Sitting alone in my dilapidated apartment for years now, I realize its not always in that order.

This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).

I am NOT OP. Original post by u/thra_Impress6525 in r/relationship_advice

Mood spoiler:

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Original

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My best friend Sarah (26F) and her husband Matt (28M) have put me in a very difficult position with my fiance Jack (30M). I knew Matt since my childhood, he was my neighbor and we were friendly. Sarah and I were roommates in college and became close friends.

When I introduced Sarah and Matt, they hit it off and started dating each other. I was happy to see two of my friends get together but also annoyed that I became the third wheel and was often ignored or set aside because they were so into each other. By the time I graduated, Matt had completely dropped me as a friend. That saddened me but I was still good friends with Sarah so it was what it was. Sarah and I would frequently hang out, but I never talked with Matt other than the occasional polite hellos. Sarah would sometimes try to do couples dates with her and Matt and me and my dates. I found that Matt had developed an unpleasant personality and would frequently be rude and condescending towards me. However, he’s a very devoted and loving husband to Sarah so for her sake I ignored him.

When my fiance and I got engaged, we had no plans to do a party. Sarah was disappointed that we didn’t throw an engagement party so she organized a small get-together at her home to celebrate us. The party was nice and as things were winding down, my fiance and I went to thank Sarah and Matt for their sweet gesture before we took our leave. Matt was pretty tipsy by then and out of nowhere he suddenly hugged me and in front of my fiance said that he was so glad that I was finally settling down and he is relieved that now I’ll be over the crush I had on him. I was shocked and told him that wasn’t true. He just laughed and told Jack that I was always chasing him and he had to work hard to keep me away. I dragged Sarah in and asked her to please fix this mess and she was all like oh he’s drunk ignore him and says, you know I always trust you, I know you wouldn’t act on your crush.

Jack was pretty pissed by this point and he walked out. I ran after him and tried explaining that this isn’t true but he told me he doesn’t want to be anyone’s second choice or their backup plan. Since that night he isn’t talking to me or returning my calls.

I have talked to Sarah multiple times to clear things with Jack but she’s brushing me off. I don’t understand why they believe this or why she’d stay friends with me if she thought I was into her husband. I was in her wedding party and did all the work because her sister who was the MOH was too busy. I have helped her through her pregnancy and have babysat her kid so many times. She never gave me any indication she thought this and why would she want me close to her family if she believed this? I feel humiliated that these people think I was pining away for a jerk like Matt.

I need help in convincing Jack this isn’t true. I am also mad at him for throwing away our relationship over what some drunken idiot said. I don't know what I am going to do about my friendship with Sarah.

Update:

I talked to Sarah again and asked her first of all why she’d think I had a crush on Matt. She said that when I first introduced them I had talked up Matt and gushed about him and she took that as me being into him. I said I was fond of him since I’ve known him for a long time but that doesn’t mean I want to be with him. She said when they started dating I was often upset about it. I said I wasn’t upset about their dating, I was upset that she’d make plans with me and then leave me to be with him and when we were all together I didn’t enjoy being the third wheel while they ignored me. That had nothing to do with wanting him and more to not liking being left out by my best friend. I asked her why she hadn’t said anything before and she explained that she could “manage” the situation. She had asked Matt to stop talking to me completely and she engineered situations so there was little chance of us socializing with each other.

I asked her now that I have explained that I never had a crush on Matt, can you please talk to Jack and tell him. She said she didn’t want to lie. This frustrated me immensely. She could ignore this imaginary crush for years and manipulate me, but won’t talk to my fiance to help my relationship. I told her I was done being her friend. Thinking back I was always doing stuff for her and she used me but did little for me.

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Update (posted yesterday):

Tl;dr: Jack and I broke up.

I wrote a long letter to Jack explaining the entire history of my relationship with Sarah and Matt with the recent screencaps. I asserted as best as I could that I had never pined after any guy and I loved him and he was my only choice.

After days of silence, Jack agreed to talk to me. We met and he said that he sees two ways of interpreting this situation. One, Matt and Sarah are right and he doesn’t want to be my second choice. Two, they are malicious people who are messing with me and that shows very poor judgment on my part that I’d have a best friend like this and he doesn’t want that quality in a life partner. Either possibility leads to the same conclusion that he wants to call off the engagement.

He reminded me that I had represented Sarah as one of the most important people in my life. I’d jump up and help her all the time. I had once canceled plans with him to take care of her kid when the baby was sick. It had irked him but he had seen it as me being caring and nice, but now he’s seeing all that in a different light.

I cried and begged him not to end our engagement, but he wanted a break for a while. I thought over what he said for a few days and came to realize that he was right. I was a clingy friend and a doormat. I never even saw how much one sided my friendship with Sarah was. I was a doormat with Jack too. I didn’t want to get married or have kids this early but agreed to his timelines. I gave up an exciting job opportunity with more money because he didn’t want me traveling for work. I love him but I need to fix myself and be stronger.

I gave back his ring and ended things. I returned all the gifts he gave too. He was offended by that, but I didn’t feel good about keeping the very expensive things he had given me. He makes a lot more than me and was very generous with what he gave me, but I can’t keep that now.

