3531t3b1...
Judging by the position of the sun in the photos, the incident is supposed to happen close to sundown.
However, this images shading implies nighttime.
Additionally, Aubrey mentions that Mari was found in the evening. And actually, the neighbours were home.
Or, at least Hero. Hero actually states that he was home in the afternoon of that day.
It is not unreasonable to say that if Hero was home, he would have somehow been alerted of what was hapenning: A crash, a scream, or simply looking out the window to see Sunny and Basil carry a dead Mari.
You know what have not been suspicious at all? Mari, walking across her own backyard towards the tree.
Processing img y16y8reu2t3b1...
​
Processing img j93z2beq6t3b1...
Left: Mari faces away from Basil.
Right: Suddenly, Mari does face towards Basil.
​
As you can see, there are quite a few inconsistencies that can be found in those photos.
​
II.b Basils Case
But up until this point, the only thing I've argued for is that Sunny memory is based on Basils account, and not that the incident in it's entire actually never happened to begin with.
​
Well, let us look at the following question: How realistic, or even feasably possible is 'the truth'?
The answer: Not at all.
​
You see... there is a standard procedure by authorities for suicide-cases.
One, the deceased has the to be officially pronounced dead - and for this, either a doctor or a paramedic is necessary.
The problem is that Mari supposedly fell down the stairs. There absolutely have to be at least bruises. And, in fact, the notesheets that Mari carried while falling are noted to be blood-stained. There also was blood.
The paramedic would find unexplained physical trauma and blood. At this point, they would be required to notify investigative authorities and alert them to evidence of foul play.
Two, in cases of a suicide without a suicide-note, a standard-investigation is carried out, including an obducation.
This procedure is mandatory, and cannot be vetoed even by close relatives.
And even if the investigations would yield no results, this case is more likely to be considered an unsolved homicide rather than a suicide.
​
There's also the matter of physical feasability. Can Sunny and Basil even pull this off...?
Not really.
There's 2 scenarios for this incident. Case I: Basil did it alone and Case II Sunny and Basil did it together.
Case I: Complete nonsense. Basil cannot pull this off.
He's 12 and Mari is 16 and significantly heavier. He's too weak.
The game actually comments on Basils strength, or more percisely his lack of exactly that:

BASIL ... OMORI... You're so heavy...
BASIL Come on... Up the stairs you go...
BASIL Phew... Thank goodness you're awake.
BASIL Are you hurt at all? I was trying to pull you toward this white light at the top of the staircase...

Key word being 'trying'.
This is the scene in question:
Processing img vbf5agr23v3b1...
As you can see, Omori is still lying at the bottom of the stairs. This means Basil didn't even manage to drag him a single step upwards.
Basil completely and utterly failed to even move another 12-yevar-old.
There is no way he can even remotely exert the force necessary to do that to Mari.
​
Case II: Sunny and Basil did it together.
I will concede that if they sling the rope around the branch, and then both of them at once oull at the rope, then they actually can get her to the necessary height.
The problem is the following though:
If they follow this procedure, they still have to fix the rope to the branch.
To do that, one of them has to let go of the rope, scale the tree and then tie the knot.
Now consider this: The setup essentially functions like a ⚖️:
Whatever is heavier at either end of the rope will remain on the ground.
Sunny and Basil together are heavier than Mari.
Either of them alone isn't.
As soon as either lets go of the rope, Mari will plummet, while the other 12-year-old will be lifted of the ground.
Another problem is scaling the tree. Sunny is afraid of heights, to the point that even the staircase is a serious obstacle.
Here's a visiualization of the necessary heights:
Processing img fcjjnly56v3b1...
Height of the branch: ~ Maris height x 1.666
Height of the noose: ~ Maris height x 1.2
​
Lowballing Maris height to the average 1.60m will lead to the following results:
Height of the branch: ~ 2.65m
Height of the noose: 1.92m
​
You can see that 2.65m is pretty high up.
In Basils case, it is actually implied that he is a bad climber due to a fear of height as well:

(5/25):
It's been pretty busy with school lately, but we finally made time to get together and go to the park today. Here's KEL hanging his legs off a tree. He's such a good climber! I wish I was as fearless as him.

This already constitutes a huge problem.
The alternative option is that they first tie the rope to the branch, and only then put Maris head through the noose.
The problem is the height of the noose. They'd have to lift Maris head ~ 1.90m of the ground.
This is problematic, since Mari is dead and thus her body acts like a limp noodle. They'd have to lift her by the head to avoid her body or head slumping over, and this creates a problem of reach.
Mind you that this is a situation in which even an adult would struggle to lift a person of comparable stature to this height.
Can two 12-year-old-boys, who are in a clear state of shock pull this off?
I highly doubt that.
And if we are to assume the scrapped descriptions of the album as a basis, then the case is already clear:
It is impossible, since all problems regarding Case II apply even more glringly to Case I.
​
Now, that still leaves the question on why Basil genuinly believes in this False Memory.
Well, we have talked about Basil and BPD, haven't we?
Well take a look at this:

This paper presents an analysis of dream-reality confusion (DRC) in relation to the characteristics of borderline personality disorder (BPD), based on research findings and theoretical considerations. It is hypothesized that people with BPD are more likely to experience DRC compared to people in non-clinical population. Several variables related to this hypothesis were identified through a theoretical analysis of the scientific literature.
Sleep disturbances: problems with sleep are found in 15–95.5% of people with BPD, and unstable sleep and wake cycles, which occur in BPD, are linked to DRC.
Dissociation: nearly two-thirds of people with BPD experience dissociative symptoms and dissociative symptoms are correlated with a fantasy proneness; both dissociative symptoms and fantasy proneness are related to DRC .
Negative dream content: People with BPD have nightmares more often than other people; dreams that are more likely to be confused with reality tend to be more realistic and unpleasant, and are reflected in waking behavior.
Cognitive disturbances: Many BPD patients experience various cognitive disturbances, including problems with reality testing , which can foster DRC. Thin boundaries: People with thin boundaries are more prone to DRC than people with thick boundaries, and people with BPD tend to have thin boundaries .
The theoretical analysis on the basis of these findings suggests that people who suffer from BPD may be more susceptible to confusing dream content with actual waking events.

If you're interested in this thematic, here's the source.
What this suggests is that people suffering from BPD are significantly more prone to DRC, which is an inability to differentiate between dreams and reality. On top of that, DRC is trongly linked to the concept of nightmares.
And Basil, in fact is hinted to suffer from this by his own dialogue:
​
Processing img kk3tofx0fv3b1...

BASIL
A lot has happened since these pictures were taken.
Sometimes, it feels like it was all a bad dream.

