If you're reading this, perhaps you're like me. You have most things you want in GTA Online. You've "done it all". And now you're bored.
But... have you *really* done it all? Turns out, most of us haven't. There's so much to do in this game, and it's easy to get stuck in old habits that prevent us from discovering everything there is to do in Los Santos!
So I began writing down all my ideas for having fun in the game, and basically use these suggestions as guidelines to always find something new to do. It has completely reinvigorated my joy for the game, and I hope it can help you do the same!
If you're having trouble with motivation or inspiration, then I suggest picking something at random from the list and just doing it! You might disccover that you love it, just like I did!
And if you have anything more to add, please share your comments so that we can all help build this list together. :)
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Let's go!
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• Break Your Habits: Most people have a routine that they repeat over and over again until they get burned out and bored with the game! Your number one goal for having fun must be to break your old habits!
• Grind Less: If you've played for a long time, there's absolutely zero reason to grind big piles of useless money. People often develop bad habits where they finally grind so much that they forget to have fun. The "wonder" of the world completely vanishes when everything becomes about optimal times and optimal routes and optimal mission rotations. Relax! Start exploring everything that the game has to offer instead! Dare to do the "less optimal" routes, and have the courage to stop stressing about the "time efficiency" when you do the game's content. Sure, perhaps you can do a mission in 2 minutes with an Oppressor Mk2, but why not relax, put on a podcast, and do a relaxing 5 minute drive instead? Relax and have fun!
• Switch Off the Business Mindset: Why grind at all? Why do businesses at all? What do you really need the money for, whatsoever? If it feels like grinding, do something else that's more fun for you! Stop thinking about the money and start thinking about the real-world fun you're having! Start actually enjoying all the things you've previously grinded for! Perhaps you might enjoy treating GTA as a racing simulator where you mostly do challenges/race maps instead? There's so much more to do that isn't purely related to earning money!
• Accept All Invites: When you see invites to races, challenges, missions, etc, accept them! You will broaden your horizons about what you can do in the game, and you will often make the newbies very happy! Of course, if it turns out they're a hopelessly stupid newbie who keeps dying and never improves, then sure, I'd suggest leaving the heist to save your time and sanity. But most of the time, the other players will be smart enough to learn quickly. You can easily make great, new friends this way!
• Protect the Newbies: If you see someone doing a sales mission in a public lobby, why not fly over there in a powerful airborne vehicle (or heck, a missile-equipped Toreador car), and then follow them as their bodyguard against any griefers that may appear!
• Join People's CEO/MC: You can list yourself as "looking for work" via the interaction menu, which will alert other people that there's someone looking for work in the session. You can then join them and help people out with their missions, which is often a fun and relaxing activity for a while!
• Get a Crew: Look around for a crew of like-minded people. They exist. There are crews that specialize in heisting with competent players. There are crews that focus on racing. There are crews for Arena War. There are crews that only do LS Car Meet challenges/races. There's even crews specialized in doing sales missions together, by helping each other with business sales, if that's your thing! Finding a group of people with a compatible mindset and interests really pays off in the end!
• Switch Sessions: You can jump between multiple public sessions until you find one that matches your mood. Perhaps a nice, quiet sessions without griefers, perfect for doing sales missions? Or maybe one where there's a group of people that are actively doing something fun, which you can join in on? Don't just settle for your session. Explore what's out there!
• Do the Stupid Things: Grab your friends or some randoms, and challenge each other to do the most stupid and random things you can think of. The game is a sandbox. So start acting like it! For example, why not challenge each other with things like "everyone starts at the beach without any vehicles, your goal is to get to the Senora Desert convenience store, and you're only allowed to use stolen vehicles, the first person to reach the desert wins", or how about "everyone jumps from the Maze Bank Tower and your goal is to ride your parachute all the way to the ferris wheel". Is that even possible? Who knows! Let's find out!
