How to cancel subscription simply piano

I just finished bojack today, and I’ve been thinking a lot about the show since. Absolutely loved it btw.
The first 2/3 of s6 were partially about the build up to Bojack’s cancellation. In the “trial” of bojack, which is how I took the two interviews he does when the public finds out about his involvement in Sarah Lynn’s death, there were some details of the stories from both the interviewer and some of her evidentiary references got wrong.
For example, the kid hollyhock talked to at a party who was penny’s friend said that bojack “gave them alcohol and basically forced them to drink.” This was kinda-sorta true, but the kids already had vodka and red Bull before BJ got involved, and he got them bourbon and water because it would have less hangover. He also seemed pretty indifferent to the kids drinking, one way or another, and it’s not exactly novel for teens to drink at their prom. It was obviously wrong of him to not curtail their drinking as a responsible adult, but the guy’s story didn’t quite match up with reality.
The interviewer also seemed to be misrepresenting BJ’s relationship with Sarah Lynn, as she wasn’t so much victimized by BJ in the sex and binging so much as she was a partner. She was way off the rails earlier in the series than BJ, doing club drugs and coke while BJ mostly seemed to be drinking in season 1. While she was 9 months sober before BJ’s big binge, a few episodes earlier SL said something to the effect of “I need someone to help me break my string of sobriety”, implying she wouldn’t have stayed sober regardless of BJ’s involvement. When they had sex, if I recall she initiated it and used it to manipulate him into letting her friends trash his house.
I’m not saying any of this to criticize the show or absolve BJ, but to ask: do you think the show runners were using these minor inconsistencies to criticize the style of witch-hunt the media performs, which might be focused more on sensationalism rather than accuracy, or to try to bend the argument a little more that BJ truly does have a history victimizing women he has power over?
As a somewhat separate discussion from what the show runners intended, It wasn’t really clear to me either way whether or not he DID have a tendency to victimize women from a position of power. He didn’t really have power over Sarah Lynn by the time he got involved in sex and drugs with her; he was a washed up sitcom actor, she was the biggest superstar in the world at that point and was over 30. He didn’t seem like he intended to pursue Penny; he mostly seemed to try to do right by her, and only at the end, when he was having a breakdown was she even framed as a romantic option for him. He definitely made (or would have made) a mistake in the moment, but it seemed more like one of opportunity and desperation, not of coercive intent. Still gross in a different way, but it didn’t seem clear to me it was like the interviewer was implying.
I’m definitely not saying BJ was a “good guy”, but it didn’t seem like he fit into the “me too” bad guy category of men that have a pattern of strategically coercing women into sex using disparities of power (ala Weinstein), but that is where BJ seemed to wind up in public opinion in the world of the show.
I guess what’s itching my brain is I can’t quite tell what the showrunners were trying to say. If BJ was supposed to come come off looking like the villain the interviewer claimed he was, they probably needed to show more intentionality in his behavior, similar to when BJ sabotaged Todd’s opera. I view that as one of the worst things he did, not because of the outcome, but because of how calculated and intentional it was. But if BJ is supposed to come off as ambiguous or as having gotten a raw deal, there didn’t seem to be much resolution of that by the end of the show. He winds up in prison, having lost or alienated most or all of his friends and family (rip hollyhock), homeless, and with no job prospects when he gets out.
Btw, I think the worst the BJ did in the entire show was something they waited until the interview to reveal: the fact that BJ waited 17 minutes before calling paramedics, and that SL was still alive when she got to the hospital. But while that was enormously fucked up, it’s never discussed again, and we never get any insight into BJ’s decision or into his response to the accusation. Did he know SL was still alive? If he didnt, he didn’t seem surprised when this when this was brought up, but if he did then it seems like it should’ve been brought up in his guilt episodes before now.

I (28f) started talking to a woman (23f) at the end of April. Our conversations were not flirtatious really in the beginning, we simply spent time texting each other and asking basic general questions. After a few weeks we started to get to know each other on a deeper level. We went on a date two weeks ago and I thought it went really well. We kissed & had great chemistry in person. We started talking more on the phone & texting even more often after that date & set up a second one. The second date was also great & we decided to go out to a local bar. I tried to pace myself so I could watch out for her, but I got too drunk & have no memory of how we made it back to her apartment. I apologized for that the next day. She said I fell asleep in my car and refused to go up to her floor (she claimed she was really drunk too) and so she stayed in the car with me. She then claimed she had to throw up & somehow got locked out of my car but had her keys to the apartment luckily. She banged on my car door relentlessly but couldn’t wake me up so she decided to go upstairs.
She claimed her ex called her (whom was also at the bar that night) and told her to come downstairs so she did. She then said she was so drunk she just got in her ex’s car and left with her but wasn’t sure why. She slept on her ex’s couch and supposedly nothing happened. Her ex dropped her back off at her apartment that morning and I gave her her purse back which was still in my car from the night before.
I understand she and I weren’t officially together, and I am completely fine with her dating other people. She had told me she would like to work towards something long term and more serious with me if I was open to do so. I said it was too soon to give her a direct yes but we could continue talking/dating to figure things out.
Am I wrong for being completely turned off of her after this? I told her this in person and she understood where I was coming from but it definitely sucks because the chemistry is there. Feels like there were some major red flags that came out from this incident, and although she says she’s completely over her ex I’m not entirely sure that’s the case. Overall It was a pretty terrible feeling to wake up and find out she was at her exes house after she essentially spent the whole day with me. She did apologize but didn’t really say much else.

Hello, this is the story of how my grup of 4 friends turned into a group of 3 thanks to Bridezilla. The group consisted of 4 girls, me (Dana), Gabby, Lilly and Lucy, it al started when Lilly got engaged and Gabby and I were so excited for her and kind of over the moon making jokes and never stop talking about the subject, we kind of felt like Lucy was jelaous but we let it go, a few weeks after guess who ends up engaged as well, yes, LUCY! We were happy for her as well. Lucy immediately asked us 3 girls to be her bridesmaids along with other 7-8 girls (girls she just met through her fiancé, her sister and SIl). Lillys wedding was going to be different and there were no bridesmaids at all, so the whole wedding planning and leading to her wedding was very different.
When Lilly told us her wedding date Lucy couldn´t handle it so went ahead and set her wedding one week before Lillys... we didn´t think much of it atm but I did felt like she was competeing or something. To give you a little context Gabby and I were on our early 20s still in Uni. Gabby was starting a beauty business and all her expenses were put into that business and school, where in my case I was paying my University tuiton with a Scholarship and by working for the school as well, my career was very expensive in tuiton and supplies as well, (needing gamer computers, art supplies, etc, every week) so all of my money was spent on school and transportation to and from School, Lillys situation was very similar, she was also in her early 20s, had just moved in with her fiancé, was paying a new car and on top of that had a whole wedding to pay for.
So I think you know where this is going. Lucy was one of my best friends so I did everything I could to support her and be there for her wedding and planning of it. Soon she started showing her bridezilla true colours. First she asked all of us bridesmaids to wear the exact same dress from a very expensive store, at the time I did not have the money so I asked her if I could make an exact copy of the dress with the help of a seamstress (it is cheaper in our country) and she said NO because she did not want to risk it being slightly different so I had to borrow money from my parents.
On the fitting day a couple of us bridesmaids were complaining about the prices and how a certain style doesn´t always fit bodies, one specifically said that she felt very uncomfrotable and she would never wear a dress like that also pay so much money for it. Bridezila wasn´t there but one of her bridesmaidezilla made sure to tell her the rumours. So that bridesmaid was UNIVITED. We were also supposed to wear the same shoes, and do our hair and makeup with the same MUA because otherwise "we could be late to the wedding" her MUA was very expensive as well. All of us had to buy the same shoes but since you guessed it they were very expensive I bought a cheaper replica of them (the dress was floor lenght so you wouldn´t even see them).
We 3 bridesmaids were invited to the bachelorette party a day before. And we were told to get there lets say 5pm, so we arrived and no one was there. The other group of bridesmaids told us to go ahead and start decorating the place, that we could help that way. We went out to buy some decorations and told the other group to text us when they were heading to the place with Bridezilla. They never texted us so when we got there bridezilla had already been surprised and we were seen as "the ones that got there late". The expected us to pay for that nights meal and again it was very expensive, more than what I would pay for in a restaurant, keep in mind I am vegan and I dont drink alcohol, there were of course no vegan options for me, so I paid more than I would´ve paid for in a fancy restaurant for salad and water.
We were kind of upset at the bridesmaids for not letting us know when they were getting there and we decided to talk to bridezilla about it, to what she responded "I am very busy to deal with that right now" and kept asking us for money to pay for her bouquet and extra money to pay for a bouquet that all of ous bridesmaids were expecting to carry. At that point I wanted to quit being a bridesmaid but I knew that ment I was going to be uninvited and I wanted to be there for my friend, I asked how much it was in total and it was bananas, overall I had spent in HER wedding more than what a month of school tuition was worth, plus I had to still pay for the hair and makeup and bouquets? I kindly asked if it was really necessary for us to do all that, and I explained my situation, she was very angry about it and said that I was not being supportive. (keep in mind I have another wedding coming up a weekend after that).
The invites came in and turnes out I only have a pass and I have to pay for my boyfriend to be there... In a wedding where there were more than 300 guests and I was one of the best friends of the bride. I again talked to Bridezila about it and she said that Lillys fiancé was invited because it was a serious relationship while mine was not. So I paid insane money for his invite.
The night before the wedding we texted bridezilla wishing her the best and also asking her what type should we be there since she stopped texting in the bridesmaids group chat since weeks ago and we were supposed to do a photoshoot while getting ready, and then with the groom etc. She replied saying that the photoshoot was canceled and we should be there on time for the ceremony only.
We got ready and showed up at the ceremony on time. The moment when I flipped was when one of the groomsmaids (idk how to say that in english, sorry) that I was very close with, as soon as he saw me asked why I hadn´t been at the photoshoot!!!!! I was like.. "I thought it was canceled" and he said no. During the wedding Bridezilla never even looked or talked to us 3 bridesmaids.
A few days after the wedding we found out through one councious bridesmaid that Bridezilla had made a new grouchat called "The cool bridesmaids" and chat there talking bad about us, saying how unsopportive we were and purposly did a photoshoot where WE her closest and best friends would not appear in. We were fuming and confronted Bridezilla about it, but againg she said she was busy planing or going to her honeymoon that she didn´t have time for us. She decided loosing her 10+ year friendship over her wedding. Later we found out that she copied exactly Gabbys business and that made Gabby lose her shit and we stopped talking to her. She moved to another state where she thought she would make friends but didnt because she doesnt work at all so she never left the house and made friends, The wedding was paid by the groom. She moved back to the city and realized that "the cool bridesmaids" are busy women and not very close to her so she lost all her friends and she reached out again to apologize saying "I am sorry even though I dont know what I did wrong" we said it was better to not be friends and now she really has no friends.
This brought us Gabby, Lilly and I closer and very happy, supportive friends (: The end