Note that he specifically says 'since these pictures were taken' - in the timeframe he describes, Maris death is included.
​
If it wasn't clear before what I was getting at with this, by now all the pieces should have fallen in place.
Yes, I am suggesting that the plot of OMORI is not some sort of murder-mystery, but instead a tragic tale about two boys who were completely ruined by a mental hell that exists exclussively in their heads.
Essentially, I am arguing that 'the truth' is a Red Herring, and that taking the obvious conclusion at face-value is a fallacy.
​
Here's a general outline for the backstory:
​

At the day of the recital, Mari commits suicide.
Sunny and Basil are the ones to find her. Both develop PTSD. Additionally, Basils BPD drastically worsens due to his trauma.
A few months pass. At an unspecified point during this time, Basil has a terrible nightmare influenced by his trauma, and due to BPD-related DRC mistakes it for a genuine memory.
He goes on to talk about 'the truth' to Sunny. Many reasons are possible: He just wants to comfort him, or maybe he did so in a desperate hope that Sunny would deny this memory to be true.
But Sunny has amnesia. And he is morbidly predispositioned to develop False Memories at other peoples suggestion. And since he has no way of debunking Basil recounting of that day, he accepts it as true.
Meanwhile, Basil had noticed Sunny to have 'forgotten' about 'the truth'. So, to ensure that Sunny does not do so again, he tapes the key to the back of one of his photos, and leaves the 'Don't forget'-message on it's back.
Basils influence on Sunnys vulnerable psyche has triggered the creation of Black Space (Note how the door to BS is located in a field of White Egret Orchid, which represent the phrase 'My thoughts will follow you into your dreams' Black Space is Basils suggestion following Sunny into his dreams).
In order to subdue it, he creates the Black Lightbulb, and starts to shut himself off completely.
4 years of silence follow, and in the meantime, 'the truth' rampages in Sunnys subconscious and grows in strength, as implied by both Stranger and Daddy Longlegs.
At the night of '3 Days Left', Sunny actively tries to remember 'the truth' and destroys the Black Lightbulb.
This causes the 'idea' that Basil unknowingly planted in Sunnys mind to resurface full-force.
What follows is a Sunny 'remembering' a False Memory, based on Basil account of the events. The photos are from Basils POV, in a book labeled 'Basils Memories', and are riddeled with inconsistencies and impossibilities.
Additionally, Basils claim of 'Something behind Sunny' having killed Mari is actually based on a truth: Since Something=Mari, this means 'Something killed Mari' is correct, just twisted beyond recognition.

I'd like to add that this theory also solves certain plot-issues rather nicely, and offers concrete conclusions rather than vague interpretations and shallow symbolism.
Specificall the key and photo in the treehouse, as well as the the meaning of the White Egret Orchid come to mind.
​
There is just one question left unanswered:
Mari.
Why?
​
II.c Mari
Well...

BASIL Aww, MARI... I wish I could be more like you! You always seem to have everything under control.
MARI That's not true at all! It just seems that way from the outside!

The implication here is that Mari has more going on than she lets on.
Additionally, she expresses a certain strong belief:

MARI
Everyone... I know it's tough right now, but we have to stay positive! We should all try to be like BASIL! Even when BASIL is upset, he always manages to smile.

She essentially says that one should suck it up and smile regardless.
This behaviour is dangerous.
If you actively try to cover up your problems up with toxic positivity, other people cannot offer help, and may result in those problems becoming worse and worse. This behaviour would explain why nobody saw it coming.
Mari is also a perfectionist.

Researchers have begun to investigate the role of perfectionism in various mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders and personality disorders, as well as suicide. Each disorder is associated with varying levels of the three subscales on the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale. For instance, socially prescribed perfectionism in young women has been associated with greater body-image dissatisfaction and avoidance of social situations that focus on weight and physical appearance.

Perfectionism is known to be a great contributor to both mental disorders and suicidal ideation.
I already have a specific disorder in mind, but more on that later.

Perfectionism is increasingly considered to be a risk factor for suicide. The tendency of perfectionists to have excessively high expectations of self and to be self-critical when their efforts do not meet the expectations they have established, combined with their tendency to present a public image of flawlessness increases their risk of suicidal ideation while decreasing the likelihood of seeking help when it is needed. Perfectionism is one of many suicide predictors that affect individuals negatively via pressure to fulfill other- or self-generated high expectations, feeling incapable of living up to them, and social disconnection.

This is pretty much the behaviour I have previously described.
In this context, it would make sense for Maris suicide to come out of nowhere due to a tendency to hide their problems and social disconnection.
Social disconnection is acually hinted at at least twice.

(9/9):
SUNNY giving MARI a big hug! MARI doesn't come home until late now because she's taking extra classes to prepare for college. Me and SUNNY have been hanging out a lot, but I'm sure he still misses her a lot.

According to Basil, Mari doesn't come home from school until very late. Furthermore, she appearantly barely gets to spend any time with Sunny, despite him being her brother and literally sleeping in the same room.
Subsequently, she probably gets little to no time to spend with the others either, including Hero.
This is further supported by the Black Space II area known as 'Mari is home':

AUBREY
Hey, OMORI... I think your sister is ignoring us. Maybe you should go talk to her.
KEL
We can't have a picnic without MARI!
HERO
MARI hasn't been home in a long time... She just needs some room to adjust.

According to Aubrey, Mari is ignoring them. This hints at increased social isolation on Maris side.
Heros wording also brings us to the next topic:
​
Adjustment Disorder.
Adjustment Disorder is in essence very similar to depression, but caused by an accute psychologic stressor. The disorder usually disappears once the offending stressor is terminated and the person manages to 'adjust' to the situation. The type I am suggesting is essentially very similar to Burnout.
Adjustment Disorder poses a strong risk-factor for suicide, especially if it is in conjunction with perfectionism.
Mari was extremely stressed in the months leading up the recital:
​

Mine and MARI's school books. MARI has been coming home late because of cram school. She must be tired...

Maris parents are sending her to cram school, which causes Mari to come home very late.
It is reasonable to assume that the majority of her free-time, most notably the weekends, were probably consumed by practicing for the recital.

A table lamp. MARI has trouble sleeping, so she reads books before bed. I often turn off this light for her after she falls asleep.

It is openly stated that Mari has problems falling asleep. This serves to make mental exhaustion and depressive tendencies even worse.
​
The way I see it, Mari was under constant and extreme pressure in the time leading up to the recital. Her busy schedule impeded on her social life, and combined with a prefectionist tendency to try and keep up an image of flawlessness resulted in her problems to go unnoticed by the others.
The closer the recital came, the more the pressure on Mari increased. She wanted it to be perfect, but since only the weekends are left to practice, this severly limited her opportunities to practice.
However, Sunny hated the practicing, and he also hated Mari locking herself away on the piano for hours at a time.
This conflict caused an alienation between the two siblings.
​
All of those issues combined provide both a realistic and believable reason for Maris suicide as well as an explanation as to why nobody saw it coming.
All in all I'd say that this alternative interpretation of 'the truth' greatly increases Mari depth as a character based on actual in-game evidence.
​
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
That should be about everything. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments.
​
What do you think about this theory?
While I certainly expect a lot skepticism, I think that at the very least I have proven that this is fairly substantiated, realistic, and narratively compelling alternative interpretation of OMORIs plot.
Before you ask, yes, I do headcanon this.
I particularily like the subtle hints, and howthe characters personality, relationships and backstory fall in place very conveniently.
A lot of little details on their own can be dismissed very easily, yet together they converge to a very powerful argument.
Essentially, I love that this interpretation re-defines 'the truth' as an ingenious Red Herring.