• Become a Map Creator: If you've had fun making random challenges in freeroam, why not make them into more formal challenges, by creating actual maps? The map creator is very advanced. You can modify the world, add checkpoints anywhere you want, you could make a bicycle race, add pedestrians, enable weapon wheel usage, add parachute jumps, stunt jumps, survival modes, etc. Go wild!
• River Racing: The game has two epic rivers that start at the "Alamo Sea" (desert lake) and head west out to the ocean. Why not do a race with some friends? Get the Blazer Aqua amphibious quad bike and start at the desert, then race through one of the rivers, which is full of fun jumps. Next, decide on a destination (such as the Del Perro Pier) and do the rest of the drive on roads to see who gets there first.
• Stop Flying: Whenever a game lets you fly, you end up skipping huge amounts of content and world design and just flying directly above it all. That's nice if you want to get somewhere efficiently, but it really breaks the game's immersion. Try driving everywhere instead!
• Learn to Fly: Many players are awful at flying (especially the helicopters). Why not practice your flying skills? Perhaps try landing your helicopter at very tight spots, on rooftops, and other fun locations!
• Use Motorcycles: They're more thrilling than cars, because crashing actually has consequences. They're also very fast and agile, which feels awesome while driving through the city!
• Oppressor MK1: Fly around the map, trying to create your own challenges such as flying over the water or climbing Mount Chiliad.
• Climb the Mountain: Find various fun vehicles and attempt to climb Mount Chiliad in them. There's lots of fun to be had with motorcycles at the mountain!
• BMX Tricks: There are so many skate parks and BMX bicycle stunt locations in the city. Why not look at some BMX stunt videos for inspiration?
• Throw Away the GPS: Stop staring at the minimap while driving! This is super fun. Let's say that you need to get to Simeon's shop. Instead of opening up the world map and setting a map marker and following the GPS line like a lemming, try to train yourself to navigate the city! Drive the streets, look at the surroundings and actually navigate! It's so much fun and you'll feel way more relaxed. The city will also feel way more immersive. You can even modify the minimap via "Settings: Display: Radar = Blips", which hides the map so that you can't see the shape of the streets by glancing at the minimap anymore. You can even disable it completely, but unfortunately it also hides the healthbar if you do that.
• Use First Person: You can change the game's camera mode to first person, which is a really unique and immersive way to play the game. Steal some cars and go cruising! It will feel like an entirely different game when you get used to it!
• Take Selfies: Find beautiful locations and attempt to take great screenshots, with perfect framing and composition! You can use the game's built-in snapmatic camera, or you can use your regular screenshot key instead! Collecting photos of your adventures is a nice way to remember where you've been!
• Businesses: There are so many businesses in the game, and it's easy to forget about them after a while. Look at your businesses and begin doing their sourcing and sales missons again! Most of us quit them because they're very grindy, but after a long time away from them, they'll feel fresh again. And they'll feel much more relaxing if you vary between your different businesses and you only do one or two missions at a time, to never get bored.
• Nightclub: Do the promotion/popularity missions, which involve going around town and promoting the nightclub, or helping to remove unwanted or drunk guests from the club. All of that improves your popularity, which improves the passive income you're earning from the club!
• Get the DJs: The nightclub has multiple DJs. Why not unlock them all? Their missions are very fun, and you'll earn new music for your club.
• Bunker: Why not do some manual supply missions, just to relax and have fun? Sure, the optimal way to make money with the bunker is to buy the supplies and do "better" things with your time instead of sourcing supplies, but why does everything have to be about ultimate efficiency all the time? If you're a long-time player, you already have lots of money and you need new things to do!
• Contact Missions: So many people don't even know that you can get missions by calling NPCs on the phone. It's named "contact missions" and they can be very fun. I recommend calling Dax and doing "Request Work" from him, because his missions are very varied and after you've done enough you get various important rewards, such as upgrades for your Acid Lab business.