Sarah was quiet for a while but then started calling me. I ignored a lot of her calls but this morning I answered her call and told her about the breakup. I was looking for sympathy from my old friend. She was more interested in knowing if I was still going to watch her kid while she and Matt went on an overnight trip. She got pretty angry when I said no. I have blocked her now.

I have lost my fiance, my best friend and my relationship with my nephew whom I adored, all in one go. But still, I am thankful for the comments that showed this wasn’t something I could fix and helped me rip off the bandaid and walk away from this mess.

Disclaimer

This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.

Read the original here

This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).

So, to my knowledge, no one has done a write-up on the batshit insane history of the Beach Boys and the various inter-politics of band-members that extends to their fanbase, which is why I'm doing this now. I don't really use Reddit so excuse any formatting errors, I'm not entirely sure how to use italics on this thing, but I feel this story is worth sharing anyways.

Okay, let's start with the basics, the Beach Boys are a classic rock band most famous for being pioneers of surf-rock. They didn't invent the genre but they were one of the earliest commercially successful surf-rock bands to have vocals, basically cementing the vocal-jazz/doo-wop sound vocal style that's all over the genre. The band was formed by the three Wilson brothers (Brian, Carl and Dennis), their cousin Mike Love and their childhood friend Al Jardine. Brian Wilson was the group's leader, writing all of their songs and eventually producing their records, with Mike Love functioning as the group's lyricist and arguably their lead vocalist (all of the members sung lead but Mike didn't play any instruments so he tended to sing lead a bit more often to give him shit to do on stage). This was how the group functioned from the early 60s until 1964.

Here's where the issue begins, for various reasons (largely due to having a panic attack on an airplane) Brian Wilson decides that touring and surf rock sucks complete ass, and that he'd rather innovate in the studio. A solution is agreed upon where Brian will write and record in Los Angeles for most of the year as the other Beach Boys tour, occasionally stopping back in Los Angeles to provide vocals on the instrumentals that Brian cooked up. Lyrics are to be provided by Brian, although he eventually elects to just hire other lyricists. To make up for his absence they recruit another musician named Bruce Johnston to tour with them, who eventually just joins the band.

So Brian gets more studio time, drifts away from surf-rock and eventually rock altogether, discovers psychedelics and records some of the greatest records of all time. "Pet Sounds", the Beach Boys fourth album to be recorded in these circumstances, is largely considered the band's masterpiece and consistently ranks near the top of most "Greatest Albums of All Time" charts (it's currently #2 on Rolling Stone's list, for example). It's really incredible psychedelic pop, genuinely a fantastic record and one absolutely worth listening to in full ("Wouldn't It Be Nice" was used in a Fallout advertisement a few years ago and got some attention because of it, "God Only Knows" was performed Bioshock Infinite by a barbershop quartet, I think Reddit likes these sort of things, they're also just very famous songs in general). There's some other material recorded around here that's also fantastic but is not necessary to understand this post.

These albums were weird, and they were critically acclaimed, but they weren't as successful as past Beach Boys albums (at least not in America, they sold fantastically in the UK). After one of them was cancelled near its completion ("SMiLE", an album with it's own insane fan history I may write-up later) the band became significantly less successful, Brian Wilson became reclusive and the power in the band generally shifted to the other members.

For the most part, this has been true since 1971. Brian has come back a few times, most notably in 1977 with "Love You" (a very weird but very good early synth-pop album), but a history of mental health issues prevented him from ever fully returning and the power in the band gradually shifted over to Mike Love. Here's the thing though, Mike Love is an asshole.

Mike Love's many faults are too long to list here, but to put it plainly he's a money-grubbing Reagan-Republican jackass who trampled Brian's creative vision to push the band back towards its surf-rock roots, in the process creating some of the worst records of all time. The Mike Love-helmed Beach Boys albums must be what the Beach Boys sound like to people who hate them, they're truly dreadful. In the mid-90s he somehow got the rights to tour under the Beach Boys' name, and has been doing so consistently since.

This is where the fans split. To those who consider themselves fans of the Beach Boys there are two general mindsets: one that considers Mike Love to be the antichrist and one that doesn't. Can you guess which side I'm on? To those who prefer the Beach Boys' experimental works, he's a greedy businessman ruining the band's legacy, but those who prefer their surf-rock tend to be more in favor of the guy. This split is largely across political lines too, Mike fans tend to be more right-wing and Brian fans tend to be more left-wing.

Many arguments are had over the merits of these two sides of the band. As Reddit leans younger, more tech-savvy and more left-wing, r/thebeachboys is mostly in favor of Brian, but on Facebook it seems way more violent. If you search for concert footage of Mike Love's "Beach Boys" and contrast it with Brian Wilson's solo touring it's apparent what types of crowds they're playing to.

Now, some Beach Boys fans are bipartisan and that shouldn't be left unstated, but this is certainly true for the majority of them. This is where our most recent issue comes to play.