Hey guys, I need some major help and I was wondering if any of you could give me some tips or guidance.
BACKGROUND AND CRASH
Now some quick background info. In January I upgraded my RX 580 to a RX 6700XT. I play games such as Squad and Digital Combat Simulator, but I mainly play War Thunder. Now my RX 580 got me a good 100-120 FPS on maximum graphics, but my 6700XT gave me 250-300 FPS. I had no issues with it until 2 days ago. Whilst playing X-Plane 11, my PC randomly crashed. I had to power restart it but thought nothing of it. After playing an extra hour or so, I put my PC to sleep. Then today, I logged into War Thunder and everything has changed. The game seems more grainy, and stuff doesn't look as sharp as it used to. I'm barely breaking 100 FPS now, and I only get more if I start lowering graphical settings.
WHAT I HAVE TRIED TO FIX IT
I’ve spent hours googling for ideas and fixes. I’ve upgraded my GPU Driver twice and still no fix. I’ve mucked around in AMD Software and Trixx Sapphire and neither of them have fixed it. I’ve played X-Plane 11 and Gunner HEAT PC and both of thoselooks and feel fine. But I have noticed that when playing War Thunder, my CPU is capped out at 30% max, whilst my GPU is maxing out at 90-100%, and I'm using about 12 GB of RAM. When I switch to GHPC or X Plane, my GPU will still max out, but my CPU will rise to 70-80%, and give me normal performance. I’ve tried selecting to use all my CPU processors upon startup, and visa-versa, and still nothing.
SYSTEM SPECS
Windows 11 64 Bit
CPU: Intel i10700KF 3.8Ghz 8 Core, 16 Processors
Motherboard: Asus Prime Z490-A
RAM: 32GB
GPU: Radeon Sapphire RX-6700XT
VRAM: 12Gbs
Monitor: 1920x1080 144hz AOC
(If you need more info, please let me know, I'm happy to provide)
PLEASE IF YOU CAN HELP, LET ME KNOW
I honestly don't understand what is happening and have tried everything I can think of. War Thunder is a big game, but I don't understand how I can lose more than 100 FPS and good quality in the span of 24 hours, whilst not suffering any issues with any other games. Please, if any of you can suggest some things or ideas to try and help it would be much appreciated.
And if you are going to get really in-depth, please give me some guidance, I'm new to PCs and especially troubleshooting issues with them.
I'm happy to provide photos of anything such as settings, performance etc too.
I’ve spent hours googling for ideas and fixes. I’ve upgraded my GPU Driver twice and still no fix. I’ve mucked around in AMD Software and Trixx Sapphire and neither of them have fixed it. I’ve played X-Plane 11 and Gunner HEAT PC and both of those looks and feel fine. But I have noticed that when playing War Thunder, my CPU is capped out at 30% max, whilst my GPU is maxing out at 90-100%, and I'm using about 12 GB of RAM. When I switch to GHPC or X Plane, my GPU will still max out, but my CPU will rise to 70-80%, and give me normal performance. I’ve tried selecting to use all my CPU processors upon startup, and visa-versa, and still nothing.

Hey guys, I need some major help and I was wondering if any of you could give me some tips or guidance.
BACKGROUND AND CRASH
Now some quick background info. In January I upgraded my RX 580 to a RX 6700XT. I play games such as Squad and Digital Combat Simulator, but I mainly play War Thunder. Now my RX 580 got me a good 100-120 FPS on maximum graphics, but my 6700XT gave me 250-300 FPS. I had no issues with it until 2 days ago. Whilst playing X-Plane 11, my PC randomly crashed. I had to power restart it but thought nothing of it. After playing an extra hour or so, I put my PC to sleep. Then today, I logged into War Thunder and everything has changed. The game seems more grainy, and stuff doesn't look as sharp as it used to. I'm barely breaking 100 FPS now, and I only get more if I start lowering graphical settings.
WHAT I HAVE TRIED TO FIX IT
I’ve spent hours googling for ideas and fixes. I’ve upgraded my GPU Driver twice and still no fix. I’ve mucked around in AMD Software and Trixx Sapphire and neither of them have fixed it. I’ve played X-Plane 11 and Gunner HEAT PC and both of thoselooks and feel fine. But I have noticed that when playing War Thunder, my CPU is capped out at 30% max, whilst my GPU is maxing out at 90-100%, and I'm using about 12 GB of RAM. When I switch to GHPC or X Plane, my GPU will still max out, but my CPU will rise to 70-80%, and give me normal performance. I’ve tried selecting to use all my CPU processors upon startup, and visa-versa, and still nothing.
SYSTEM SPECS
Windows 11 64 Bit
CPU: Intel i10700KF 3.8Ghz 8 Core, 16 Processors
Motherboard: Asus Prime Z490-A
RAM: 32GB
GPU: Radeon Sapphire RX-6700XT
VRAM: 12Gbs
Monitor: 1920x1080 144hz AOC
(If you need more info, please let me know, I'm happy to provide)
PLEASE IF YOU CAN HELP, LET ME KNOW
I honestly don't understand what is happening and have tried everything I can think of. War Thunder is a big game, but I don't understand how I can lose more than 100 FPS and good quality in the span of 24 hours, whilst not suffering any issues with any other games. Please, if any of you can suggest some things or ideas to try and help it would be much appreciated.
And if you are going to get really in-depth, please give me some guidance, I'm new to PCs and especially troubleshooting issues with them.
I'm happy to provide photos of anything such as settings, performance etc too.
Thank you for reading all of this, and I hope you guys have a wonderful day!