Alright this is my first time posting and I've been going back and forth on making this post. I'm simply curious, and it does not change how I view this incredible group of musicians and it should not be taken as a negative stance whatsoever. I could even be way out of line here. I simply have a theory about Vessel specifically. My background is medical, and I've noticed something interesting about Vessel's build. My mind immediately went to Marfan's, which is a somewhat rare connective tissue phenomenon that causes longer than average arms and fingers, creating a very tall, slender build. Again, this means absolutely nothing, but something that has bounced around in my brain. Feel free to completely tear down this theory because I haven't seen them live yet and could be totally wrong/way off here.

Hello everyone!
This subreddit is very new and I am fairly new to reddit so we are going to figure things out as we go but right now the priority is to provide a place to be able to trauma dump, ask questions, share experiences, or just simply talk with people from the same community who have similar experiences with church. I think this can provide healing for people and awareness that they aren't going through their trauma alone.
I also will be working on a documentary covering several cult like churches in KC in the future but for now I just wanted to make this sub to connect people. I will talk more about the seperate documentary in a later post.
Thank you for joining and visiting. Idk how many people use reddit like that in KC but even if we can just help/connect a few people it'll be worth it.
- tii

I'm Trying to help a friend who has harmful beliefs. WARNING & APOLOGIES THOUGH: This is an extremely long post.
​
I have a very close friend who and he is actually much much more of a devout christian than I am. He also is extremely schizophrenic (he's been officially diagnosed I think 7 or 8 years ago or more) and he is also probably at least 200 pounds overweight (if not more). He has told me many many many times over the years that he believes that he can literally just pray all of his problems away, without doing any work whatsoever, and his prayers will still be answered. I think this is completely non sense, and I believe that God helps those who help themselves. And I also believe it's just a simple fact of common sense reality that you have to pray along with action to make things happen in life.
Tonight we had a heated debate about this topic and I brought up 2 big examples. One being me and his weight. I'm about 60 or 70 pounds overweight and I'm only 5'4 so I'm extremely overweight myself so I brought up the example that me and him are both extremely overweight...but I told him, we can't simply pray away our weight. I told him praying for God to give us the strength to work out or eat better etc. is great. But for us to actually lose weight we have to physically put in the work also, along with praying. And he disagreed. He literally was trying to tell me that we both can just sit on our fat butts and pray and somehow, some way God will make the weight go away on it's own.
I brought up another example. We're both single males, and we've both been single for a very very long time. We both want girlfriends and potentially wives eventually, but I don't think either of us are focused on it too too much right now. But I brought up the example that let's say tomorrow we decide we are done being single and we want a girlfriend really really bad now. I told him we can pray for that, of course. But it's not actually going to happen unless we actually meet women in some kind of way. Whether it be dating sites or apps, some way on the internet, going to public places and talking to women, something in the physical world to meet women. I said the percentage that if I pray for a girlfriend tonight that God will have one magically knock on my door tomorrow is so tiny, that's it's literally not even worth thinking about or considering at all. And he disagreed. He thought it was a perfectly reasonable thing to believe that if he prays for a girlfriend tonight that God could have one knock on his door tomorrow. And look, I know God performs miracles and totally could do that. But 99 times out of 100, it's just simply not going to happen. We all know that.
I'll be honest I think a lot of this could be his schizophrenia, I'm no mental health expert but from what I have been told a lot of schizophrenics have trouble staying in reality sometimes. And from I understand he is extremely schizophrenic. He is on disability from the government because of his schizophrenia, so it is severe enough for him to be on that. So I don't know how much of this is his disability or not.
And to be honest I don't care what is causing it, it just pains me that he is looking at life like this everyday because I think it's an extremely unhealthy & harmful way to look at life. And I know my only chance to show him he is wrong is to show him some kind of scriptures that refute his current views on this, if there is any. I don't know if some of you may find this to be manipulative or not, what I'm wanting to do, and if you do I fully understand and we can have conversations about that. But I just love this guy to death and it pains me that he is looking at life this way. So anything to help him with this topic, to me personally, would be a good positive thing. He always brings up different scriptures in the bible about "waiting on God" to defend his views on all of this. And I never have any scriptural evidence because I have to be honest, I'm nowhere near as devout of a christian as he is. And I've only read the bible a little bit probably one time in my life. I still identify as a christian, and I fully believe in a christian God. But I'm nowhere near as devout as him so I don't know any scriptures.
But I think showing him some scriptural evidence that God helps those who help themselves may have a chance on helping him. I've always heard the phrase "God helps those who help themselves" but I don't if there's anything in the actual bible to prove that scripturally. And I don't know if scriptural evidence will even help him, if it doesn't, I will honestly probably give up forever when it comes to this because I've tried to talk him out of this for probably going on at least 5 to 7 years now. But I feel like it's worth one last try by doing this because I have known the man since we were both in 6th grade and I love him like a brother. And it kills me that he really thinks he can pray away all of his problems without doing any action whatsoever at 30 years old. And I think it's really leading to him not fixing any of his problems for the past 7 to 8 years (maybe longer) So if you guys have any suggestions on what I could try to help, and like I said any scriptural evidence on God helping those who help themselves, I'd greatly appreciate it.

My boyfriend and I have been together for about a year. As our relationship becomes more serious I'm starting to have fears over whether we are unequally yoked and whether I am following God's will for my life, but I'm not sure if this is simply the influence of my upbringing.
I was raised strict fundamentalist evangelical, nearly aspect of my life was controlled and many things were spiritualised (for example if someone had mental health problems it was suggested they might be demon possessed). I had to read the Bible every single day, and I spent most of my childhood in church or around people from church. After a serious of traumatic church-related events, I left that environment and attend a more relaxed Baptist church now but I deal with anxiety constantly over the knowledge that my current lifestyle is not up to the standard in which I was raised.
On the other hand my boyfriend was raised Presbyterian, attended church regularly but not to the extreme level that I experienced. He was allowed to drink, go to parties etc, so these things aren't really a big deal to him, and he very rarely partakes anyway (while I was taught that this behaviour was extremely sinful).
Naturally due to my upbringing, I am able to rattle off scripture and doctrines at the drop of the hat, while he is less familiar with these details. This makes me afraid that we are unequally yoked as I am often the driver behind spiritual/religious conversation topics. However, I also know that I feel the need to discuss these topics out of guilt at not talking about God enough, and the trauma attached to religion for me would probably cause a lot of anxiety if my boyfriend DID have strong views on issues like doctrine. I already take antidepressants and undergo OCD treatment due to my upbringing, especially since I was taught never to date outside my church let alone my denomination.
We never argue about religion - the only issue arose when I essentially insisted that he needed to be baptised as an adult and that his infant baptism was invalid. We resolved this and agreed to disagree after I realised how upset I would be if our roles were reversed.
He is kind, generous, hardworking, treats me like an equal. There is nothing 'wrong' with him other than that he's not as 'spiritual' as the man I was always taught to look for.
If I continued with this relationship, we will likely have a peaceful, wholesome life together, go to church on Sunday, send our kids to a Christian school, but we wouldn't be constantly praying and reading the Bible like how I was raised. Is this ok? Is it wrong to feel that my original denominational background isn't sustainable for me personally in terms of my faith?

In her book “Living the Law of One 101: The Choice,” Carla says the following

Completing the grades of this school takes millions of years. This present grade, which the Confederation calls the Density of Choice or third density, lasts about 76,000 years. We are in the last decade of this long period, heading rapidly toward a planet-wide Harvest in 2012.

And

These gradations of light along the steps are guarded carefully so that we get a true walk into the thickening sunshine. When we are on the most comfortable of those steps in terms of the light, we stop. If that step where we stopped is still in third density, then we have not yet successfully made our choice, and so we will spend another cycle of 76,000 years working on those lessons which bring us to that defining choice.

And

Would you rather graduate, at the end of this lifetime, and move on to the Density of Love? Or would you rather spend 76,000 or so more years having one incarnation after another in another earth-like environment while working with these same lessons and playing this same game? Most of us would choose to graduate. The key to graduating is to achieve sufficient polarity to move on.

And

When we do meet that soul stream again after our deaths, it is very likely that we will either have just graduated from third density or just been slotted for another cycle of 76,000-plus years in another third-density environment, on another earth-like world.

And (this one is an analogy)

The patient has just awakened to the true situation regarding the harvest of planet Earth. He has almost no time in which to make the choice of polarity and become harvestable.

And then finally,

We have until the end of 2012 to make maximum use of the last of 3-D and to choose our polarity. It is urgent that we wake up, make our choice for love and become Players. The time is now.