• CEO/VIP Work: When you're a CEO, you can start SecuroServ missions via the interaction menu. There's lots of fun ones! For example, why not get your favorite car, relax and do the Sightseer mission, seeing where the map markers will take you while you enjoy the relaxing drive? The mission gives you 15 minutes, which is plenty of time to take the scenic route.
• Terrorbyte Missions: Another forgotten relic! The terrorbyte has lots of fun missions which are very good for variation. They used to be the best "active" way to earn money in GTA. Most players who grinded those missions have only done the "optimal rotation", but how about actually doing all of the available missions for fun?
• Rockstar Jobs: There are so many high-quality maps, races and challenge modes in the game. Explore the official list of RockstaCurated jobs in the game's pause menu. There's a ton of them!
• Community Jobs: There's a ton of cool community maps in the game. Remember to favorite the ones you liked so that you can easily start the same again!
• Auto Shop: Do the customer car customization and delivery jobs, and do the heists! They can be done solo.
• MC Club: Do the customer motorcycle customization and delivery jobs.
• Vehicle Warehouse: Do the Import/Export car theft and sales missions. Be sure to use the trick that ensures you only get high-end cars (permanently fill the warehouse with every worthless sourced car in the game, then you will only get high-end cars after that).
• Acid Lab: The best passive income business in the game. Spend some time doing Dax's contact missions to fully upgrade your lab's efficiency and it will become very profitable. Then mix up your gameplay between both sourcing Acid supplies or buying them. And do the sales missions.
• Franklin's Agency: Do the Dr. Dre story missions, then do 201x Security Contract missions until you've unlocked the highest amount of passive daily income (it goes up by $100 every time you do a mission, capped at $20,000 after having done 201 contracts).
• Payphone Hits: They're unlocked after doing at least 3 Security Contract missions. Then you can pick up assassination contracts from ringing payphones. They're very profitable.
• Weekly Time Trials: Do the camotorcycle time trial and the RC car time trial every week, they're a good way to learn how to drive and they give a nice bit of money! Remember that you can hold a key to respawn at the start of the race before the time has ended, if you're sure that you won't make it in time.
• Daily Objectives: In your interaction menu, look at the Objectives and complete them. They're a good way to be inspired to do things you might not do otherwise.
• Daily Collectible Hunts: G's Cache (hunt for the hidden street cache), Kosatka submarine treasure hunt, Street dealer (find it and sell to it every day), etc.
• Get a Fresh Look: Create a new character outfit (clothes, hairstyle, tattoos, mask).
• Use Different Weapons: Challenge yourself to use different weapons than the same old, boring weapon you always use. For example, how about only using the Heavy Revolver? Make those shots count!
• Modify Your Weapons: Change their styles and attachments.
• Tune Your Precious Car: You might have a "perfectly tuned" car that you've been driving for years and that you're always using. Why not modify it a bit? Put a different livery on it, and some different colors at least? What felt "fresh" two years ago would just be contributing to a feeling of "staleness" today. Freshen things up!
• Ride of the Day: Most long-time players have around a hundred vehicles, but most of them collect dust. Why not set fun "challenge" rules for yourself, such as randomly selecting a vehicle and using only that vehicle on that real-life day?
• Outfit of the Day: Why not make it your goal to create a new character "outfit of the day" (or week) whenever you log in? It's a great way to get a fresh feeling every time you play!
• Minigames: How about some Golf, Tennis, Darts or Arm Wrestling?
• Gang Attacks: Find a gang and eliminate them!
• Stash Houses: Find the stash houses and raid them for resources for your businesses.
• Parachute: Go somewhere high up and do a parachute dive! Better yet, look for the Junk Energy Skydives challenges on the map, or do Dom's parachute challenge (which is a special skydive at a random location).
• San Andreas Flight School: Do the flight school challenges! They're at the Los Santos Airport, at the airplane icon!
• Gun Range Challenges: Complete the Bunker's and Ammo-Nation Gun Range shooting challenges!