Hey everyone, long time lurker, first time poster here...maybe anyone can offer advice. So my boyfriend and I had a rough break up. Yes I know about the age difference, it's bad... Quick history: we met whilst living in the same town but he had to move back to another country and I moved away after a while as well. The problem was he moved back to where his ex lived. He had a job there and all. At least that's what he told me. I had always been insecure about this and shared my fears with him. He continuously assured me nothing is going on, they don't see each other and all that. I visited him and all seemed fine. We were planning on moving together in the country I moved to. I never stopped feeling uneasy about it but figured once we live together it's all going to be different. Yes I was blinded by love.
Long story short, I found out that his ex and him were still/again together. He kept assuring me he would come to me but by that point I was basically done with him. I was absolutely heart broken, as I found out that the person I had planned a future with was never existent and this man basically treated me like dirt. The only thing I wanted was for us to see each other one more time. I am a private person, but was stupid enough to send him... well explicit photos. He has shown me now over time, that he doesn't care for me or my body, he is also not private at all about his body. I can never stop feeling uneasy that he still has those photos of me and am afraid of what he might do with them. He basically used all my fears against me so far, his ex is really nasty to me as well and says if I ever contact him again she will make my life a living hell. A bit of context, he was the one who basically was the one who initiated the relationship, it was clear that we were going to be long distance for a while which is why I didn't actively pursue him. (Both of us have since moved from my hometown) We were friends and stupidly stuff just happened and at some point I got weak and didn't stop him anymore. I am afraid of her having access to his phone. She thinks of me as the sidechick. Again, I thought they were broken up, I thought it was fair game. All I want is to see his phone and make sure that all the photos are gone. Hell even all the photos that don't show anything bad, I just want him to have nothing of me. But I cannot contact him and even if I wanted to he is kind of far away and he told me he moved from the last address I have. He has put me into a really dark space already, I am already heartbroken, I don't know what I would do if I found out that he has done anything stupid with these pictures. I hate myself for ever sending him anything. For ever spending any second with him at all. I always thought live was this beautiful thing, now he has used all my fears against me and I feel that I can never trust anyone again...also I live in a new country and have trouble meeting new people. I am absolutely miserable and tired half the time. My job is very physically demanding. I dont have friends here to get out with, only people on the phone at home... everything seems to go wrong lately with everything I do. Maybe this is the wrong sub to post this in. Maybe I just needed to vent. If anyone has any advice for me it would be much appreciated. I hope whoever read this far, I hope you have a better relationship than this.