So Carla doesn’t provide any citations from the channeling archives for any of this, so I’m struggling to verify it. Do any of the channeling confirm this?
It also seems like an awful lot of fear mongering. This book is dated as copyright 2009, and she’s pretty much saying “you have 3 years left to polarize before it becomes a lot harder.” In general, this book has a lot of this kind of thing. This all kind of surprised me considering the description of the book on L/L’s website says “This is a light–hearted book about the Game of Life.”
BUT the book also says (as part of a 2015 update)

So we would like to suggest that when you read her occasional statements in this book regarding seekers having only until 2012 to make this choice of polarity, that you simply ignore this statement. Carla’s emphasis on a date in time in no way affects the rest of the message contained in this book which, as you will soon discover, is largely concerned with timeless spiritual principles.

If she was wrong about this, how can we filter everything else this book says?

Hey, fellow gay bros, I'm in need of some advice and support regarding a sensitive issue in my relationship. I've been with my partner for around 9 months now, and while everything else about our relationship is fantastic, I'm struggling with feelings of sexual frustration and being unwanted. I hope you can lend me your ears and offer some insights. Let me start by saying that I'm not a pushy person, especially when it comes to sex. I believe in open communication and ensuring that both partners feel comfortable and never pressured. When we first started dating, I noticed that my partner wasn't very responsive to my invitations or even inviting me over. Concerned, I decided to address the issue directly. We've had a couple of getaways together where we engaged in foreplay but didn't have penetrative sex. It was during these moments that I started to realize my partner's lack of interest in sex so I asked him what his boundaries were and what he needed from me. He opened up to me about not being a very sexual person and even mentioned that he rarely masturbates. He shared that he has gone long periods without sex in the past, even when in a relationship. I reassured him that I don't need sex all the time and that I'm okay with not having it every day or every week. I made it clear that I understand everyone has different needs and preferences. We've had several conversations about sex since then, and I've made an effort to understand his perspective better. What I've gathered from these conversations is that he doesn't mind feeling my erection against him when we're cuddling, and he appreciates knowing that he's sexually desired, even if he doesn't want to engage in sex at that moment. He suggested that instead of gentle or overt advances, he prefers me to be explicit and directly ask if he's interested in having sex when I'm in the mood. Recently, we went on vacation together - I made sure to ask him if sex was a possibility, so I could purchase lube since I had forgotten to bring some. He confirmed that it was on the table, but each time I attempted to initiate, I was turned down. It's becoming frustrating because, on top of feeling sexually unwanted, I'm also becoming sexually frustrated. I want to emphasize that our relationship is incredible in every other aspect. We share intimate non-sexual moments that make my heart swell. The way he unconsciously reaches for my hand while we walk, sit on the couch, or even when we're sleeping is something I cherish deeply. He inspires me to be a better person, not because I feel obligated to keep him, but because I genuinely want to continue impressing him. I'll stop there simply because this post is already going to be much longer than even I would like to read. But here's the thing—I'm reaching a point where I'm starting to seek attention and validation elsewhere, albeit discreetly through apps. It's essential to note that I haven't been hooking up with anyone, but I crave feeling desired and sexually wanted. I'm writing this post because I'm seeking advice from those who may have experienced a similar situation or have insights to offer. How can I navigate this discrepancy in our sexual desires without compromising our emotional connection? Is there a way for me to feel sexually fulfilled while respecting my partner's lower libido? I genuinely love my partner, and I believe our future is worth fighting for. I'm willing to put in the effort and find a middle ground that works for both of us. Any guidance or personal experiences you can share would be immensely appreciated. Thank you for taking the time to read my story. Your support means a lot to me. TL;DR: I've been with my partner for 9 months, and while everything else is great, I'm feeling sexually frustrated and unwanted. My partner has a lower libido, and I'm seeking advice on how to navigate.

Hello. I'm thinking of buying my first kimono! But my budget is quite tight. And I heard from this sub that sou_japan ebay is a cheap, albeit risky, option. I think I can afford one from the bidding. I have a few questions tho from you who are more experienced in both using ebay auctions and buying from sou_japan.
If I won the auction do I have to pay immediately. Or is it okay for example, if I wait for another auction item to end? I plan on bidding on a few different pieces with a day and a few hrs of difference in bid end time. I read that ebay has at most 4 days of allowance for each payment, is it the same for sou_japan's policy or do they cancel winning bids if not paid immediately?
Will there be added fees to the winning bid? I read that there is handling fee of $10. Is that separate on top of the $10 shipping or is it the same thing? How about added taxes, will there be any?
About the shipping and the ETA. How accurate is it from your experiences? Does it usually take more than a month to arrive?
Thank you so so much!! I'm so excited to buy my first piece!!

About me:
I'm 30 years old. I am a loner by choice. Actually, it's not by choice. I can't stand being around other people, so I live as what most people would consider as a hermit. I don't go out, and I don't have any friends. A family member who I love more than anyone comes to stay with me for 2 months a year, and it drives me insane. However, I realize that this visit is as much for her as it is for me, so I let her stay as long as she desires and try not to show my displeasure. I only show this to display that I can't tolerate being around people for long periods of time and that sure, I'm selfish.
I work 10-15 hour shifts usually and a few weeks ago, I began working 7 days a week because it is extremely lucrative for me(Up from 5 to 6 days per week). I work a job that many people find stressful but I really like my job (95% good) and I like that I am able to provide medical care to many individuals in my community. For years, my mother keeps telling me to "enjoy my life", "don't get burned out", "go meet women", insisting that I'll want kids, and that I should travel. For years. I don't have an interest in that stuff. I feel as though she is pushing what makes her happy (and to be fair, probably most people) onto me.
It is very important to note that I love my life. I have almost no stress (other 5% of work provides my only life stress), I have tons of hobbies that I enjoy, that mostly can be performed in my home, and I am not lonely. I love reading, playing piano, playing guitar, playing video games, and pyrography. In the last 2 years, I've started to achieve all of my financial goals, so this year I've started giving to others. I feel like I'm in a great place compared to most people so I'm not asking for life-advice or anything of the sort.
This is all just for context.
Why I ask:
I ask because I keep getting pestered (I'm being dramatic here) about how much I work, and my lifestyle. I want to see if there's anyone else who has worked many hours for a long period of time without ever becoming "burned out". Or if you did get burned out, how long did it take? Could you feel it coming on? Was it a sudden realization?
I've been going strong for nearly 5 years in this role, and I feel great. My only "difficulty" is that since I've moved to 7 days a week, I'm working different shifts (4 days night shift, 3 days evening shift, and occasionally I'll do a double and stay for the day shift) so I have to learn to schedule my sleep accordingly. Also, I can only do one hobby a day now which is fine, but I will say that is my biggest complaint (Privileged, amirite?).
​
Anyhoo, since it's Memorial Day, I'm light on work in my lab. I'll send this out now and respond if anyone messages during any free time I have tonight.

Motivation — A Close Reading of Tea Time

"I'm six feet from the edge and I'm thinking: maybe six feet ain't so far down?"
Nimander Golit
Chapter V of Weathered
2002 BS
Click Here for the Introduction to the essay series.

Prelude to the Close Reading

Why, hello there, again. It’s been a few weeks but I promise that this endeavor is still moving forward. For those that don’t know, this essay is a part of a collection I’ll be putting together which investigates the Eleint, their blood, and sorcery within the Malazan shared secondary universe. We’re still laying down our foundations, and today we’ll be covering a sequence of scenes in Chapter 8 of Toll the Hounds.
My intentions were to cover all of the scenes in a single post, but that has proven itself to be difficult. As such, I’ll cover the first scene in this sequence in this post. There’ll be one or two follow-up posts.
There are ten scenes that are in this sequence:

1. Nimander 1
2. Desra 1
3. Desra 2
4. Skintick 1
5. Desra 3
6. Nimander 2
7. Desra 4
8. Kedeviss 1
9. Nimander 3
10. Kedeviss 2

I’ll be approaching these scenes (including the one discussed today) through a few lenses.

A ringing of bells.

In his musings on writing, Erikson discusses the notion of a bell. I’ll let him speak for himself.
In the scenes we’ll be looking at, some of the bells that I believe are used are (and not all of these are represented in this first particular scene):

• Past versus present — ancestors/parents vs. living/children
• How others see us, and how we see others
• The word ‘beast’ and its many meanings
• The words ‘child/children’ and their many meanings
• The relationships between gods and mortals
• Portals/thresholds

Existentialism.

Particularly the genealogy of continental philosophy that led to Sartre’s existentialism and the shared/adapted/bifurcated philosophies of his contemporaries (such as de Beauvoir, Camus, and Merleau-Ponty). This wasn’t my initial intention when I decided to use this sequence of scenes as a launch pad into my collection of essays. However, the beauty of close-reading is that you go into a text with a hypothesis seeking evidence and support, and then end up with new insights.
Some of the concepts that will be brought up are:

• Anxiety
• Facticity and transcendence; Authenticity and bad faith
• The Look/Gaze and being-for-others
• The Absurd and Revolution
• Perception

Genre conventions as grammar.

Particularly, we’ll look at Erikson’s use of genre conventions from the likes of Gothic literature and Weird Fiction — namely the Sublime, cosmic horror, and the Weird — as the subtle language used to convey tension that is congruent with some of the other subtexts. If these grammars are subverted, we’ll try to point that out too.
We will later delve more into Malazan’s literary genealogy in other essays, but I want this lens to be present during the reading to see how Erikson aligns or subverts these genre conventions.
We’ll be using Professor Michael Moir’s YouTube lectures on Weird Fiction as reference.

What the fuck is happening?

This is a question about plot that I will answer at the end of all of the scenes, but keep it in mind as we go through. It has less to do with existentialism and Gothic literature and more on what Gothos was trying to do during these scenes.