So a few weeks ago on New Year's Eve, after Trump lost the election but before he was out of office, he held a party at his Mar-a-Lago resort and the Beach Boys performed at it alongside Vanilla Ice. "The Beach Boys" in question were Mike Love and a handful of touring musicians but no other members, not even Bruce Johnston who is a republican and has toured with Mike before. To say this caused a shitstorm would be an understatement.

Beach Boys fans are insecure about many things and I'll be the first to admit that, "Pet Sounds" pretty directly inspired the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's" and yet the Beatles and the Beach Boys are often considered to be in different leagues which Beach Boys fans don't really like. One thing that fans of Brian are particularly insecure about is "The Beach Boys" being used when referencing Mike Love's touring band. You can bet that when dozens of articles from major news publications come out about "The Beach Boys" performing at Trump's mask-less party in the middle of a pandemic that these fans would be fucking pissed. And they were.

This was easily the most active I've seen Beach Boys fans in awhile, especially on Twitter where just about every tweet about the matter had a dozen Beach Boys fans underneath it clarifying that Brian had absolutely no connection to the concert. In a rare move for him, Brian (or at least his social media team) came out to condemn Mike Love for playing a mask-less concert in the middle of a pandemic to support a man who was voted out of office and wouldn't admit it. Al Jardine, another Beach Boys’ member who regularly tours with Brian agreed, and former Beach Boys’ collaborators had some more colorful things to say (including Van Dyke Parks, the lyricist for Brian’s “SMiLE” project who has pretty regularly shit-talked Mike Love over the years).

While this wasn’t the first controversy surrounding where Mike Love’s touring band choose to play concerts, there was a similar controversy a few months ago when they performed at a party for Trump’s re-election in October and another one back in February when they performed at a Safari Club (Brian Wilson is very strongly in favor of animal rights), but this was truly the last straw. Bipartisanship is nearly impossible to maintain with the current politics of band members, and while a true reunion of the band has been discussed to occur sometime later this year (or whenever quarantine lifts) it seems considerably unlikely. The band, the real band with Brian participating, is probably just over forever now. You'll still be able to see Mike Love's bastardization of "the Beach Boys", and you'll still be able to see Brian tour (and Al too, probably) with his incredibly superior backing band, but the true Beach Boys are done.

I, and I assume many others, have found some hope though. The sheer amount of backlash seems to show that the Beach Boys’ legacy hasn’t been ruined, that Brian’s experimental music has been and will continue to be properly appreciated, and that attempts to destroy with this boomer surf-rock garbage have ultimately failed. It’s nice to know, but we can’t really be sure for now. Knowing Mike Love, he’ll pull some more shit.

I don’t really know how to end Reddit posts but if any of you want a real belly-laugh I suggest you check out Mike Love’s 2017 double-album “Unleash the Love”, specifically its second disc which consists of re-recordings of classic Beach Boys songs. I don’t want to spoil it but pay attention to the vocals, they’re uhhh kinda hard to miss.

And if you want some good music to listen to, listen to Pet Sounds! It’s seen as a masterpiece for a reason. If you’ve already listened to it, then listen to their other stuff like “Friends” and “Wild Honey”. That “SMiLE” album I’ve mentioned a few times in this post was eventually released in like 2011 as “The Smile Sessions” and it’s fucking mesmerising, really worth a listen. Get involved with the Beach Boys fan community too, speaking for the Brian-side of the group there’s a lot of really good and really talented people working hard to preserve the band’s legacy. Brian’s current touring band actually consists of a bunch of Beach Boys fans (namely Darian Sahanaja, the main organiser) who were able to perfectly replicate the very complex arrangements of Brian’s songs live.

So yeah, that’s all. Have a good one, listen to the Beach Boys, and don’t be like Mike Love.

Edit/Author's Note: Just to be safe, I added a couple sentences to show that all of this did have consequences as to follow Rule 10. Didn't really impact the pacing or the point, just emphasized what's at stake in a clearer way. Also, you've all been super cool in the comments, very nice to see people who've decided to check out Pet Sounds after this. I know "thx fer de updoots" is a fucking meme but it's nice how welcoming you all are, I'll probably do a write-up on the history of SMiLE and all of the bootlegs people did sometime in the next couple weeks. Okay, author's note over.

Disclaimer

This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.

Read the original here

I looked at Earth one last time before my suit ran out of power

This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).

I am NOT OP. Original post by u/throwra_overweight in r/relationship_advice

trigger warning:

mood spoiler:

I’m (32M) considering leaving my wife (30F) because of her weight - 7 June 2021

Alright before I get called an asshole let me explain. I love my wife, I think she’s incredibly beautiful and even more so after she gave birth to our son 3 years ago.

The problem is that she put on a good amount of baby weight (Obviously) and never lost it. She instead started to gain more weight and was overall pretty depressed. I initially assumed it was PPD and suggested she go to therapy for it. She went to therapy and got some anti-depressants, it took her a while find the right ones, and she’s been fine mentally since she found them.

Physically is a different story however. She has continued over the past 3 years to gain weight. The problem isn’t anymore that i’m not attracted to her, But she will die if she continues to gain weight. She is currently 5’2 about 260 pounds with a BMI close to 50

I don’t know what I can do, I feel like i’ve tried everything. I’ve asked her to go to the gym with me, go on a diet with me, Not buy fast food, have some active hobbies. She’s turned down every single one of these ideas.