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https://www.reddit.com/EmojiReview/comments/1409yjo/ai_songs_oto_1_to_5_otos_links_here_hot_bonuses/
in this video I'm going to do a review of AI songs this is a product by udha pramanik that's available on Warrior plus I'm going to take you guys inside the members area we're going to do a demo and walkthrough of AI songs then we're gonna go over the sales funnel and lastly we give you my personal opinion about AI song So if you're ready let's Dive Right In before we get started I've got a quick question for you guys what is the definition of insanity well the answer is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result well here you are buying another Warrior plus product expecting a different result
unfortunately we all know how that story ends listen if you want to discover how to build the foundation for your own 100 per day affiliate marketing business then I want you to follow these three simple Steps step number one click on the link in the description below step number two enter your name your best email address and then click on the button below and step number three watch the taking action Online Fast Track affiliate bootcamp this free boot camp will show you that building a sustainable and recurring income stream as an affiliate is far more straightforward than you think so oh stop the insanity stop chasing shiny object products and watch the free fast track affiliate boot camp
Ai Songs Local OTO
Ai Songs OTOs - All 5 Upsell Links Here:
https://timebusinessnews.com/ai-songs-oto-1-to-10-otos-links-here-hot-bonuses-ai-songs-upsell/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-songs-oto-1-5-otos-links-here-hot-bonuses-upsell/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-songs-oto-1-10-otos-links-here-hot-bonuses-upsell
today alright guys so what is AI songs all about well according to the sales page say goodbye to 1980s AI tools witness the new sunrise and artificial intelligence Universe rolls first artificial intelligence powered Texas song creator that enables you to transform your text or lyrics into captivating musical compositions without any technical skills or marketing acumen all right guys so we are going to go inside AI songs we're going to do a demo of this product this software and I'm going to reveal to you the one missing thing that you need that will prevent you from making any money at all so let's go inside and I'll show
you around all right guys we're now inside the members area of my AI songs account as usual I've purchased a front-end version of this product review for you guys so you can make the best purchasing decision for yourselves now that being said should you decide to purchase this product even after you've watched this review please make sure you watch this video this is the only training video that they have and if you have any questions at all open up a support desk ticket and hopefully hopefully they'll get you squared away alright so what is this all about well it's about creating songs using
AI so we're gonna walk through some of the features here this is not a tutorial guys okay this is not a tutorial if you buy the product then you got to watch this one video right here and then you need to figure everything else out on your own and if you need any help again hopefully they'll be able to help you out when you open up a support desk ticket so let's do this first first of all AI generated songs this is where you can create a an AI generated song right so we're going to create a new one here and you can see right here you first of all step one you gotta select a beat so you can go down here you can select any type of beat that you want you can listen to them if you want just press this button right here [Music] so I like it it says Nike so we'll stick with
Ai Songs OTOs Linka
that so that's step number one so we're gonna save and continue then step number two is you need to generate the AI lyrics or you can use your own custom lyrics now in order to create your own custom lyrics you guys if you're familiar with chat GPT you just give it a command create lyrics for this type of song and it'll write write some lyrics for you really really cool but we're gonna test this out so generate AI lyrics and what you need to do is you need to give a detailed description of what you want your song to be about so let me come up with something real quick we'll just say warrior plus products waste we'll go waste time and money so we'll use that as our detailed description guys and then we're gonna generate the lyrics and this is where the AI is going to
generate a song for us all right so let's generate the lyrics and we'll let the AI do the work and if I got a pause the video and come back I'll pause the video and come back all right that was real quick and it says here are four bars Warrior plus products they're like a twisted game wasting time and money is just a crying shame these digital leeches they'll suck you dry and it's it's not even done yet it's missing something but let's go ahead and go and save and continue okay and so we click on that and then from here this is where you have to select a voice so you have to go through here and the one thing is they don't allow you to um sample the voices so you're gonna have to kind of just pick and see you know what works for you so I'm just going to go through here we'll take a look here um there's Chucky so we are gonna go with Chucky here oh they're Scrappy do so talk about 80s right they're talking about 80s on the sales page there's a lot of 80s voices here so Chucky so let's go select voice
and then from here we're going to generate the song and we'll let the AI songs app create a nice little ditty for us here and again if I got a pause the video we'll pause it and it'll come back okay so here's a song and it's going to be downloaded to um your computer so I'm going to download the song and then from here I'm going to um play this song here so I'm going to open it and that way you guys can listen to this song if you are the four bars four across products they're like a twisted game wasting time and money it's just a crying shame these digital leeches they'll suck you dry [Music] so it keeps playing keeps playing the music here I'll just quit that so it keeps playing the music you can see right here it ends up in in your area called my songs Okay so I look at this
Ai Songs OTO AIUpsell
Ai Songs OTOs - All 5 Upsell Links Here:
https://timebusinessnews.com/ai-songs-oto-1-to-10-otos-links-here-hot-bonuses-ai-songs-upsell/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-songs-oto-1-5-otos-links-here-hot-bonuses-upsell/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-songs-oto-1-10-otos-links-here-hot-bonuses-upsell
and I see all these songs in here and I didn't generate any of these songs so the investigative side of me is asking well are am I sharing this app the API with other people I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm just hypothesizing that you're sharing this this API connection with everyone else who buys these this product all right that's neither here nor there but this is something that I just noticed okay so that was a song here's another one that I did I want to pop this up here and let's bring up this song right here this was another one that I did and we're gonna open it with uh QuickTime and we'll play this one right here this is another one I did for warrior plus I'm spitting bars no time to waste worry problems products a total disgrace money down the drain like a broken bass these
deals leave your wallet in a darkened space [Music] word so that's how you make the music that's how you make the songs okay that's that's the AI generated songs version of this product then let's take a look at the AI song video maker and this is where you can make videos all right so first of all you start off with a detailed description so let's do my favorite which is dogs playing poker on the beach sipping cocktails Alright and then the ratio you go Square portrait or landscape let's just go with square select the video effect so they've got no effect bubbles butterfly flame One Flame two they got all these different ones let's use Stars and then you select the resolution let's go with 720 by 720 and then you select the audio moves there's different types of mood
Ai Songs OTO Bonuses
here and we'll go with happy and then select audio so from right here you can select different types of songs I don't particularly care for any of them because these all seem like Christmas songs all this hair is one right here it says ticklish let's choose that one and then now we're going to generate the video oh you can see it's playing for us let's generate the video so that way you guys don't have to be subjected to that torture so we'll let it generate the video and again if I gotta pause it I'll pause it um and then come back so we'll just let this run for a second or two all right so we're back that took a couple of minutes to generate and here is the video result right here we can download the video so we'll download that to our folder and then we're going to play this so you can see what it looks like [Music] foreign [Music] the dogs looked a little strange but that's how AI does these photos okay and it's not perfect but this is what it comes out looking like all right and then the last feature here we have this AI music generator so this is where you can type in a keyword or
you can use a voice command and it's going to generate some songs for you so we'll just put in let's put in dog since we just had that so we're going to use that as a keyword generate see what kind of music it comes with comes up with here so it comes up with everything that shows the word dog or has something to do with dogs all right so there's different types of sound files here and that's that that's the AI music generator did it generate these my my opinion is it probably pulled from a database of files so not necessarily generating the music but locating it for you okay so now that you've seen all of these features here what are you supposed to do with the songs that you create well they have something here called the AI music Marketplace so let me click on this visit my site and
Ai Songs OTO Product Overview
Ai Songs OTOs - All 5 Upsell Links Here:
https://timebusinessnews.com/ai-songs-oto-1-to-10-otos-links-here-hot-bonuses-ai-songs-upsell/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-songs-oto-1-5-otos-links-here-hot-bonuses-upsell/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-songs-oto-1-10-otos-links-here-hot-bonuses-upsell
this is where you're able to put all your songs in here and you're able to charge for some of those songs and you heard some of those songs I don't know if I'd be charging 22.43 for a song that I created but you know your business your choice and you can create songs and add them to your website all right and if you come back here you can see all the settings you can change the logo and fave icon extensions language there's even an SEO manager there's an email manager here okay and so when we talk about email marketing if you're a beginner where are your emails you don't have a list right so you don't have any lists okay but maybe something later on that you can you can utilize when you do have a list and even with SMS messages guys who are you going to send text messages to okay they've got a gdpr cookie I'm glad they're thinking about that kind of stuff and you can manage things like advertisers coupons categories even payment gateways so you can accept payments so
that's all fine and good that's all fine and good but but here's the question how are you gonna get people over to this site think about it how are you going to get people over to this site you need traffic okay that's the main thing that's missing that's the main thing that's missing and most if not all of the warrior plus products I review I always talk about is traffic you need people you need qualified people people are looking for AI generated songs you need those people to come to your website in order to buy those songs so how are you going to do it how are you going to do that they don't talk about that right so that's going to be the challenge and that's a challenge with most if not all of the warrior plus products our reviews is generating traffic this is what everybody needs even myself I need traffic too so what do I do I create YouTube videos I create YouTube videos that attract people like you you guys out there in YouTube Land watching my video you guys are my ideal target audience peo
Ai Songs OTO Review
ple looking for shiny object products people who think that they can buy one product for 17 bucks and get rich overnight you guys are my audience because my goal is to build up my list to build up my following with honest no BS reviews to get you guys to see the the truth about making money online is that that is you have to work for it okay so in order to generate traffic you got to produce value you got to give value to people are you going to do that producing content that people like people that are looking for this kind of music you need to put that kind of content out if you're going to do it the freeway now if you want to use paid traffic then well you're going to have to spend money you're gonna have to learn how to run ads you're gonna have to go through that whole process of learning this is how online entrepreneurs operate all right I know everybody tries to make it seem like it's so easy and fast and they sell you a 17 product with you know you're going to find out with Nine upsells and Nine down sales right but guys the truth of the matter is is that you don't need all these fancy Tools in order to build a business
okay and that's the reason why I'm going to urge you guys to click on the link below check out the fast track affiliate bootcamp all right it's going to set you guys straight put you on the path or it's building a real online business traffic guys traffic how are you gonna get traffic that's the main issue here okay you can create all these songs and some of them were kind of clunky and the videos were kind of weird but you know that's my opinion my video my opinion guys but you know can you see yourself selling those songs that's the thing right and how are you going to get people over to your site so they buy the songs okay so traffic is always going to be the main issue that you guys face and unless you guys are willing to roll up your sleeves and put in the work you're not going to make any money all right this looks cool looks like you've got a website and all that kind of stuff you can customize it to your heart's content but who's going to visit it right so guys traffic that is the main issue with this product and now let you guys know how AI songs Works let's go ahead and talk about the sales funnel all right guys the front end offe
Ai Songs OTO Reviews
Ai Songs OTOs - All 5 Upsell Links Here:
https://timebusinessnews.com/ai-songs-oto-1-to-10-otos-links-here-hot-bonuses-ai-songs-upsell/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-songs-oto-1-5-otos-links-here-hot-bonuses-upsell/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-songs-oto-1-10-otos-links-here-hot-bonuses-upsell
r AI songs retails for 16.75 when you exit intent off the sales page they're gonna offer up a three dollar off coupon code which will drop the price down to 13.75 there are 10.
I repeat 10 upsells and 10 down sales I'm not going to go through all of them you can pause the video check them out for yourself as usual guys pricing and otos are subject to change so let me give you my final thoughts on AI songs all right guys so what's my final opinion about AI songs well let me play this song for you so you can understand how I feel spitting bars no time to waste Warrior problems products a total disgrace money down the drain like a broken base these deals leave your wallet in a darkened space [Music] yeah these deals will leave your wallet in a darkened space I couldn't have said it better myself so based off of what I've shown you guys you probably already know what I'm going to say I would stay away from AI songs guys please please please I am begging you learn how to generate highly targeted traffic by producing
Ai Songs OTOs - All 5 Upsell Links Here:
https://timebusinessnews.com/ai-songs-oto-1-to-10-otos-links-here-hot-bonuses-ai-songs-upsell/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-songs-oto-1-5-otos-links-here-hot-bonuses-upsell/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-songs-oto-1-10-otos-links-here-hot-bonuses-upsell
valuable content for your audience if you want to have a long-term business you gotta do it the more you search for these push button apps the longer it's gonna take for you to start earning affiliate commissions so stop wasting time and money guys so I hope you guys found this video to be helpful if you did please give it a thumbs up and consider subscribing to my YouTube channel I would greatly appreciate it this is Ken Furukawa from ken4u kyle.
com and I'll see you in my next video

The Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, fifth class, is the highest rank a Ukrainian foreign national can achieve. Its newest inductee is back home in Florida and has been in the shower so long he’s lost track of time. His feel for the present moment will return in about thirty seconds when the hot water runs out. His hair has been both shampooed and conditioned. His body throughly soaped. It’s the shower’s warm solitude he cannot leave. There is plenty to do today; an interview at a radio station at eleven, lunch with his sponsor, an early dinner at his mom’s pastor’s. All of them want to know more about his experience overseas, they want to know how the war is progressing, they want to hear how he went from Highland Hills High School to war hero. What they don’t want to hear, what David does not want to hear, is how cold his new found notoriety makes him feel. Before can explore his melancholy any further, the hot water goes. The steam rising above the shower clears as a lukewarm solution rinses the remaining soap and warmth off David’s body. He remembers taking similarly cold showers in Ukraine, and how happy he was to have them. It’s shocking how clean a man can get with a half full bucket of water and a couple of towels.
“Ah look at Abie! Clean enough for a Russian bitch.” says Bone in his thick provincial accent. Words David can’t remember Bone actually saying or they only sound like something he would say. Sitting around waiting for mechanics, waiting on orders, waiting on food, waiting on the Russians to start shooting, David didn’t know war could be so boring. The only thing Bone said he liked more than killing Russians was fucking them. The rest of the guys in the platoon knew Bone was probably lying, but he was their instructor, and they were the international volunteers, so he was never questioned. He was the only person in their platoon who spoke Russian and Ukrainian and English. One guy, this kid from Belgium, called Bone a cunt after failing to pull the pen on a grenade during a training exercise, and Bone gave it to him.
“What is this? You do not have to pull pens in Belgium? Or do you like to give your enemies the grenade so they can throw it back?” said Bone. He then effeminately ran around the kid saying, “Here Mr. German. Take my grenade. They are loud and I am afraid.” Bone comes back to his real voice. “Killing Russians is no different than driving a truck. It is your job. Don’t think. Don’t be like this Belgian. Pull the pin. Kill Russians.” The Belgian kid said something to Bone but no one knew what it was because no one spoke French. This didn’t stop Bone from hitting him in the face so hard it broke his nose. The kid quit later that day, and Bone got written up which David told him is like a kid being put in timeout during a house invasion.
“What is this time out?” Bone asked.
The water is cold so David gets out. In the kitchen his mother goes over the day’s itinerary again, just to be thorough she adds.
“Do you know where you are going David? No, sorry. Do you know where you are going Abie?” she asks as David grabs a breakfast banana.
“Yes ma’am.”
“You know parking can be difficult downtown. Be sure to take quarters for the meter.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“And be sure to be yourself. I hope they are nice to you. You know how the media likes to spin things these days. I don’t think they are too liberal but don’t let them put words in your mouth. If they ask you something you don’t want to answer, you just say ‘No comment'. You just tell your story. You are a hero. And then you’ll meet with Fred, and then dinner at Pastor's. Be there at four. If it’s ok with you I’m going to bring the medal. Pastor will want to see it. He’s a big fan of Zelensky.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Ok. Enough doting. That’s all you’re getting out to me today. Are you excited? Isn’t this exciting? News Radio 950 is doing a story about you. They want to hear about their local war hero…and that’s you. Give me a hug and get going before you are late.”
“Yes ma’am.”
In his car, David listens to Domination by Pantera at full volume. The heavy riffs, screaming and terrifying drums raise his spirit. Bone used to play it all the time. David hasn’t prepared anything for save his memory of his time in Ukraine. Perhaps Bone is giving an interview somewhere? You didn’t do anything wrong, he tells himself as he opens the station’s door. Inside he finds an attractive, young woman named Sara who has been emailing him for the past several weeks.
“Nice to officially meet. Right this way.”
David does his best not to stare at her as she leads him through corridor of offices and hallways.
“She looks nice. Go into an office with her.” says Bone.
“We’ve all been looking forward to having a more in-depth conversation with you. Our programming producer, who is also named David, will be asking you most of the questions. But I begged him to let me ask some too, so you might say I will also be interviewing you. I hope that’s ok?”
Sara’s blonde hair folds into a neat part on the left side of her head. David pictures her styling it in her bathroom, in a bathrobe. It’s been a while since he has smelled perfume. He found a bottle in an abandoned apartment in Zaporizhzhia and kept it. It had some Chinese lettering he couldn’t read, but it smelt nice. Some of the guys teased him when they found it saying he was going to attract Russian because he smelt like an Asian. Sara’s perfume smells expensive and French. She introduces him to David the producer and the three of them find three seats on the end of a conference room table. Sara sits on the same side as David. After introductions, David starts the interview by saying even though he is not sure exactly when the piece will air, he is certain it will before the end of the month. He then adds something about how David is a hero for doing what he did.
“So tell us how you found yourself in Ukraine?”
“Well it was pretty easy really. I went online and volunteered for the IVB, that was the name of my unit, the International Volunteer Brigade. I don’t think I talked to a real person until I booked my flight to Poland. It was mostly just forms I was filling out online. So yeah it was pretty easy. So I landed in Krakow and my recruiter picked me up. I stayed in a hotel for a few days while we waited on a couple more guys to show up. One was from Spain, another from Portugal. The Portuguese guy never showed, or if he did he didn’t come with us. I guess he could have volunteered with another outfit. I guess that’s the thing about the war I didn’t really expect. We were always just kinda losing people. And I don’t mean they were killed, although a lot of them were. I mean guys would just be with you one minute and gone the next. And then you’d find them a week later and I go, ‘Where have you been?’ ‘Oh I’ve been in Dnipro’ or ‘Oh I got picked up by the Regs.’ It was crazy. The only place where that didn’t happen was the front.”
“Who do you mean by ‘the Regs?’” asks David.
“The regular army. The Ukrainians. The good guys we were there to help. Sometimes they would be short a man so they’d just nab one of the volunteers. That was a bad gig. The Ukrainians wanted their most motivated guys fighting in the worst places. I only had to do it a couple of times, but…it was not something I did and wanted to do again. ”
David rubs his hand over his arm. He can’t smell the hot blonde anymore, only trench dirt and gun oil. The soil of Donetsk had a deep brown color to it he always enjoyed. Even with snipers supposedly in the area, digging was one of his favorite jobs. The earth smelled vibrant, full of worms and nitrogen and reminded him of his granddad, coming in from a day of field work, his jeans and boots caked in a rich layer of his land.
“So tell us what is it like being a hometown celebrity?” asks Sara. “You’re from here so people already know you, but what’s it like now? I mean now, gosh, everyone i know has been talking about this kid from Highland who won a medal from Zelensky. Did you get to bring it by the way? You were on the national news. It was NBC, but still…”
A bouquet of scents and questions. David looks across the room and sees Bone sitting with a heavy slouch in a chair at the other end of the conference table. He looks rough; still alive but not by much. He sits holding his side, his chin on his chest.
“It’s neat I guess. I walk down the street and people call my name. I take lots of pictures with people. Everyone is really nice. I felt like I was kinda a wallflower before.It’s something I think lots of people think about experiencing. I know I did, I just never thought it would be for this.”
“What did you want to be when you were a boy?” asks Sara.
“I don’t know. The normal stuff; doctor, fireman, my Dad was in sales, so not that. I think about it a lot. I think mostly I just wanted to be good. I didn’t like getting into trouble.”
“Oh my gosh, I was the exact same.” says Sara. Then durning her boss she adds “David, I don’t know if you knew this about me and this David, but we actually went to Highland High at the same time. I was a senior when you would have been a freshman, but I swear I remember you. I thought you were cute.”
“Don’t be trying to steal my assistant Dave. Can I call you Dave?”
“David’s fine.”
Bone perks up and tells them to call him Abie
“Ok so let’s get back on track. You’re over there, you’re fighting Russians, you’re helping the Ukrainians, can you tell us, what was that like?”
“What is war like?”
“Yeah the war, but you’re doing a good thing. You volunteered to help an oppressed people, to fight against tyranny, something I think our listeners think our government should have done a long time ago. But while our President sits on his ass, you bravely go do the thing that needs be done. God it must have been exhilarating, but I don’t know, I don’t want to put words in your mouth.”
Bone lays his head back on the desk and says something David can’t quite make out but thinks he knows what his commander is saying.
“Meta.”
“What?” asks David.
“It’s a Ukrainian word I learned while over there. It means purpose, but more than just doing a job, it’s your calling. It’s a word the priests with the beards use a lot. Everyday I knew exactly what was expected of me and what I could expect from everyone around me. I had clarity for the first time in my life. I felt like I could see for miles in every direction, like sitting on the roof watching all the cars going by.”
Bone stands up out of his chair and walks out of the office.
“Even when I was scared I knew that was to be expected. And when I was tired, I knew that too was to be expected. And when I was hungry, and wet, and cold, and angry enough to kill. I knew that too was to be expected because war is a cauldron. Everything gets boiled into a singularity. It’s terrifying but also pretty damn motivating. What sucks is that I can already feel everything starting to get cloudy again.”