Pre-TtH Context

We first meet Nimander and his siblings (unnamed) in House of Chains on Drift Avalii. By Bonehunters, they had left Drift Avalii and ended up at Malaz City, where they then joined Tavore Paran’s fleet while fleeing Malaz City. In Reaper’s Gale, we find the siblings had been ‘adopted’ by Sandalath while they traveled to Lether with the Malazans. Phaed wanted to kill Sandalath. Nimander stopped Phaed from killing Sandalath. Withal (Sandalath’s husband) throws Phaed out a window. The murder is taken as a suicide. The siblings intern Phaed and then meet Clip, who offers to lead them to Anomander in Black Coral via Kurald Galain.
This gets us to Toll the Hounds, where Nimander is being haunted by Phaed. They’ve left Kurald Galain and are now on Genabackis (but not yet to Black Coral). Nimander fears the future meeting his father and the rest of the Tiste Andii. The siblings and Clip ‘stumble’ on Morsko, where Clip is curious about its cult of the Dying God. A ritual takes place there. Nimander and Skintick are nearly enthralled, but are saved by Aranatha (and thus Mother Dark herself). The group then find Clip, who is in a coma. They collect him, and set off in a wagon to follow the Dying God’s priests to Bastion. Along that journey, the siblings stumble upon the High King, Kallor, who reluctantly chooses to not kill them and instead travels with them.
The sequence of scenes in Chapter 8 that we’ll be discussing follows some time after Kallor joins the siblings.
Now that the administrative stuff is out of the way, let’s dive into the first scene.

Nimander 1

Rum-induced memories.

We start this sequence thrust into Nimander’s introspection on ‘rage’ as a breaking of a vessel, impossible to fix. He recalls Deadsmell’s musings that ‘rage in battle’ was a gift while the two drank rum. Rum that awakened memories once ignored by Nimander.
(Note: in Scene 2, we’ll see Desra’s view of Nimander, and we’ll see that Nimander’s ruminations on rage here are what inform Desra’s view of him, and not in the way that Nimander’s doubt imagines.)
In the previous post, we discussed memories and their decay. So much of this series and the lore surrounding it is driven by the memories of ancient beings. Nimander is younger with respect to ancient beings (but ancient nonetheless), and even he struggles with his memories. Perhaps this is a result of the traumas he’s experienced with respect to his being in diaspora and perceived abandonment by his father (a symmetry itself with Rake’s — and the Tiste Andii as a whole — relationship with Mother Dark).
He recalls the rum lighting “a fire in [his] brain, casting red light on a host of memories gathered ghostly round the unwelcoming heart.” He reminisces on the time after Kurald Galain (but before Drift Avalii) and his father’s emotional indifference. He recalls the pranks him and his kin would pull on Endest Silann; the arrival of Andarist and his arguments with Anomander. It is unclear what the arguments were — if you’ve read Forge of Darkness, you might be able to infer what’s likely, but I’m curious if the argument is Andarist asking to take the siblings and Anomander refusing, or Anomander asking Andarist to take the children and Andarist was reluctant? Was the argument about Anomander thrusting the Hust blade, T’an Aros/K’orladis (i.e., Vengeance / Grief), onto Andarist or did Andarist already possess the blade? We don’t know exactly to my knowledge, but it’s fun to speculate.
Regardless, Nimander recalls, like a certain inscribed hearthstone, there was peace. Andarist was to take them all through a threshold, a portal elsewhere (as mentioned, portals end up being a rung bell, so pay attention). Nimander remembers Endest’s weeping as the children were pulled through a “portalway into an unknown, mysterious new world where anything was possible.”
Andarist raised the Tiste Andii children on that portal’s other side, on Drift Avalii. We know (or can infer) that this was a task to protect the Throne of Shadow, but Nimander and his kin didn’t understand this as children. But Andarist led them with his pragmatism, he ensured they learned how the world was. With our knowledge of Kharkanas, this is so powerful. We know Anomander’s hubris was abused as a motivating factor for Hunn Raal’s despicable acts. We know that Andarist likely lacks children of his own in response to this, and so his taking on guardianship over the children of his brother — that very same brother that rejected Andarist’s grief in favour of vengeance (and materialised in the T’an Aros/K’orladis dichotomy) — is a stark, challenging, and ultimately selfless decision.
But this pragmatism created child soldiers. The collision of reality’s necessity to survive and carry out the duty of protecting the Throne of Shadow came at the expense of what little remaining childhood innocence Rake’s brood still had (even as a people on the run, exiled from their home due to a sociopolitical schism). Andarist became a stern teacher, juxtaposed to the echoes of Endest’s gentleness. “The games ended. The world turned suddenly serious.” Nonetheless, the Tiste Andii siblings grew to love Andarist.
Nimander continues his introspection:

See a bored child with a stick — and see how every beast nearby flees, understanding well what is now possible and, indeed, probable.

This reminds me of a general rule of advice: ‘never fuck around when a child has gun.’ Tiste Andii or not, children can be cruel especially when mixed with unknown doses of trauma and violence. Regardless, I want to call attention here that this notion of children and beasts are each bells rung. To Nimander, Andarist “unleash[ed] them, these children with avid eyes.” He “had made them good soldiers,” ones that know rage.
Vessels broken.
As such, from his own experience, Nimander suspects that the Dying God is a child. He speaks to the dialectic between gods and their worshippers (another bell rung):

The mad priests poured him full, knowing the vessel leaked, and then drank of that puerile seepage. Because he was a child, the Dying God’s thirst and need were without end, never satiated.

The group stumbles on desiccated bodies staked among fields: dried up, tapped of their libations. This speaks to a particular exploitation between mortal and god, symbolised literally as worshippers feeding a god to then become the harvested. This perpetuates the Dying God’s power to accumulate more worshippers via addictive kelyk. The language here shows that the Dying God has stumbled upon a sort of cheat code, an exploitation of the god-mortal dialectic that allows him and his priests to arbitrage power. Like a cancer that, via the law of large numbers, is equipped with the mechanisms to divert a body’s resources to it while it slowly destroys the body.
The scarecrows being in fields is such a perfect choice of this analogy: things to be harvested. A product, a commodity — a thing with both use-value and exchange-value, for our Marxians out there. I believe Erikson has said that he was thinking of oil here, and that is fine by itself, but I do like the mirroring to Eucharistic transubstantiation in Catholicism (due to my being a very-very-lapsed Catholic). Especially with wine, an extremely addictive substance, transcending into God’s blood to cleanse us as cannibalistic sacrament.

Dal Honese burial practices.

Nimander sees these fields as “bizarre cemeteries, where some local aberration of belief insisted that the dead be staked upright, that they ever stand ready for whatever may come." This makes him recall some shipwrecked Dal Honese on Drift Avalii. He thinks on the ancestor cult and burial practices of Dal Hon: literally constructing their homes with their dead in the walls as both material and essence, the building stretching out with additional rooms as time moved on and kin died.
This reminds me of the Neolithic proto-city, Çatalhöyük, found in Anatolia within modern-day Türkiye where ancestors have been found to be buried beneath platforms in living quarters. See: Chapter 6 of The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow.
With or without intention, I like to view this ritual via an existentialist lens, particularly Sartre’s notion of the Look. To Sartre — in contrast to other phenomenologies — being is in flux, some path of a given chaotic double-pendulum switching to and from poles of being-in-itself***\**¹* and being-for-itself***\**²*. The Look, to Sartre, is a sort of symmetry breaking — a realisation by being-for-itselves that decentralises it, the sudden awareness of its being an object, an Other, to Other consciousnesses.
A heuristic often used to showcase Sartre’s notion of the Look (or Gaze) is that of a voyeur peeping through a keyhole into someone’s room that hears a noise down the hall. Regardless if that noise is from another person (another being-for-itself) or not (say, the house settling), the subjective voyeur suddenly objectifies themselves, collapsing the chaotic pendulum from being-for-itself (nothingness as "no thing-ness") to their facticity — their being-in-itself, their thing-ness — whose meaning to Other being-for-themselves is relative to a separate centre than the voyeur’s own.
To Sartre, the resulting anxiety experienced snapping from subject to object is a proof against any nihilistic approach to solipsism. The fact that we can Other our own being-for-itself means that we can also recognise being-for-itself external to us since those we Other too can Other us as we Other ourselves. The reflexivity as a result of the Look is evidence against solipsism to Sartre.
As a result, this Dal Honese practice is a cultural self-burdening via Sartre’s Look by literally having your ancestors clay-filled bodies decentralise your subjectivity and externalise you as an object that can be judged by its facticity. This results in a sort of collective Dal Honese being-for-others, Sartre would argue. This isn’t inherently good or bad to existentialists, but it does necessitate a calculus that discerns if the living descendants are authentically expressing their freedom with each moment they accept this practice, or if they are living in bad faith.
Regardless, though, this is a haunting of the Past. This haunting isn’t something that is only important to existentialism or other philosophical traditions (such as post-structuralism — see: Derrida’s hauntology), but to the genre conventions and tropes of Gothic horror and its descendants (such as cosmic horror, weird fiction, and their influences on sword and sorcery, etc.).
There are mappings (some more subtle than others) between the Sublime and the existential anxiety and dread experienced in phenomena similar to the Look. The experience of looking upon the vastness of the sea, of stumbling upon an ancient statue, of learning of the size of the universe — which are described as the Sublime, the Weird, or Eldritch in some literary traditions (e.g., Romantic, Gothic, Horror, the Weird, etc.) — are the same experiences that are often analysed in continental philosophies using words such as angst/anxiety/despaiabsurdity/alienation.
Nimander goes on to further expose the relationship between this Dal Honese ancestor cult and inter-tribal conflicts that lead to deaths and stolen bodies that leave physical voids in Dal Honese architecture. He muses how this physical representation of wounds begets a cycle of vengeance (a cultural tradition, a product of facticity and bad faith): “blood back and forth,” he says. He mentions that this cycle is what pushed the shipwrecked Dal Honese from their homes, an act of revolt and perhaps even authenticity to Sartre. Eventually the Dal Honese recovered and “paddled away — not back home, but to some unknown place, a place devoid of unblinking ghosts staring out from every wall.”
I love that Erikson has this whole little short story in this scene, especially in the contrast of its being some rum-induced reflection by Nimander on his own past’s haunting of him and his siblings. Moreover, these Tiste Andii are travelling with Kallor, the Undying Unascendant: a being-for-itself that literally manifests the past’s haunting on the present — a man cursed, jaded, who carries the past with him wherever he travels. All of these together show that one’s freedom can have one flee (even be redeemed — which balances with other plotlines in TtH), but that doesn’t necessarily — nor sufficiently so — annihilate the past.