I feel like I don’t have any choice but to give her an ultimatum. Either she genuinely tries to lose the weight or I leave. I can’t watch the women I love and mother of my child slowly kill herself . I don’t want to be the dude who gives an ultimatum, but I see no other choice. I guess I just wanted to ask if i’m being an asshole or if theres any other way I could go about this.

Edit:

For everyone in the comments telling me you can be overweight and healthy, your right. But No, you can not be Obese and healthy, at least not long term. Heart disease runs in my wife’s family and while your weight might not effect you, being overweight is directly linked to heart disease. I understand weight loss isn’t easy, I used to be overweight, but my concern isn’t that’s she not the same way she looked when we got together, It’s that she may not live to see our son become a teenager.

Update: I’m (32M) considering leaving my wife (31F) because of her weight - 27 October 2021

So I made a post about 5 months ago because I was getting pass the point of no return with my wife’s weight. Now Expectedly I got called an asshole and a dickhead and every other name under the book for evening mentioning it. But I also got some real good feedback and decided before I made any real decision I would sit her down and let her know how I was truly feeling. Because at that point we had, had multiple conversations addressing it but none of them lead anywhere.

So after we put my son to sleep I asked my wife If we could talk for a moment in the kitchen. Now i’m not gonna lie the conversation was probably the hardest one i’ve ever had. Because despite what everyone believed I do love my wife. Now I don’t want to get into every detail but the basis of the conversation was that I needed her to at least try and be healthier. I also think she needed to hear how serious I was about this and when I told her I was even thinking about separating I think it really put the nail in the coffin.

It’s been about 5 months since then and i’m proud to say my wife has lost 35 fucking lbs. I am so proud of her it’s fucking ridiculous. The first month was a fucking hurdle and a half but now she’s going steady and losing weight at a healthy moderate rate. Recently she even started to exercise with me. In the morning I usually jog, but since her knees are somewhat shot 3 days a week we go walk a mile or two, together and either talk or just listen to music together. I know it sounds corny to say but she even seems happier and her confidence is coming back as well.

Well this was my little update and I wanted to finish it with thanking anyone who actually gave me advice on my first post.

Reminder - I am not the original poster.

Disclaimer

This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.

Read the original here

This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).

I am surprised there aren’t any posts about Chronicles of Elyria on HobbyDrama yet! The community was so rife with drama from start to finish that I don’t even know where to begin.

Throwaway because I will probably be doxxed if I post on my main.

What is Chronicles of Elyria?

Chronicles of Elyria was pitched as a Kickstarter in May 2016 as a dynamic MMORPG with procedurally-generated quests, a fully destructible environment, closed economy, finite resources, and survival elements. The goal was $900k, but they made about $1.3 million in the initial campaign, and through their subsequent crowdfunding efforts made close to $8 million total over the next few years.

What went wrong?

In terms of lofty ideas, Chronicles of Elyria was right up there with Star Citizen, but with a fraction of the funds. We’d be here all day if I went into detail about all of the game’s proposed features, because it’s like they were trying to be Crusader Kings meets medieval life simulator meets Harvest Moon meets survival game meets action RPG all at once. Browse through their Developer Journals; even without a background in game development, it’s clear that the scope of what they were trying to pull off would have been ambitious for a major studio, let alone a small crowdfunded team.

The game’s initial release date was a laughably unrealistic Q4 2017, so it was no surprise that this would get pushed back again and again over the course of development. However, on March 24, 2020, lead developer Caspian made an announcement that rocked the community: State of Elyria: Into the Abyss (autoplay warning). In his typical long-winded fashion, Caspian spent the bulk of the post outlining the milestones the team reached over the past year, but only in the last few paragraphs did he mention that due to financial stressors from COVID-19, they ran out of money and had to lay off the entire team, shuttering development of Chronicles of Elyria. Because of several factors I’ll cover in the next few sections, the community did not take this well. In less than two weeks, the Washington State Attorney General’s Office reported they had received over 150 official complaints against Soulbound Studios, the most they had ever received for a company in that amount of time. Community whales formed a 'CoE Lawsuit' discord and discussed plans for a class-action lawsuit, demanding accountability and refunds. Some of them even pledged over $20k on the game, and they weren’t going to let Caspian cut and run.

Amidst threats of legal action, on April 9 Caspian dropped another blog post, A Letter from Soulbound Studios to Our Community claiming that the March 24 post came from a “very emotional place.” He said that the community misinterpreted his intent, and that he was actually trying to communicate that he was still working on the game while looking for ways to secure additional funding. As you can expect, this was just as poorly-received as his last announcement.

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Wait, why did people spend so much money on this game? And how did the drama get so spicy?