Leaning his belly against the table, David leans in to ask his next question as if he does not want to be heard.
“Did you, you know…and this will be off the record…did you kill anyone else?”
Sara places her empty hand on the table, an offering for David to hold should his answer prove too much. But David knows the answer is not too much for his has thought of little else.
“Nope. Just the one.”
After another few minutes of hearing how brave he has been, how proud his family must be and how grateful the station is to have him come in, the interview is over. The producer shakes David’s hand and Sara walks him out. She mentions that friends of her’s are going to a new bar in the Depot and suggests David should come too. He says he can come but it will be late because he has dinner plans. “That’s ok. I’ll be there pretty late.”
—————————
Only a few blocks from the radio station, David pulls into a Waffle House parking lot. There is condensation on the windows of the building and cigarette butts near the door. Nothing here breathes well, David notes. Inside he finds his old sponsor sitting at booth by himself. David sees Fred before Fred sees him and for a moment considers leaving. However, he sees Bone sits in the corner of the restaurant, smiling and looking to flirt with a chubby waitress with grown sons.
“How the hell are you Abie?” says Fred. No turning back now.
“Sober for today.”
“Me too.”
The pair order eggs, toast and bacon. The cook makes each of them a waffle on the house after recognizing David. He finishes his plate before Fred can finish a piece of toast. Meals happen quick on the battlefield and David can’t seem to slow himself down long to enjoy his food. Bone is no longer in the corner. David sees him moving around the room; following an old lady into the restroom. He comes out with a grotesque look on his face. “That little woman took the biggest shit I’ve ever seen! Abie, come and look at it. It won’t flush. Call in a drone strike. We are going to have to pull back!”
“So” says Fred, “Mr. War Hero, how are you really? You’ve got recognition, a war recommendation, you’re doing interviews, you still got your sobriety. Life seems to be going well, but…”
“How I am really?” When he was in NA Fred could always sniff out if he was high. As his sponsor that was his job, but David never liked it. I know you say you’re fine, but how are your really. Effective, but crude. Fred taps his finger to the tip of his nose. Bingo kid. David looks around the room for Bone but doesn’t find him.
“I’m good man. Things are going well. Everyone always asks me how I’m doing, but I’m really fine. I honestly don’t feel much different than when I left. Same shit different day you know? Girls come up to me now, so that’s different I guess. So…yeah…things are good. Still sober. No real temptation to go back down that road. Been working the Steps since I got back. Doing the work. I didn’t even think about getting high when I was over there. I’m serious. Not once. I’ve got a therapist that I’m seeing. She’s really smart. And I get to see her for free. It’s part of some rehabilitation program from the federal government. I’m moving out of my Mom’s soon. I found an apartment through the church she goes to. There is a guy there who owns a bunch of places and he hooked me up with a really nice place for really cheap. He gave us a really good deal on it. The same guy said I could come work for him too when I felt I was ready. He has a real estate business and said he is always looking for new realtors. With my story, he told me, he thinks I could to really well.”
Bone sits in the booth next to Fred. His face his clean, empty. Without blinking, moving or saying anything he stares at David; human mirror he is unsure is alive or dead, in a Waffle House in Florida or an expensive dirty tank in Ukraine.
“But then I think, do I really wanna use my story to sell real estate? Some douchebag buys an apartment I’m selling him because I killed a Russian general. That’s not why I went over there. And who would even ask me to that? They don’t know what it was like. They make it seem like going over there was no big deal, that killing generals is something that happens all the time, or that the war is going well. Really man, I got so lucky with that shot. I’ve had trained snipers tell me they probably couldn’t hit a target at that range. But I did. I did that and I know I could never do it again. Even if I could, I don’t know if I’d want to. I didn’t know that guy. I mean I now know a bunch of stuff about him, but it’s only what I’ve been told. They told me that he supported Putin from the beginning and that a lot of the war planning was his idea. Ok. If you say so Bone. But I looked this guy up, he has a wikipedia page, and a wife, and kids, probably grandkids. I don’t know if his family is proud of him or not, but I know they will never see him again. And then just the charade of it all. So I got to meet the Ukrainian War Minister, Zelensky’s right hand man. Still not worth it. There’s just nothing noble or romantic about it. It’s all just a cold, black hole that runs on death and killing and for some reason you have to look at it…at least I do. I suppose I thought at some point I would see something. Never did though.”
Bone breaks his stare and cracks a smile.
“And for who, for what Fred? What is going to happen when all of this is over other than the same thing that happens after every war. A cabal of erudite assholes are going to meet in an overly secure room in the Netherlands and draw a new line in between Ukraine and Russia which is exactly what those same assholes did seventy years ago, and seventy years before that, and in seventy years we’ll do the same thing all over again. Wash, rinse and repeat. That line makes about as much sense as the first day of Spring. Sure, there is an official first day of Spring, March 20th or whatever, but we all know that there was some really warm days before the 20th and there is going to be some real cold days afterwards. But the 20th is the official day. It doesn’t make Spring happen. It just kinda helps sense out of a blurry situation. It wasn’t two days after getting there I realized the whole thing is so complicated. Half the regs were guys who had either lived in Russia at some point, gone to school there mostly, or had family living there. It felt like trying to break up a fight at a family reunion, only everyone is holding ARs as they argue about whether or not the 20th is the first day of Spring. The conflict goes back so far you can’t make out the start. And the profiteering my god, that’s what really gets me. Just like that asshole who wants to use the war to sell real estate, all the arms manufacturers who are pouring guns and bullets and tanks into Ukraine, propping this war machine so they can win another government contract. It’s sick. The people running those companies have the first available seat in hell. And Putin too. He started this whole mess. First him, then a nice row of CEOs and shareholders, that’s who I want to in hell. And there is never talk of any alternative. None. Not even a whisper. Just two sides trying to exhaust the other for a better seat at the bargaining table.”
Bone gets up to leave, but not before stretching his back, revealing a large, dark red stain in his uniform, just above his waist line.
“So here I am in all my hometown glory.” says David, “The renown Prince of the Order of the Ukrainian Shit-Show.”
There is a wet spot on David’s pants which he is not sure how it got there. He looks at Bone who is already out the door and running down the street. It’s ok, David thinks to himself, I know where he is going. ———————————————— At the 7-11 next to Waffle House David buys two tall boys and two shots of Jack. He pours the whiskey into the cans and kills the second one as he pulls into Pastor’s driveway where several Mercedes, Teslas and BMWs are parked. David clears his throat, spits into the bushes and unwraps a stick of gum. He enters the house after two hard knocks.
“Oh I think that is him.” David hears his mom say after shutting the large, dark front door. She comes around the corner of the corridor to tell him he is late and to take his shoes off.
“But my socks don’t match.”
“Well take those off too! Pastor just put down new carpet.”
“Ah well, since there is new carpet involved. Let’s not walk on the new carpet.”
The rest of the dinner party comes around the corridor in their socks. Each of them personally thanks David for coming and for his service. The men shake his hand. The women all give him hugs. By the end of introductions David has met two bankers, two retirees, and handful of housewives, as well as two more pastors and their wives. Bone is the last to shake his hand. He tells Abie he smells like old lady perfume. Elenor, Pastor’s wife, takes David’s arm, sliding her’s underneath his, leading him into their recently renovated kitchen. The rest of the group follows.
“Well dinner is almost ready. As we wait, why don’t you tell us about Ukraine.”
“Leave him alone Ellie,” says Pastor, “maybe he’s tired of talking about it.”
“I don’t mind.” says Abie. “I don’t mind telling people about blowing some Russian guy’s head off.”
“David Absalom!”
“It’s ok Mom. Yeah so I saw this column of tanks approaching our trench, which ran parallel to this road running west outta Horlivka. I don’t think they knew it was there, or if they did know, they sure as shit didn’t know we were in it, which was weird because we’d been trading fire with them all day. We were all scared shitless. It was only me and Jizzy and Bone. Right Bone? Oh yeah, it wasn’t Jizz it was that kid from Croatia. The one who fucking just ran off one day. I don’t remember his name. Anyways, Bone tells us to all be real still, play like we are dead. So this entire tank column passes by us. Takes for fucking ever. Couldn’t have been more than an hour, but it felt like ten. Finally it starts to let up you know, the last tank passes. So Bone takes the radio and tries to find a spot to call it in. As he is doing that I see the last tank, which was what Bone, about four hundred yards from us? Anyway, he comes to a stop, and out pops the unluckiest son of bitch in the whole war. The General gets out to take a piss, I take aim, figuring I’ll just scare him. And yeah. Bam. Headshot. He didn’t feel a thing; killed him with his dick in his hand. Speaking of which…if you will excuse me.”
“The bathroom is back down the hallway, first door on your left.” says Pastor.
“Is it a full bath?” ask Abie.
“Three-quarter.”
“Close enough.”
No one looks him in the eye, no one except Bone and Pastor. The bathroom has been redone in the same tile as the kitchen. David takes off his clothes, turns the steel knob in the shower to red, sits one floor and waits for the water to get warm.