Finding a tower.

After this, Nimander’s reminiscing is interrupted by his hearing Kallor nearby (like a footstep in a hallway). Kallor comments on the use of the corpses and notes that the flora “[is] not even native to this world, after all.” Nimander replies that the corpses are being used for saemankelyk. The mention of the plants not being native to this world should orient the reader back to the Weird, especially since it brings upon a sense of unease, an Othering — the house settling that again serves to reduce both Nimander and the readers to our thing-ness
‘The past’ versus ‘the present’ versus ‘the future’ (and their hauntings of one another) bubble up again with some banter between Skintick and Kallor about the state of things. Kallor states ‘nothing changes.’ Skintick counters ‘it keeps getting worse,’ to which Kallor claims is but an illusion.
I find this dialogue to be a comical little conflict between Kallor’s perceived-postmodern, nihilistic judgement of the state of things being inert versus Skintick’s pseudo-Rousseauian, inverted-Hegalian, modernist grand narrative of things getting worse.
Again, it alludes to a haunting of the past on the current generation. Interestingly, this is a trend within the Book of the Fallen in general: not as an espousing of the ‘old vs. young’, but Erikson’s decentering/challenging/deconstruction of that binary. Think of Raest in GotM; Menandore, Sukul and Sheltatha in RG; Karsa in HoC; the Witness trilogy. He does this via a sort of Ancient's Hubris colliding with its differences to the Present’s Ingenuity, and this being dual to the Present’s Naivety colliding with the Ancient Wisdom.
Kallor eventually hits a sore spot with the Tiste: he brings up Rake. Unlike the Dal Honese whose freedom had them flee the cultural practices of letting their ancestors haunt both literally and figuratively, Nimander and his siblings were pulled/pushed away from their father (and people) as children — by what very well could be their father’s request. The Tiste siblings are haunted by Anomander’s active absence. Their continued distance from their father isn’t an act of expressing their freedom against an Ancestor’s Gaze — it isn’t an act of revolution — it is their facticity and a source for their Othering of themselves. We often see this from Nimander’s POVs up to and including this sequence.
Kallor sniffs out this weakness and presses upon the wound. Nimander gets flustered and retorts. To which Kallor responds:

'Anomander Rake is a genius at beginning things. It’s finishing them he has trouble with.'

Damn, Kallor.
Also, I didn’t need my ADHD called out so harshly, dude. What the fuck.
Without diving into what Erikson was dealing with while writing this book, this hits hard for Nimander, and is an interesting commentary nonetheless. His father, Anomander, is the leader of a diasporic people who’ve been without home, without a centre, for 400,000 years. I think Kallor’s words hurt Nimander so much because the Tiste siblings don’t know Anomander’s current plans nor have they experienced the "settling-down" from the unveiling of Kurald Galain in what is now Black Coral. They are unaware of Rake’s teleology for his people, for himself even. Regardless, we see again and again that Kallor isn’t just a strong skirmisher, his words cut nearly as well as his blades.
Kallor goes on to confirm that he knows Rake before the group notices a ruined tower among the alien plants and scarecrows. Kallor says its Jaghut. Kallor trudges forth indifferently, pushing corpses out of his way as he bee-lines it to the ruined tower. I don’t think such a sequence of action has ever described Kallor’s whole raison d’être and modus operandi so well: just a man seemingly indifferent to the corpses in his path as his will pulls him forward.
We get a small interaction between Skintick and Nimander that reveals Skintick’s acuity in reading Kallor’s take on Rake. Kallor sees their father as an equal (it isn’t just the readers that need to be keen to subtext, characters do too).
Skintick offers the idea of sicking Kallor on the Dying God, hoping he “decid[es] to do something for his own reasons, but something that ends up solving our problem.” I like the use of “deciding to do something for his own reasons,” as this aligns so well with authenticity in existentialism (and the absence of some absolute morality for authenticity).
As Nimander approaches the tower behind Kallor, both Nimander and the readers get a great sense of horror, the weird, the uncanny, and the sublime with how Erikson describes the scenery:

Drawing closer to the ruin, they fell silent. Decrepit as it was, the tower was imposing. The air around it seemed grainy, somehow brittle, ominously cold despite the sun’s fierce heat.
The highest of the walls revealed a section of ceiling just below the uppermost set of stones, projecting without any other obvious support to cast a deep shadow upon the ground floor beneath it. The facing wall reached only high enough to encompass a narrow, steeply arched doorway. Just outside this entrance and to one side was a belly-shaped pot in which grew a few straggly plants with drooping flowers, so incongruous amid the air of abandonment that Nimander simply stared down at them, disbelieving.

Nimander notes an incongruity of this place — its aesthetic of abandonment juxtaposed with a curated garden. “The cold despite the sun’s fierce heat.” This evokes a certain unsettledness to Nimander (and thus, the reader). These genre conventions are sources of tension and anxiety, similar to non-diegetic violins building up to a real or false jump-scare in a slasher flick.
Arrogantly, Kallor chooses to go out of his way and insult the presumed Jaghut within the tower. Classic Kallor. The Jaghut replies “nothing changes,” resulting in Kallor shooting Skintick and Nimander a “pleased smirk.”

Tea time, but before falling into a rabbit-hole and not after.

Before Kallor can announce himself, the Jaghut lists off Kallor’s titles, his facticity. Kallor’s reputation precedes him and there’s an asymmetry here in which the Jaghut knows who Kallor is but Kallor doesn’t yet know who the Jaghut is. This is our first hint that this meeting isn’t serendipitous, and is instead an intentional interaction with regards to the plot. And if this Jaghut knows of Kallor, does he know those who Kallor travels with? Who is this Jaghut’s intended audience among those options?
I also like the play here with facticity: the Jaghut lists out things about Kallor, but is Kallor some sum of those thing-nesses? How many are true, how many are manufactured myths? It’s an act by this Jaghut to Gaze upon Kallor, to show to Kallor that he’s being seen. It’s a deliberate tactic to destabilise and decenter Kallor: an offensive.
We as readers are informed of Kallor’s limitations from the Azathanai curses via Draconus, K’rul and Nightchill, but these limitations on Kallor don’t necessarily restrict his freedom until Kallor allows them.
We get a flash of Jaghut humour and guest rites — this ancient dismisses Kallor while inviting everyone in for tea. Interestingly, Erikson has this Jaghut use the proper noun of ‘Others’ which lends me to think that an existentialist lens hasn’t been the worst pick (not that ‘Othering’ is strictly existentialist by any means).
So, we’ve had corpses drained dry for kelyk, alien plant-life, a ruined tower of an unknown age stumbled upon beyond the urban, a preternatural creature to Nimander and his kin (something they’ve maybe only witnessed a handful of times) and then we get this description:

The air of the two-walled chamber was frigid, the stones sheathed in amber-streaked hoarfrost. Where the other two walls should have been rose black, glimmering barriers of some unknown substance, and to look upon them too long was to feel vertiginous — Nimander almost pitched forward, drawn up only by Skintick’s sudden grip, and his friend whispered, ‘Never mind the ice, cousin.’
Ice, yes, it was just that. Astonishingly transparent ice–

I love this. First: “it was just that” screams “no it isn’t” to anyone paying attention to the words Erikson is using to make the reader uncomfortable. We know: Jaghut + Ice = Omtose Phellack. The atmospheric setting here is directly being called out in not just a sublime way, but his description has an added layer of horror to Omtose Phellack.
Erikson uses “vertiginous,” giving both Nimander and us a sense of vertigo, being decentred and unoriented. This isn’t too different from descriptions found in works like Vandermeer’s Annihilation or other New Weird authors. This ice wall calls to Nimander, draws from him feelings of unknown when he’s caught himself staring for too long — emphasis on staring.
For all intents and purposes, this ice wall is a thing, a being-in-itself, neither active nor passive. But its effect on Nimander is similar to the Dal Honese ancestors’ Gaze — this ice wall objectifies him, calls to him, evokes his being-for-others, and emotionally alienates him. The pull Nimander feels is his submitting his being-for-itself with the freedom of those that Gaze upon him. A justification of his facticity, his bad faith. This will be important later.
Eventually we get this awesome line from the Jaghut host:

’Once, long ago, a wolf god came before me. Tell me, Kallor, do you understand the nature of beast gods? Of course not. You are only a beast in the unfairly pejorative sense — unfair to beasts, that is. How is it, then, that the most ancient gods of this world were, one and all, beasts?’

There’s so much going on to unpack in this paragraph.

• He’s called Kallor a beast, but says his doing so is unfair to beasts (damn, this ice orc just roasted Kallor).
• It calls back to Nimander’s thoughts on children wielding sticks and beasts fleeing as a result. With or without knowing it, this Jaghut is calling Kallor a child, too, in the pejorative sense, unfair to children.
• He says the first gods were beasts, but does he mean these early gods were explicitly Beasts (in essence, not the pejorative sense) or that they were beast-like akin to the pejorative sense used on Kallor (or some combination of both)?
  • Interestingly, we know that this wolf god is possibly an Azathanai d’ivers from FoL — with this knowledge, would Fanderay and Togg count as a Beast-as-literal-beast beast-god?

Later, again, we get this Jaghut saying Others as a proper noun, and then the Others are called Tiste Andii.