By its own design the game stirred up drama even before release. With social stratification based on medieval feudalism literally built into the system, there was no way around it; the developers cheekily called it the “Dance of Dynasties.” There were multiple tiers of "pledges" and if I’m remembering correctly, the prices after the kickstarter were $500 for a Mayor title, $1000 for Count, and $3000 for Duke. The most coveted were of course the King/Queen titles, which had people shelling out a whopping $10000 for the chance to be royalty in an unreleased game. Even with the limited supply (6 kingdom slots per server iirc), these kingdom packages sold out all but one server. A few monarchs even purchased TWO kingdom slots to guarantee their supremacy on their chosen server.

It’s very difficult to overstate the cult-like mentality of the community during the “peak” years of 2016-2018. There was an official CoE discord server where the developers frequently engaged with players, but most of the drama happened in what were called the Discords of Elyria. These were community-run discords for individual kingdoms, duchies, counties, towns, and baronies. Each had their own cliques of ‘advisors’ and elite roleplaying cabals.

No, ‘elite roleplaying cabals’ is not an exaggeration; these people were spending thousands of dollars for a title to justify RPing as nobility to lord over the peasant rabble. This attracted a lot of entitled narcissists; the game’s structure practically encouraged it! I’ll give you an anecdotal example: I was really active within a kingdom discord and was eventually appointed as an advisor (the equivalent of what a guild officer would be in a normal MMO). This title was almost useless until release, so it was mainly just a glorified clique with a secret discord channel where we would theorycraft and talk shit about people we didn’t like in the kingdom. But I was the only one on the advisory council that did not possess a noble title, and a Countess kicked up a big fuss about this. Just like the real-life aristocracy, she was scandalized! Wording it in an RP-appropriate way with paragraphs of purple prose, she claimed that the $60 I pledged to the funding of the game wasn’t enough to prove I was fully committed. She and her cronies were so bothered that they tried to get me off the council. They went around DMing a bunch of people, accusing me of being a spy because I used to RP with some guy that left for a rival kingdom, and dredged up screenshots of year-old discord posts as proof my conduct was “unbecoming” of a representative of the kingdom.

There’s a saga behind that story and many others; I can absolutely go into more detail in another post if enough people are interested in the byzantine “Dance of Dynasties” and the inter- and inner-kingdom drama that went down during the development of this beautiful disaster of a game… and developer involvement in said drama. If you want to waste several hours of your life, there is plenty of RP cringe archived on the read-only forums. For now, that’s just a small slice to help illustrate how detached from reality and cult-like this community was. Going back to the downfall...

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Early Red Flags

As I alluded to, there were already red flags when the game was first pitched on Kickstarter. Despite hitting the initial $900k and going well into their stretch goals, the devs were still encouraging players to crowdfund long after the Kickstarter ended. There were several additional promotional events (somewhat outdated post that doesn't include everything) selling both cosmetic items and mechanically useful items, despite the developers going through hoops to justify over and over again why the game was not pay to win (it was). Eventually, the constant promotions and gamey tactics prompted community members to question why we were seeing more promotional events than development updates.

The devs then admitted that the original Kickstarter campaign was meant to raise enough to be able to create a demo to attract investors and secure a stream of income that didn’t rely on crowdfunding. Unfortunately, no investors took a gamble on a risky debut from an inexperienced team, and despite Caspian making a few weird statements on Discord and implying they had “other sources” of funding that they did not have to divulge to the community, he too later admitted that they were relying solely on crowdfunding to make this game work.

Well, this news was a departure from their previous claim that all they needed was 900k to develop the game for a Q4 2017 release, and that all funds would be used towards the development of Chronicles of Elyria. No one knew this was all just for a demo to attract investors, and people were justifiably upset.

​

The Community Begins to Turn

There was (and still is, last I checked!) a particularly loyal and obsessive subset of the community. At the slightest hint of criticism they’d quickly jump in to defend the game and devs. The community moderators were no better, and a lot of posts were censored or deleted from the forums. The developers had built up a sort of cult of personality with their over-involvement with the community. Despite a hilarious lack of transparency about the actual development of the game, they were… uncomfortably close to the playerbase.

Caspian complained about specific players on the official discord and publicly accused two kingdoms of cheating during a cheap browser event meant to (surprise) raise more money. A player made a post on the forums saying the community outreach manager should be replaced (he was known for being snarky and condescending). Said community outreach manager actually private messaged people that upvoted the post, basically saying “if you think I should be replaced, please don’t contact me if you ever need anything in the future.”

Yes, that came from the guy handling outreach.

The "Map Selection" event was rife with its own kingdom vs kingdom drama, but the devs weren't able to redeem themselves here. After months and months of delays for a map event, Caspian failed to deliver the high-resolution maps as promised on November 5, 2018, claiming they were taking too long to render.

"Remember, remember, the 5th of NoRender" became a meme and rallying cry across the community in reference to the constant delays and deception, to the point where people were banned just for saying it in the official discord.

Then there was the issue of Prelyria. Prelyria was the low-poly pre-alpha client of the game they were developing. Meant to be like a graybox, it became a lot more involved than that and seemed to eclipse the development of the “real” game. People felt they had been bamboozled when they looked back:

Pre-alpha video May 2016

Pre-alpha video September 2019

Some players with industry experience were pointing out that the amount of time the devs were spending on building the Prelyria assets and developing the low-poly client first (it was a lot more involved than a simple graybox) was actually going to be more cumbersome and definitely not save all the time the devs hoped it would. At this point, Caspian still looked like a well-intentioned idea guy with his head in the sky, and most people didn’t think he was intentionally scamming anyone. Personally, I believe Caspian definitely started out in earnest, but he spoiled his own vision with mismanagement and obfuscation.