• Gun Range with Friends: Challenge a friend to the gun range mini-games, where you compete to see who is the most accurate!
• MC Club Missions: Form a MC club with at least one friend, then ride in formation and start MC missions via the interaction menu.
• MC Businesses: Yes, they're the most hated businesses in the game, but why not do them a little bit? You could do a little bit of supplying and a few small sales missions, to ensure that you have small sales. Or, team up with friends and take turns helping each other do larger sales.
• Racing: Do Open Wheel, Stunt Races, Transform Races, and Regular Races. There are so many different kinds of races in the game! The transform races are the newest feature, and are very cool, since you might drive a supercar down the street to the airport, then transform into a plane and fly through the sky, and other epic things, all in the same race map!
• LS Car Meet: Do the challenges, races and rank up your LS Car Meet rank. Try to win the Prize Ride!
• Lobby Car Meets: You can try arranging car meets with other people in the lobby, to check out each other's cars! Just beware of griefers. You may want to do it in the LS Car Meet building to avoid the griefer explosions, or just switch to a lobby with cooler people.
• Arcade: Play the arcade games and try to beat them! Some of them have hidden rewards for completing the game or completing certain challenges.
• Achievements: Look at the pause menu's Stats - Awards section, and pick some award that you'll try to complete! There are so many fun challenges in there, such as attempting to parachute for more than 3 minutes, or robbing every store on the map (you can see the checkmarks on the map to know if you've robbed those stores).
• Stunt Jumps: There are 50 stunt jump locations on the map, which unlock a few rewards and are also really fun to complete!
• Unlock Vehicle Colors: You may have noticed that certain colors are locked behind challenges, such as winning a certain amount of races. Why not finally unlock those colors you've always wanted but were always "too lazy" to unlock? You'll get to enjoy some flashy, new vehicle colors!
• Arena War: Very fun, but unfortunately hard to get a group going for it. But if you can get a group, Arena War is super fun.
• Freemode Battles: Join a large lobby and just do whatever you want while you're waiting for freemode battles, which start every 20 minutes and will alternate between Business Battles and Freemode Challenges. Then attempt to win those battles! Events will only trigger when there are at least 4 players outdoors, and they cannot be in the same CEO/MC.
• Ride with Strangers: Pick your nicest car and then drive around and invite strangers to either ride with you or do impromptu street race 1v1 challenges.
• Freemode Map Markers: Look at the map. There are icons and glowing markers everywhere on the map/streets. Visit whichever icon is nearest your current location and see what's there! Remember that you can go "On Call" (queue) for public races/missions while you're waiting for them to fill up, which lets you stay in Freemode while you're waiting.
• Weekly Bonuses: Look at the Rockstar Newswire to see what the weekly bonus money is, and focus on doing that business/event for a while, to earn some money!
• Max Your Stats: Get all your stats to maximum! Most people haven't finished Strength, which can be gradually maxed for fun by simply punching every civilian you see.
• Invade the Military: Invade the military base at Fort Zancudo with some friends, and make it your mission to steal a Lazer jet plane.
• Heists: Do some heist preps or full heists for fun! Many of them can be casually setup while solo, which is very relaxing! Most of the newer heists can even be completed while solo!
• Change Your Heist Routes: You don't have to always do the same approach over and over again. Most heists have a lot of different approaches. For example, have you ever successfully completed the "Silent and Sneaky" approach at the Casino? Start exploring the different possibilities out there!
• Yellow Mission Markers: The yellow letters/markers on the map show the location of significant storyline missions (such as ULP, Agency, Acid Lab, etc). Visit those locations and start completing the stories that GTA Online has to offer!
• Do the Jobs: Go to "Online - Jobs" in the pause menu, and explore the available options!
• Answer the Calls: There are so many fun missions for English Dave, the various DJs at the Music Locker, the Casino staff, etc. In most cases, you'll also get some kind of reward if you finish them all! You might even get them to stop calling you when you've finished everything, which is a nice reward in itself!