‘Ah, and what of the Others with you? Might not they be interested?’
Clearing his throat, Skintick said, ‘Venerable one, we possess nothing of worth to one such as you.’
‘You are too modest, Tiste Andii.’
‘I am?’
'Each creature is born from one not its kind. This is a wonder, a miracle forged in the fires of chaos, for chaos indeed whispers in our blood, no matter its particular hue. If I but scrape your skin, so lightly as to leave but a momentary streak, that which I take from you beneath my nail contains every truth of you, your life, even your death, assuming violence does not claim you. A code, if you will, seemingly precise and so very ordered. Yet chaos churns. For all your similarities to your father, neither you nor the one named Nimander — nor any of your brothers and sisters — is identical to Anomander Dragnipurake. Do you refute this?’

Above, the Jaghut goes on to describe genetics, but also calls out the fact that they are children of Anomander — dude definitely knows more than he’s leading on, that’s for sure, and is winking directly to us readers, seemingly going over the heads of both Kallor and the Tiste. Also, the bit about chaos in blood will come up again and again in later scenes and later essays.
Moreover, we see that the Jaghut says that which he scrapes "contains every truth of you, your life, even your death" — our genetics are facticities, among our thing-nesses. "Yet chaos churns," the Jaghut rebuts. That chaos in our blood is a source of our "no thing-ness," from which we may express our freedom against the determinism of genetics — of facticities — and transcend.

For each kind of beast there is a first such beast, more different from its parents than the rest of its kin, from which a new breed in due course emerges. Is this firstborn then a god?’

I love this for two reasons. One, it speaks to a criticism of the assumption that a prime-mover is necessarily divine. But, through the existentialist lens, it’s a challenge and criticism of the presumed Authority of Genealogy. Jumping back to the early musings on ancestry: if ancestors haunt us and dictate our facticity as a result of suppressing our being-for-itself, then where does that chain of dictating/suppressing end? And is that terminus also an Authority above all generations below it just due to its being something new, something sufficiently different from its own genealogy, its ancestors ‘behind’ it?
I also like the subtext of trauma as hereditary here with the double entendre behind ‘beast’, we can think of this Jaghut as asking if the primordial source of generational trauma has authority over its descendants? What does this dialogue mean for Nimander and his siblings and their place with respect to their father and the rest of the Tiste Andii people? Does this inform an analysis of Nimander’s chaotic double-pendulum between being-in-itself, being-for-itself, and his being-for-others?
A huge thing I would like to point out here, too, is that neither Skintick, Nimander, nor Kallor have used the Tiste Andii’s names, yet this Jaghut knows them by name. Kallor could deduce they were Rake’s children, but he didn’t know their names. Even though Skintick showcased an acuity to subtext when considering Kallor’s opinions of Rake, he doesn’t catch onto this subtlety. This Jaghut not only knows of Kallor, he knows of Nimander and his siblings. The evidence that this meeting isn’t serendipity continues to build.

‘You spoke of a wolf god,’ Skintick said. ‘You began to tell us a story.’
‘So I did. But you must be made to understand. It is a question of essences. To see a wolf and know it as pure, one must possess an image in oneself of a pure wolf, a perfect wolf.’
‘Ridiculous,’ Kallor grunted. ‘See a strange beast and someone tells you it is a wolf — and from this one memory, and perhaps a few more to follow, you have fashioned your image of a wolf. In my empires, philosophers spewed such rubbish for centuries, until, of course, I grew tired of them and had them tortured and executed.’

This sequence of dialogue is fantastic and reminds me of arguments foagainst the strong/weak Sapir-Whorf hypothesis/es. We see the Jaghut musing on a seemingly prescriptive Platonic idealism that Kallor interrupts with a more descriptive, pragmatic, empirical framework in which he follows with a jest of torturing and executing philosophers (remind me to never live in the Kallorian Empire).
Kallor speaks as if his words contradict the Jaghut and show the assumed idealism to be wrong. But, by Kallor’s own argument, the Jaghut’s words of ‘pure’ and ‘perfect’ are just as empirically contingent to one’s memories as ‘wolf’ is. The combinations of signs and symbols language users use give flesh to those signs’ and symbols’ own meaning — but bury that meaning beneath the flesh by doing so. The concept of a ‘perfect wolf’ (i.e., ‘perfect’ + ‘wolf’) emerging from one’s own contingency with the notion of ‘perfect’ and ‘wolf’ is entirely possible without that imagined ‘perfect wolf’ being actually some idealisation, i.e., some Platonic Perfect Wolf.
The Jaghut responds with laughter to Kallor’s absurdity: both in his misinterpretation of the Jaghut’s musings as well as the nature of Kallor’s brutal reaction to those that question things he finds to be rubbish. This pairs well with Skintick’s future POV in this sequence, but the contrast between Kallor and this Jaghut is entertaining nonetheless. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish when Kallor is telling the truth about his brutality or if his mutterings are just words congruent to his reputation.
The two then have a pissing contest. We find out the Jaghut was in disguise — I don’t have the evidence or time here to say, but there are ideas that this particular Jaghut is a d'ivers and it is fucking awesome even if untrue. The discussion here points to some T’lan Imass’ Jaghut War. It being the Kron, I’m inclined to wonder if there is a relationship with the bones Karsa stumbles upon in HoC (where he and his war party find Calm).

Skintick squatted to pick up two of the cups, straightening to hand one to Nimander. The steam rising from the tea was heady, hinting of mint and cloves and something else. The taste numbed his tongue.

Don’t take candy from strangers tea from Jaghut, people.
We find out that Raest is this Jaghut’s child. We find out that this Jaghut took on 43 T’lan Imass and a Bonecaster, killing them all. This is a threat rallied back against Kallor’s assertion that he’s killed Jaghut.

Teeth bared, Kallor bent down to retrieve his cup.
The Jaghut’s left hand shot out, closing about Kallor’s wrist. ‘You wounded that wolf god,’ he said.

Oh shit. What follows is one of the first times I can recall that Kallor is scared. Contrast with his earlier treatment of Rake as equal.

'Oh, be quiet, Kallor. This tower was an Azath once. Shall I awaken it for you?’
Wondering, Nimander watched as Kallor backed towards the entrance, eyes wide in that weathered, pallid face, the look of raw recognition dawning. ‘Gothos, what are you doing here?’
‘Where else should I be? Now remain outside — these two Tiste Andii must go away for a while.’

The revelation: the Jaghut is none other than the Lord of Hate himself, Gothos. You can understand why Kallor, always so arrogant, submits to Gothos and listens to his instruction.
Immediately after the reveal, Skintick and Nimander succumb to the effects of whatever extra ingredient Gothos had slipped into their tea. We get this final sequence:

Nimander’s eyes were drawn once more to the walls of ice. Black depths, shapes moving within.
He staggered, reached out his hands–
‘Oh, don’t step in there–’
And then he was falling forward, his hands passing into the wall before him, no resistance at all.
‘Nimander, do not–’
Blackness.

Again, the readers eyes are drawn along with Nimander's to the icy, abyss-like, objectifying, Gazing threshold. Here's where the sublime and the weird really flavour the setting in this scene.
There's a bell’s echo here from the start of this scene: this sequence starts with Nimander discussing the uncertainty related to moving through a portal with Andarist away from the rest of his kin, a breaching. During these final lines of this first scene, we get a tension between us and the unknown, between what has happened and that-which-is-to-come, between what we’ve imagined about Malazan’s cosmos and some contorting of those assumptions. What’s beyond the veil decentres not only Nimander in its draw and pushing him to being-for-others, but it decentres the readers too. Hic sunt dracones, terra incognita, the sublime, the enigmatic, the terror. We’re made to feel small and inconsequential by this icy threshold.
It isn’t mysterious because it evades our Gaze like other fantastical things (e.g., many renditions of some archetypal tricksters found within various folklores), instead it invites our Gaze eventually since It Gazes back (almost Nietzschean).

Thoughts

Calling back to the genre conventions, this extended scene is one that definitely plays with the established conventions of Gothic literature and its descendants. Constantly, Erikson hits us with tension sewn into his choice of words in Nimander’s ruminations, his angst associated to diaspora, the notion of Dal Honese ancestors gazing upon their descendants from clay walls, absent ancestors that too haunt the same, the fields of scarecrows as desiccated (and harvested) bodies of worshippers, the alien plant-life, the ancient Jaghut tower, the ice threshold. Each of these (and those unmentioned) add onto to the dissociation (de-centering) of both Nimander and us, the readers. Each of us seem small and inconsequential to the dynamism of the cosmos: everything we know, including that of what we already know about the Malazan universe (and our own) can be challenged. We’re each just travellers who have stumbled upon a shattered visage in the desert that reads: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
This stands in contrast to — almost a revolution against — the modalities one can garnish from the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment that favour an almost religious rationalism and positivism. This is why I believe (and hope I have shown) that the existentialist (and those schools of thought peripheral to it) lens is apt. The genealogy of Gothic literature serves as a grammatical sandbox that gives way to exploring the things that existentialism tries to frame in its study, such as the dread and anxieties — the nothingness (no thing-ness) — of being.
Not only are the Dal Honese clay-filled ancestors present to alienate the reader by entertaining a certain ‘exoticism’ (by the readers’ juxtaposing such practices against what we consider ‘normal’ — here's where Sartre is applied to White or Male Gazes), but they are there as conduits for understanding how Nimander is affected by Others, by their Looks — his siblings, his absent father, his dead uncle, Kallor, Gothos, and the icy threshold — even if this ‘othering’ is one done only by Nimander onto himself (the house settling perceived as a footfall). This becomes more important in the scenes that follow.
So, how does this relate to the Eleint, dragonblood or sorcery? If you want to know now, please read ahead in the text — i.e., he future scenes in this sequence in Chapter 8 of TtH — you’ll find out. Otherwise, I’ll attempt to provide more clarity in the follow-up post(s). Until then, I just want put forth some questions:

• Are the Eleint actually dragons in the usual fantastical/conventional sense, or are they something different, something alien, something terrifying, something that evokes horror?
• If meaning-making (and, as such, essentializing) — according to my reading of existentialism — is a choice of ascribing/burying the Real with its facticity, what does this mean for K’rul’s warrenification and the birth of sorcery? What does this mean for aspecting, particularly for the Eleint and the Azathanai?