Funding was always a touchy subject.

Despite first claiming they only needed $900k to finish the game, then saying no wait actually we need like $3 mil, Chronicles of Elyria raised almost $8 million in total and after 4 years in development had nothing close to a minimum viable product.

We later learned that $500k of that initial $900k came from Caspian himself. This of course was not disclosed until after the Kickstarter.

On March 20, 2020 (four days before the infamous Into the Abyss announcement), the devs released an exciting update claiming that Pre-Alpha Testing Has Officially Begun! Players that had pledged (iirc) $1000 or more now had access to test Alpha I! But excitement quickly faded as players realized this wasn’t really an alpha, but a 10-15 minute demo showing off movement and parkour mechanics and ONLY that. I didn’t have alpha access so I don’t know how bad the demo really was, and those who played it are still under NDA, but I heard it was terrible, and looked like something that could be slapped together in a couple weeks using Unity store assets.

Let’s look again at the timeline Caspian pulled out at the end of 2017 when he admitted the Q4 2017 release date wasn’t going to happen:

• V3 of the Website (Q3 2017)
• ElyriaMUD (Q4 2017)
• Alpha 1 (T1 2018)
• Server Selection (T1 2018)
• Settlement / Domain Selection (T2 2018)
• KoE (T2 2018)
• Design Experiences (T3 2018)
• Alpha 2 (T3 2018)
• Beta 1 (S1 2019)
• Prologue & CoE Adventure Toolkit (S1 2019)
• Exposition (S1 2019)
• Beta 2 (S1/S2 2019)
• Stress Test (Any paid account)(S2 2019)
• Launch (S2 2019)

By March 2020, the only milestones they hit were V3 of the Website, Server Selection in November 2018, and Settlement/Domain Selection (after a series of delays that included a period of radio silence lasting over 100 days, it began somewhere around Summer 2019 and never officially concluded).

​

The Downfall

Now for the big question I’m sure all of you have: why was it such a big deal when he announced they ran out of funding?

Indeed, projects are cancelled or become vaporware all of the time. While it's obvious Caspian and team were drowning in too many ideas and not enough tangible progress, why was this scummy enough to warrant hundreds of complaints to the AG and a class-action lawsuit?

About a week before the March 24 announcement, Caspian launched the “Settlers of Elyria” event. It’s hard to explain out of context, but basically all the unclaimed duchies, counties, and baronies were going on sale, and players could purchase them at reduced prices.

Yes, up to a day before he announced he laid off the entire team, he was allowing people to spend thousands of dollars on fake titles. Worse was the fact that this event was designed for new members of the community that didn’t have a chance to buy titles before or weren’t able to because of the prohibitive cost.

Illegal? Maybe not. Fucked up? Absolutely. This, combined with Caspian taking a PPP loan right afterwards painted a damning portrait of a man squeezing every last penny out of this failed endeavor before he ran.

Caspian kept the official discord open for a couple days after announcing the shuttering of the studio, but on March 29, he “fired” all of the community mods and deleted the discord, claiming that people were saying “horrible, unimaginable things” about him. There were rumors that he was cheating on his wife with a (much younger) community member. Apparently, a dev was corroborating these statements and providing receipts. Whether these awful rumors were true or not, Caspian’s reaction in the mod forum was nuclear.

The Future of CoE

After nearly six months of radio silence, a few days ago on December 17, 2020, Caspian gave interviews to MassivelyOP and MMORPG.com and released an “update” video that is a nothingburger rehash of old 'gameplay' footage and platitudes. He keeps saying that CoE is in development, but he has nothing to show. He keeps saying some of the staff have volunteered to work on it, yet based on their LinkedIn profiles it looks like most of the original team have found jobs elsewhere. He refuses to release the results of the studio’s audit. The new FAQ on the website is an obvious attempt to avoid lawsuits and in the two interviews he hilariously continues to extol his own transparency while being as transparent as a brick wall.

People are still able to find justifications for Caspian's actions and to this day are in the community-run discords and subreddit trying to keep the hype train going. Maybe it's a combination of Stockholm Syndrome and Sunk Cost fallacy, but a lot of people still maintain absolute trust in his vision. I personally did not invest a significant amount of money (but I did waste my time, RIP), but it's still as saddening as it is maddening. Yes, those "Dance of Dynasty" posts on the forum might be cringey now, but people put SO MUCH creative energy and passion into coming up with lore for their kingdoms and duchies and towns and such, and despite being a skeptic for most of my time with the community, it was an incredibly unique experience to be part of this group. I just wish they would move on; put that energy into something productive and not waste it on a failed game. Caspian used them and he will continue to use them if people keep giving him a platform.

​

EDIT: added more links

EDIT2: Obligatory "wow I didn't expect this to blow up!" but I really didn't! Thanks for the gold x2!