• Check Your Texts/Emails: There's a lot of "mini missions" that arrive via emails/text messages. For example, Simeon asks you to steal certain cars every day. There's also an early game treasure hunt which starts through an email.
• Use Quick Join: There's an app on your phone named "Quick Join". It queues you for a rapid, random job. It's a great way to explore new content, meet new people and to help them with the queues for their own missions.
• Browse the Internet: There are a ton of funny parody websites in GTA Online's internet browser. Explore what's out there!
• Watch TV/Movies: Have you seen all the TV shows and cinema movies yet? If not, relax and have some fun! :)
• Customize Your Phone: You can change the theme, background, ringtone and other settings for your in-game phone. Why not change things a bit?
• Don't Be Annoyed: The phone calls and missions may seem annoying, but try actually relaxing and doing them. Listen to the phone calls. Call the NPCs. Do their missions! They are pretty nice and chill activities which gives you something to do in the game and some challenges.
• Use a Gamepad: If you're a PC player, you'll know that most of the game is too easy, since the aiming and enemy difficulty was balanced for console (gamepad) players. Try using a gamepad on PC! Not only will your driving and flying be massively improved, you'll also have a much more fun fun time when fighting enemies, since you can't just "360 No Scope" everything with your superior pointing device anymore. You'll even get immersive rumble that lets you feel the engine of your cars! How cool is that?! The game's options lets you finetune the sensitivity and aiming mode, and true professionals will use "Free Aim" which completely disables the auto-aiming.
• Meet Different People: If you're mostly a heist person, look for someone who loves cars and start hanging out with them to absorb some of their passion for another aspect of the game. You might learn to love car tuning too!
• Trade Prices: Many vehicles in the game have trade prices which give you a massive discount on the vehicle if you complete the challenge first. So set your eyes on a nice vehicle and do its challenges for fun! The discount you're earning will be like earning a huge sum of money that you put towards that specific vehicle. For example, a 2 million dollar discount on a vehicle you wanted is the same as if you had just earned 2 million dollars that you decided to spend on that vehicle! So don't sleep on the trade price discounts! They're a fun challenge with a very high monetary value!
• Bunker Research: If you have a bunker, try doing the research! You can unlock a ton of cool and super useful vehicle and weapon modifications! The explosive and incendiary ammo are must-haves.
• Mobile Operations Missions: The Mobile Operations Center is a forgotten business. It exists in your bunker, but you can request it via your Interaction Menu. Enter the truck's trailer, and then start missions from the computer in the command room!
• Avenger: Take your Avenger out for a drive! It's an extremely powerful, heavily armored aircraft and can be customized with various fun additions.
• Relaxing Yacht: Why not purchase or upgrade your yacht, and chill on it for a while with some friends? It even has lots of fun water vehicles parked in the water at the yacht, and helicopter pads for easy travel.
• Yacht Missions: You can start the fun "A Superyacht Life" mission series from the captain on your yacht. You'll even get a fun Yacht Captain outfit if you complete them all as host.
• Special Vehicle Work: The Vehicle Warehouse provides various epic missions whose "main" purpose is to unlock trade prices on various weaponized vehicles, but the missions themselves are fun too. Most players only do the specific missions for the vehicles they wanted to buy. Why not complete them all at least once, or play them again for fun?
• Collectibles: The map is full of collectible items, such as USB music sticks, playing cards, action figures, signal jammers (to unlock the best hacker for the Casino heist), etc. Why not relax and do them all for fun? They all unlock something fun or useful!
• Dream Vehicle: Relax, do some research about vehicles are available in the game, and set your eyes on a new "dream vehicle". Then work towards earning it and pimping it just the way you want it! Having a goal is fun!
• Test Drives: Check out the weekly test drives at the "Luxury Autos" shop, at Simeon's "Premium Deluxe Motorsport", and at the "LS Car Meet". You might find your new dream vehicle!