Beyond those questions (which align with my grander narrative shared in this collection of essays) — in regards to the plot, I think it is smart to continue asking, ‘why has Gothos ensured that Anomander’s children and Kallor would stumble upon his tower?’
¹ the facticity of what can be understood as objective states ascribed to things, including social constructions — thing-ness — e.g., how things are thrown into the world, a mode of existence that simply is, the contingent being of ordinary things, such the language(s) one speaks, one’s occupation, etc.
² the mode of existence of consciousness that stands in contrast to being-in-itself, “no thing-ness”, that which negates being-in-itself

As a response to a comment on my last post, "Top 10 Most Important Roads in Indy," I have created this latest countdown of the Top 25 Busiest Intersections in Indy. Note that these are the BUSIEST intersections in Indy, whereas the last post looked at roads most IMPORTANT to the city.
​
25.) Kessler Blvd and Michigan Rd
24.) 38th St and Dr.MLK Jr St/Michigan Rd
23.) 96th St and Meridian St
22.) Pendleton Pike and Sunnyside Rd
21.) Southport Rd and Emerson Av
20.) 38th St and Lafayette Rd
19.) 86th St and Michigan Rd
18.) 21st St and Shadeland Av
17.) County Line Rd and Emerson Av
16.) County Line Rd and Meridian St
15.) Washington St and Post Rd
14.) Kentucky Av and Mooresville Rd
13.) Kentucky Av and High School Rd
12.) Washington St and High School Rd
11.) County Line Rd and US 31
10.) Edgewood Av and US 31
9.) 82nd St and Allisonville Rd
8.) 71st St and Binford Blvd
7.) 38th St and High School Rd
6.) Pendleton Pike and Franklin Rd
5.) 86th St and Keystone Av
4.) Rockville Rd and High School Rd
3.) Fall Creek Pkwy and Keystone Av
2.) 96th St and Keystone Av
​
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Washington St and West St; Fall Creek Rd. and Shadeland Av; 10th St and Dr.MLK Jr St/West St; 86th St and Meridian St
​
And the busiest intersection in Indianapolis is....
​
1.) Rockville Rd and Country Club Rd
​
How Were These Entries Selected?
Unlike the last post, which was simply based on my experience living in the city for 25 years, this countdown was made using measurable data. The data comes from the INDOT Traffic Count Database System. The data was measured mostly in 2022 or later, with a few readings coming from as early as 2020.
Traffic Count Database System (TCDS) (ms2soft.com)
To make this list I searched for reading locations in Marion County and then sorted the list by highest AADT (Annual Average Daily Traffic).
As one might guess, nearly all of the top 100 were located on interstate highways (I-465, I-65, I-70, etc.). However, for this countdown I excluded all locations situated on interstate highways. This means I even excluded locations situated on the interchange of an interstate highway and a non-interstate (eg., Keystone and I-465 on the northside,, 82nd and I-69, etc.). I only included reading locations situated near interstate highways if there was a non-minor intersection nearby (eg., I included Rockville and High School since both roads are non-minor but excluded US 31 and Elbert St. since Elbert is a minor road).
Using this criteria, I compiled a list of 48 intersections in Marion County, each with an annual average of over 30,000 hits per day.
​
From this list of 48 intersections, to avoid redundancies I grouped entries together where all of the intersections occurred within 1 mile of a single intersection and kept the highest reading, then named the entry after the central/largest intersection (eg., I combined US 31/Stop 11, US 31/Stop 12, US 31/ Stop 13, US 31/Co. Line, Co.Line/Airport and called it US 31/Co. Line)
Below are the 28 entries I got after grouping, with the AADT in parentheses to the side.
​
Southside
Kentucky Av and Mooresville Rd (36,267)
Kentucky Av and High School Rd (36,348)
Meridian St and County Line Rd (35,231)
US 31 and County Line Rd (37,374)
US 31 and Edgewood Av (38,034)
Emerson Av and Southport Rd (34,201)
Emerson Av and County Line Rd (34,979)
​
Westside
Washington St and High School Rd (36,707)
Rockville Rd and High School (43,558)
Rockville Rd and Country Club Rd (46,971)
38th St and High School Rd (40,746)
​
Eastside
Washington St and Post Rd (36,090)
Pendleton Pike and Franklin Rd (42,892)
Pendleton Pike and Sunnyside Rd (33,867)
Shadeland Av and 21st St (34,809)
Shadeland Av and Fall Creek Rd. (30,101)
​
Northside
Allisonville Rd and 82nd St (39,468)
Michigan Rd and 86th St (34,386)
Keystone Av and 86th St (43,310)
Keystone Av and 96th St (46,929)
Meridian St and 86th St (31,421)
Meridian and 96th St (33,859)
​
​
Central
Lafayette Rd and 38th St (34,220)
West St./MLK St. and 10th (31,103)
MLK St./Michigan Rd and 38th St (31,819)
Michigan Rd and Kessler Blvd (31,736)
Fall Creek Pkwy and Keystone Av (45,904)
Binford Blvd and 71st St (40,146)
​
Surprised at anything in this list? Wondering how any intersections didn't make this list? Please feel free to comment below.
​
Thank you for reading!

Back story, my husband 35m and I 35F have been married for 7 years, together for a little more than 8. We lived in Austin, TX, where I’m from, and living there was just getting too expensive. We talked about other places and I brought up his hometown of Cleveland, OH. He was hesitant at first because well, it’s Cleveland, OH (his words). But he hadn’t seen his family in a long time and had lost some dear ones over the years. He and I finally made the decision to move to his hometown. Biggest mistake of my life. Sorry for the really long post, I’m not sure if it makes sense but I can hardly keep my thoughts straight.
Saturday night May 20th 11:16pm bill time stamp Applebee’s Got home 2:05am Went alone/ went with coworkers/ went with 1 worker, an OLD LADY (all the lies I heard) he was actually supposed to be at work till 7am.
Memorial Day weekend
Well, he cheated. It wasn’t an OLD LADY it was an ex. He apparently wants her and he doesn’t want to lose her a second time. I’m so disappointed, so angry, so hurt.
Sometimes I just can’t. He’s a totally different person to me now. I used to think of him as someone who would never hurt me, ever. And now I just can’t stop picturing him kissing her, holding her, fondling her. Wanting to be with her, wanting to have sex with her. It’s just too much.
He lied to my fucking face Saturday night. This asshole gave that bitch the heads up about me finding out about them and they planned a fucking fake goodbye that just reeked of BULLSHIT!!!! I bet they had a good laugh that night after I feel asleep. I just fucking knew it was bullshit. It completely cancelled out everything that happened in the night to early morning hours of Sunday. He “opened up” to me, he cried. Blah blah blah is was I thought about it all when I read that these fuckers didn’t give a shit about anyone else’s feelings but their own. And when I confronted him about it he was just flabbergasted. He slightly denied it and kept denying until I muttered the word “chaos”. He had the actual fucking gall to be angry with me that I found out it was all bullshit that I went through his stuff. Please what I found was way fucking worse than me going through your stuff. I did apologize for invading his privacy and eventually he said that he understood why.
Am I just hearing more lies?!?! I don’t fucking know what’s the truth anymore. Is everything that comes out of his mouth a lie. I cannot tell what is lie and what is truth. It’s driving me crazy.
I met his family at a big picnic and it took all my fucking strength not to break down. I almost did a couple times. It was so strange everyone happy to see him and thinking how great he was. Not knowing the horrible amount of pain I was in. Not knowing what their precious Jab had done to his wife. I WANTED TO FUCKING SCREAM!!!!!!
Now he’s “ok” with cutting her out of his life (Monday) but on Saturday evening he lied to my fucking face. He pretended to cut her out and those two fucking bastards were just gonna keep talking/fucking flirting and god knows what else.
I want to believe him, I really really do. I just don’t know if I can. He’s already lied to me so many times, I just don’t know if I buy that NOW he no longer cares about her. He keeps saying “fuck her” “don’t think about her”. And gets so emotional when telling me. He almost wants to cry when he tells me to “forget her”. Reminds me of the “tears” when he “ended their friendship/perverted texting/meeting”. Reminds me of the “tears” from last Sunday when I was grilling him about who he was there with at Applebee’s and he just made me feel like a fucking idiot when I found out the actual truth. Those “tears” to me signify that he is lying to me. He was all those other time with his damn fucking “tears”.
Part of me feels that as soon as I fall asleep that’s he’s gonna be texting her. As soon as I’m gone for work tomorrow (Tuesday) he’s gonna text her. They’re just gonna be laughing at me that he was able to sucker me in to more of his lies. They’re gonna be talking about how much they want each other, how they’re gonna have to be more careful and how they love how each other feels. I JUST CANT WITH THIS!
It breaks my heart so fucking much I can’t even deal with the pain, I don’t know how. I can’t eat, can’t sleep. I have to plaster happiness on my face because seeing him all torn up makes me feel bad. Like bitch fucking please, I shouldn’t feel bad for anything. I may have gone through his stuff but only because I knew something was off. And sure enough I found what I didn’t want to find. I was really hoping I was wrong, that I was being unreasonable or “crazy” like he said I was last Sunday when I grilled him about Applebees.
At this point I’ve said I’m gonna trust him, even though my dumbass really shouldn’t. Like please he’s already burned that fucking bridge more than once. I’m either really fucking stupid or just very naïve to believe him after everything’s that happened.
I still don’t know, I’m still not 100% I’m maybe like at a 40% and that’s being generous. I’m so fucking torn and it’s driving me crazy trying to decide what to do. I don’t know if I can just trust him and never bring it up again. I just know it’s gonna eat me alive, the uncertainty.
I wish this never happened, I wish we NEVER FUCKING MOVED UP HERE!!! I never thought he’d hurt me like this. I just want to scream so fucking loud that my damn ears pop!!!!
WE HADNT EVEN BEEN HERE IN CLEVELAND FOR A MONTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I just don’t know what to do, this has never happen to me before. I’m just so entirely heartbroken and yet for some reason I still want him, why!?!