So I(42M) and my wife(39F) have been married for 12 years now. We have a 7 year old daughter. My wife is a SAHM and we're happy with this arrangement because I work a lot(I'm a heart surgeon) and we wanted our daughter to have adequate attention from at least one parent. Moreover, my wife didn't want to pursue her career after she conceived.
My family has always been very vocal about women getting educated and working even after marriage. My mother, my sisters, my aunts. All of them are highly educated and have successful careers.
When we got married, she was working as an elementary school teacher. My mother didn't approve of our marriage because she wanted a more career oriented woman for me. But she came around after about a year of our marriage because I told her straight up that I didn't like her disrespecting my wife and we couldn't meet anymore if she didn't even try to be civil towards my wife. After that everything was going fine.... At least until my brother got married. His wife is a corporate lawyer and obviously my mother dotes on her so much because she's apparently "independent, headstrong, etc. etc." My wife feels insecure about it because my mother has never treated her that well. I asked her not to worry about it because my mother's opinion of her doesn't matter that much.
Well, coming back to the situation, my brother and sister in law have a 10 year old daughter. She and our daughter play together every weekend since we all stay in the same neighbourhood. The thing is my niece goes to ballet and piano classes. She also has a private tutor. This is because her mom wants her to go to an Ivy league college.
Our daughter just goes for art classes because she loves painting.
So yesterday, we all went to my mom's place for a family get together. After lunch, my wife said she'd bake cookies and a cake for teatime. The kids also went with her to help. While they were baking, my sister in law came home. She had gone to pick something up urgently from her friend after lunch.
She was furious on seeing her daughter in the kitchen baking with the other kids. She yelled at my wife saying that she has no rights to teach her daughter to be a traditional woman. I calmed her down and apologized saying that it wasn't our intention to interfere with her parenting and that my wife was just trying to do something fun with the kids. But she wasn't ready to listen and my mother joined in saying that she didn't mind my wife being a housewife but my wife shouldn't make the kids be like her(i.e. a housewife). She said that they were trying to make the kids be successful and my wife was trying to do the opposite. My wife started to cry and ran out of the house to the car. I told my mother that I wouldn't be crossing her doorstep again until she apologizes to my wife. Then I left their house immediately with my daughter.
I've been getting messages from my dad saying that I should go back home. I haven't replied to him.
AITA?