Disclaimer

This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.

Read the original here

I stood atop his grave and smiled, imagining him screaming and clawing at his coffin lid as he did the two previous times I wished him back.

This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).

I am NOT OP. Original post by furtopt in r/legaladvice. Do not contact OP or comment or vote in the linked threads, that is against legaladvice's rules and more generally quite rude.

trigger warnings:

mood spoilers:

husband is physically abusive. He is a cop. I can't escape. Help? - Sun Mar 27 01:21:57 2022 UTC

husband is physically abusive. He is a cop. I can't escape. Help?

I'm completely dependent on my husband. He sees all my movement. I'm pretty sure he planted one of those apple tags in my car.

He is very violent. I've called the police. They didn't do anything even when I had two black eyes.

I have no family. Am estranged of all y friends.

I think he's gonna kill me.

Help.

Ohio.

**[Update] Husband is physically abusive. He is a cop. I can't escape. Help?** - Mon Jun 20 18:22:58 2022 UTC

Hello all,

First of all... I am alive!

Second of all... thank you all so much.

In my first post I was really really scared because I thought my husband might kill me.

I'm glad to say I made it out.

After the threat I got new motivation and energy to go out. I made a little emergency bag and hid it in the laundry room under the dirty pile.

I started keeping petty cash from my shopping trips.

With the petty cash I bought a very cheap pre paid phone that I used to call a woman's shelter. They helped me make a plan and got me out of there.

That was by far the scariest night of my life. I left when I knew my husband had night shift. I was so scared that he somehow found out what I was planning and was hiding out to catch me.

I had been very careful too. I was sweet to him. Acted as if he had broken me successfully. Acted on his every wish. It was very painful.

But that night at 3 am I finally escaped with my little bag. I left behind my phone. That same day I had sold my laptop. I told my husband that I wanted to put some cash forward to his gaming PC so he wouldn't mind.

I got an old tablet with Sim function for very cheap too. So that I had the rest of the 500 bucks of my laptop sale for me.

I left the car behind and everything left the house and just ran till I arrived at a McDonald's and from there ordered an Uber to the pick up place.

As soon as I arrived they helped me close everything that could be closed (email, cashapp, my bank account etc etc). And they helped me get an amazing lawyer.

So right now I am in the shelter alive and well. I finally managed to get a TRO till the divorce hearing. My lawyer is realistic with the case.

But everything that matters is that I am no longer scared of going to sleep at night and never waking up.

Thank you so much!

Reminder - I am not the original poster.

Disclaimer

This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.

Read the original here

This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).

G'day Curd Nerds! I'd like to tell you about a bit of hobby drama that is not so much a tempest in a teapot as it is a bit of a ripple in a teacup. It's drama that's so small, in such a peaceful little corner of the internet that I almost hesitate to bring it here- except, the resolution has such a unique blend of petty and wholesome that I thought perhaps others might find the story diverting.

The ingredients:

First, the Cheeseman: On youtube, there is a man whose entire channel revolves around cheese. His name is Gavin, and telling you this is not doxxing because that is literally his channel name. You can find his channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/GavinWebber/featured However, in the spirit of not using real names (even ones so thoroughly public), I will be referring to him here as The Cheeseman.

I came across his channel in March and got hooked on his videos because literally all he uploads (aside from Q&A livestreams) is videos where he walks through cheesemaking recipes, explaining the process the whole time in a very mellow, soothing voice, and tasting videos for the cheeses he's made. His videos are very calming, and exactly what I needed because, y'know, pandemic. His channel has 251K subscribers, which is nothing to sneeze at, but also not enormous. It's also home to one of the most generally positive comments sections of any I've seen; I don't often read comments sections so it's very possible I've missed things, but generally all I see is positive comments and conversations among folks who have attempted to make the cheeses in the videos.

Next, the cheese: Grana Padano

Grana Padano is a type of Italian cheese similar to Parmigiano-Reggiano. It's a hard cow's milk cheese with a grainy, crumbly texture. It's also PDO, that is "Protected Designation of Origin", and has been since 1996. Essentially, just like champagne is only champagne if it comes from the Champagne wine region of France, otherwise it's just sparkling wine (and Destiel is only Destiel if it comes from Supernatural, otherwise it's just sparkling bury your gays), Grana Padano is only Grana Padano if it comes from the Po river valley in northern Italy, otherwise you cannot use that name to describe a cheese.

Which brings us to: The Consortium for the Protection of Grana Padano Cheese

This is a legally-recognized group whose purpose is "preserving Grana Padano and its Protected Designation of Origin (in Italian, Denominazione di Origine Protetta or DOP) status; in promoting it, supporting its development and taking care of its interests and in providing correct information to the public." You can view their website here:

https://www.granapadano.it/en-ww/the-consortium.aspx

They have all kinds of detailed explanations of exactly who they are and so forth, but the salient details for the purposes of this drama are that 1) these are the people who make the cheese, and have a vested interest in keeping tight control over the name, and 2) they do have the legal authority to do so. For the purposes of this writeup, I will be referring to them as The Consortium.