Im super confused here, and im not sure how to fix this. In my editor, I'm trying to edit normally, but for some reason this time when I opened hitfilms to my file, the audio and video arent synced. Ive been working on this for months so Im certain it isn't a mistake on my end. I know this because if I'm playing the video, even if I see one thing on screen, it simply changes when I pause. It shows the correct video when paused but not when playing. It seems to be playing the video 5 seconds too early at the 4:40 mark. It seems when I edit any clip slightly, and undo that change, the clip now plays at the correct time. But when I close and reopen, it causes the same bug. Any idea why this is?

Hey, since a couple of years I have conversations with a person I have met on an online platform. But here’s the problem: I don’t feel anything for her on a social scale, but she thinks I’m a good friend because we have talked a lot. Ironically, the conversation started because I criticized her for being unreasonable rude to someone. I even find her terribly annoying, why? She is highly extravert and I’m incredible introvert. And she even had a crush on me….
She keeps talking about her friends, family and life including throwing names I’ve never heard of, and referring to her already told stories every time and ask me what I think of it. It’s the ultimate hell called small-talk.
1 year ago I met her for the first time in real life because after years of avoiding she came with that excuse I had to help her with a school project she literally pushed on me and couldn’t cancel anymore. And I’m that introvert that thought: let’s do it, then it’s over for another couple years.
And guess what: it was horrible. While she was thinking ‘finally after all those years!’, I was thinking: kill me. 90% of the ‘conversation’ (is it if only one person claims the talk?) was pure small-talk, hysterically laughing of her own jokes and asking what I thought of it all. At the end while I was bringing her to the bus station she wanted to hug and take a selfie. When I walked to my home, the only thing I did was breathing out.
I know I’m just feeding her by keep talking with her online, because I don’t want to be rude. But often, I just read her messages without even reacting if it’s about the 528th person she mentioned by name.
But what should I do? Should I break up the situation after all those years? She deserves the truth tbh. But I don’t want to be that rude to suddenly end it. What do you think? How do you tell an extrovert she doesn’t has a place in my life and even would have been thrown out since the beginning?

I think all INFJ men know how hard it is for us to approach a woman
We don't like the uncertainty if the interaction will be positive or negative (Ni). Empathy makes us weary of making her feel uncomfortable (Fe). We know the odds are low of it working out (Ti). And we are naturally observers of what's around us, we're not great in interacting with our environment at all (Se).
Of course approaching women isn't easy for any personality type, but it's especially difficult for an INFJ man.
So INFJ men, how do you approach women? What are some things you have done that were successful?
The problem I've seen is most advice about approaching women always seems to come from some kind of ESxx viewpoint, and built around ESxx strongpoints. While men with ESxx personalities may be the best at approaching, it's a waste of time to try and adopt their mindset and methods if you don't have their MBTI skillset.
They'll simply tell you 'do this or do that' because it's easy and natural to them, thanks to their function stack, but it's going to be awkward and miserable for you.

For young biology teachers who are looking for inspiration and suggestions, I offer this free manual that addresses teaching methods that take today's high school students directly into Nature as an introduction to Biology. I developed it across 40 years of blissful teaching. Enjoy it! Have fun with it!
It took quite a few years to figure out how to teach nature-illiterate high school students introductory biology. Richard Louv's The Last Child in the Woods (2008, Algonquin Books) reinforced in me the notion that Biology as a subject was being taught backwards. Aldo Leopold said as much in 1938. For a ninth grader, the notion that submicroscopic biochemical processes such as the Calvin Cycle or protein synthesis are more basic than finding oneself at home in his or her biological community is simply incorrect. We’re teaching biology without context. We need to get kids into the field, seeing and hearing Nature, learning to observe, question, hypothesize, and design experiments. Later, we can ferret out the subtle processes that drive the organism. This book is a manual for biology teachers, beginning with nature-literacy. The chapters contain field experiments to address biodiversity measurement, population size estimation, community similarity, transect analysis, natural selection, interspecific competition, and landscape boundaries. I teach these concepts during the fall and spring, when the weather is favorable.The cold months can be spent in the lab to study enzyme activity, calorimetry, measurements of cellular respiration and photosynthesis, osmosis and diffusion, DNA extraction and electrophoresis, genetics, and modeling of molecular systems and processes. It’s also a good time for microscopy and drawing skills development.
It is free. Enjoy it, have fun with it.
https://books.apple.com/us/book/teaching-biology-to-nature-illiterate-students/id1447756384

CREDIT PROFILE

• Current credit cards you are the primary account holder of:
  • CSP - $30k Limit - Opened in 2018
  • BoA Customized Cash Rewards - $20k Limit - Opened in 2012
• FICO Scores with source (see note on FICO score sources below):
  • 796
• Oldest credit card account age with you as primary name on the account: 10 years
  • Number of personal credit cards approved for in the past 6 months: 0
  • Number of personal credit cards approved for in the past 12 months: 0
  • Number of personal credit cards approved for in the past 24 months: 0
• Annual income $: $250k

CATEGORIES

• OK with category-specific cards?: Yes
• OK with rotating category cards?: No
• Estimate average monthly spend in the categories below. Only include what you can pay by credit card.
  • Dining $: $600
  • Groceries $: $800 (Most groceries are done at TJ and Safeway)
  • Gas $: $200
  • Travel $:
    • Flights: $800
    • Hotels: $600
    • UbeLyft: $100
• Do you plan on using this card abroad for a significant length of time (study abroad, digital nomad, expat, extended travel)?: No
• Any other significant, regular credit card spend you didn't include above?: $1000 (Shopping, including Amazon)
• Can you pay rent by credit card? No

MEMBERSHIPS & SUBSCRIPTIONS (delete lines that don't apply)

• Current member of Amazon Prime?: Yes
• Current member of Costco? Yes
• Current member of Chase, US Bank or any other big bank?: Chase and BoA
• Are you open to Business Cards?: No

PURPOSE

• What's the purpose of your next card (choose ONE)?: SUB and Cashback
• Do you have any cards you've been looking at? Amex Blue Cash Preferred for Groceries, Chase Trifecta, Citi Premier

I have been living under a rock and finally catching up on how to best utilize credit cards. I'm looking to get at least 2 more in the near future and start building from there to maximize cashback and rewards. I will have a significant purchase in the near future ~$10k (In the next 2 months probably) so I would like to maximize the rewards. I also read that I could downgrade my CSP and then re-open it to get the SUB. Will I lose any of my UR points if I do that?

Hi everyone, this is going to be long so I apologise. I am aware that this is a first world problem but it’s less about the actual trip and more about preserving my friendship with someone I consider one of my best friends.
I (21F) went to school with these 3 people, let’s call my close friend (S), her cousin (M) and his girlfriend (B). I recently got back in touch with M and B after we attended an event for S. We hung out a couple times and decided to plan a trip for the summer. Italy and France.
This is obviously very exciting and I felt very grateful to be able to plan such a fun trip with my friends but very early on I ran into an issue which is budget. We don’t live in the US and are all well off in our country but two of them S & M (the cousins) are ridiculously rich even by western country standards. I’m going to list my issues so it’s easier to read.

1. Airplane tickets. They wanted to go business class but I wanted economy so I could spend my money on shopping. They gave each other looks and I caught on so I told them to go business and I would happily sit in economy. It was a little awkward but in everyone’s best interest so they agreed and we moved on.
   
2. Hotels. M sent us an itinerary $350 per night per person. I wanted to be in safe hotels so I agreed. A few weeks later this has changed to $550 per night and this was not okay with me. I’m an anxious person and didn’t want to cause conflict so I call someone for advice and they told me to just suck it up and communicate and that if S is really a true friend they’d understand and want me to be comfortable. I call S and address my concerns and they are nice about it and told me nothing is finalised and of course we can change it. I was relieved. A few weeks later nothing has changed and it’s like the conversation never happened. Instead of getting the cheapest room at the fancy hotels they wanted balconies that no one is ever going to use. I tried to say do we really need a balcony and they just laughed it off.
   
3. Booking restaurants. We meet up to plan the small things. I have a friend who lives in France so I ask for recommendations. They send back a long message with restaurants and bars. We are going through this list and M starts making jokes about how they are inexpensive and probably suck. (€30 a dish) so yes not Michelin star but not unhygienic by any means. Only wanting to go to caviar lobster restaurants but I stay silent because I like food too and it’s fine.
   
4. Other activities. Boat day, rental car. Need the fanciest boat but I don’t say anything because boards are fun and it’s fine. Rental car for one day is €2800 ( I won’t be driving) so it doesn’t matter to me if it’s a vintage sports car or just a taxi. I say no because they called me and made jokes about how I’m sitting in the backseat alone because B has now cancelled due to work.
   
5. B has cancelled. I feel unheard and I don’t want to cheat them out of their luxury trip experience. I don’t want to keep nagging about things. It’s not fair to them or me. Not to mention things like the boat and car are now divided by 3 not 4. Without B I feel like the third wheel between two cousins who are best friends. They also speak a different regional language than me and often start communicating that way and I have to ask that they don’t do that multiple times a day. I feel left out and don’t want to not enjoy myself fully. I don’t know what to do but cancel at this point because our preferences are different.
   

I don’t think badly of S at all. They think that getting regular rooms instead of suites is a compromise. They think using Ubers rather than getting a car + chauffeur is a compromise. If I could afford that, of course I would go. I know that if I go on the trip, many more things like this will come up and at this point I just care about preserving my friendship with S.
If I do cancel, they will still go without me. So I wouldn’t be ruining it for anyone else. I just need advice on how to approach the situation and try to get S to see it from my side.
If you got this far, thank you for reading and I apologise for the formatting since I’m on my phone.