Step 1: Warming The Milk

So a while back, the Cheeseman had uploaded a video entitled "How to make Grana Padano Style Cheese". I don't have the exact date the original video was uploaded, nor can I link to it, because it has now been taken down, however I can deduce that it must have been uploaded about 15 moths ago, which would have been sometime in August 2019. Because most cheeses take time to age, the Cheeseman generally uploads an initial preparation method where he makes the cheese, and then after aging for the prescribed length of time, he uploads a second tasting video where he shares the results of aging the cheese. The tasting video for the Grana Padano Style cheese went up October 17, 2020, and is viewable here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1Qj2i3PMy4 The video description indicates a 14-month aging period.

In the original video, the Cheeseman makes it very clear multiple times that the cheese he is making is inspired by Grana Padano, and is intended to be as close as he can get to the style of this cheese, but no matter how close he gets, it can never be called Grana Padano because of the PDO status. However, that wasn't good enough for the Consortium.

Step 2: Curdling

Three days ago on November 26, the Cheeseman uploaded a video, viewable here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_AzMLhPF1Q&t=2s

In it, he shares that he was sent a cease and desist letter from "an intellectual property company" on behalf of the Consortium, wherein they declare that the Cheeseman's video "is a clear infringement of the Consorzio’s intellectual property rights." They go on to say that "Indeed, your video seems to describe how to create counterfeited replicas of Grana Padano."

​

Let us all take a moment to contemplate the implications of counterfeit cheese.

​

Ok moment over.

​

They conclude by "kindly asking" for the removal of the video within 5 days of the receipt of the letter, and caution that if he fails to comply, they "will not hesitate to take the necessary steps to ensure the protection of its trademark rights."

The Cheeseman included in the description of the video a link to the PDF of the letter, which you can view there, if you're so inclined (there's not much more there than what I've included, though). I've chosen not to include it here directly because even though he posted it himself, it still includes some personal information and I'd prefer not to link to it directly.

After reading the letter out, he talks a bit about the letter and the original video, playing the snippets where he specifies that he is not and cannot make true Grana Padano cheese due to the PDO nature of the cheese; however he theorizes that he must have gotten pretty close with his recipe based on their concern over "counterfeit replica cheese". He concludes by encouraging his audience to go check out his original Grana Padano video soon if they're interested, because he does intend to comply with the takedown request and remove the original video exactly within the timeframe requested (and no sooner).

Step 3: Pressing and Draining

This is where things get interesting, because at this point, the Cheeseman shares that the Consortium has actually apologized to him.

The very next day on November 27, 2020, the Cheeseman uploaded a video (viewable here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xy_KkZDiTE ) updating his audience on the Grana Padano situation. You see, he received a letter from the Director General of the Consortium in reference to the cease and desist letter, and the Cheeseman's video on the subject. As with the previous video, the Cheeseman linked to a PDF of the letter right in the video description, and although I will pull some quotes from it, I will refrain from linking it directly here. Basically the gist of it is that they were aware of his video and were going to let it slide (and indeed, it had been up for over a year unchallenged), however the video had been "reported to us [...] by our direct superiors at the Ministry and the EU Committee."

The Director General went on to say "We had not intervened before because your good faith is clear from your video and we are very sorry to see you and your community so angry towards us."

The Cheeseman responds: "Well personally I'm not angry, but the community has spoken I suppose, [Director General], that's just what they do on the internet" (This is, quite possibly, the most understated and true description of the internet that I have ever heard.)

The Director General adds a postscript:

"Ps. On a further note, you didn’t quite get the “real recipe” of Grana Padano...it is “slightly” different [smile emoji] So if ever you come to Italy, once this awful pandemic is over, we would like you to be our guest and we will take you to one of our dairies, where one of our master cheesemakers can teach you all the tricks of the trade."

The Cheeseman's response to this is gracious, but reaffirms that he doesn't believe he's in the wrong, and shares his intension to re-upload a "grainy Italian hard cheese" video.

Step 4: Aging the Cheese

As promised, yesterday (November 28, 2020), the Cheeseman reuploaded his Grana Padano cheesemaking video under the name "Chease & Desist Style Cheese with Taste Test. To Italy with Love 💛" viewable here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqPP24IU1to

It is, as promised, exactly the same as the original video, except he's dubbed over every instance of "Grana Padano" within the video with "Chease and Desist". He's also combined the making video with the later tasting video, although the original taste test video was not specifically mentioned in the original cease and desist letter, nor was it ever requested to come down. Indeed, as I mentioned earlier, that original tasting video (with the name of the cheese unaltered) is still up, and as a matter of fact, it shows up in the first page of google results for Grana Padano!

Tasting Notes:

If you've read all this, I hope it's brought some amusement. I know it's not as dramatic as most stuff in this sub, but a small-time home cheesemaker getting communication directly from an international cheese consortium was a level of absurd that I had to share. If there are any further developments and if people are interested, I will be happy to provide updates.

[edited to add the link to the apology video]

[edited again because I messed up numbering my steps and it was driving me nuts]

Disclaimer

This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.

Read the original here