• Collect Vehicle Sets: You might have fun building specific collections, such as all Benny's vehicles in the game, etc. Setting goals for yourself about specific vehicle collections gives you something to strive for, and means that there's a lot of new things you'll need to buy and tune, which will keep you busy for a while!
• Sell Vehicles: Let's be honest, there are a lot of stinkers in your collection. Why not sell them? Just beware of the game's daily sell limit. The limit will be hit somewhere around 30-40 cars sold in 24 real-life hours. I'd suggest only selling 1-5 cars per real life day, which ensures that you'll never face the anger of Rockstar, and you'll have more time to make deliberate choices about which vehicles to get rid of. You'll also be getting roughly 50% of your previously spent money back for each sold vehicle! I'd recommend forcing yourself to drive a vehicle for a while before selling it, and looking at its customizations to see if you'd like it if you changed its style a bit, so that you're absolutely sure that you don't want it.
• Organize Your Vehicles: A lot of people have a complete mess in their garages. Why not begin sorting your cars, such as placing all your best cars at the premium display spots in your office garage? Perhaps organizing the floors by vehicle type? You can have lots of fun and you'll get a much better overview of your available vehicles.
• Relocate Yourself: If you've been staring at the same, old, boring spot for years, it could be fun to move! Most players choose the ugly, industrial, "optimal" locations. Why not relax and move to the beautiful beach instead? The Lombank office, the Insert Coin arcade, the Vespucci Beach MC clubhouse, the Del Perro Nightclub, the Strawberry auto shop, and the Vespucci Canals agency are all very beautiful locations with amazing interior and exterior design and great views! They're also very well placed for all of their business purposes!
• Browse in Person: When you're looking at real estate on the internet, things look very boring and impersonal. Why not take a drive around the city and look at the "real estate for sale" map markers in person? Perhaps you'll find a great new location for your home! However, if it's a multi-apartment house, I recommend checking YouTube for the various room views, to find the room with the best view before you buy it.
• Upgrade Your Properties/Businesses: If you haven't yet upgraded all of the equipment for a business, it's a great idea to upgrade it to improve its efficiency and safety. Or how about changing the interior design for fun, to replace the "same old daily view" with a fresh new look?
• Buy Every Arcade Machine: There are so many fun minigame machines for your arcade. Why not buy them all and pimp that place out? It's a nice place to relax, and even get some rewards for completing the games.
• Get All Passive Businesses: Why not work towards getting and fully upgrading all of the passive incomes in the game? Such as the Nightclub (which automatically generates money in the safe based on popularity, and generates MC business products to sell from its basement), the Acid Lab (which can be restocked with a simple phone call to Mutt, and has easy sales missions), the Arcade (which generates $5000 per in-game day when you've filled all of its interior slots with arcade machines, which can all be the same machine if you want), the Agency (which generates up to $20000 per in-game day based on how many Security Contracts you've completed), Street Dealers (finding the daily street dealer is much faster than regular sales missions, and they pay more than regular missions), Bunker (you can resupply it via one click with the Master Control Terminal in your Arcade, and then simply sell the product when it's still less than 25% full, thus guaranteeing a single sales vehicle every time). An added bonus of having passive businesses is the fact that they let you do other things in the game, such as doing racing and other fun challenges, while your businesses passively produce for you!
• Start Fresh: Did you know that your online account has two character slots? You can actually start fresh by simply withdrawing all of you banked money to your primary character, so that there's $0 in the bank. Then create a new character, which will begin at $0. Then relax and enjoy the ride of building a new empire. I suggest doing things differently this time. For example, if your primary character owns every business, why not just focus on a specific business this time, such as the CEO businesses (cargo crates), or just the vehicle warehouse, etc? Take this opportunity to simplify and avoid grinding, while still building a new playstyle to keep things fresh! Why not skip the Kosatka, so that you don't have the "easy Cayo Perico money" either? This slower, more deliberate, old-school way of making money will ensure that you have lots of fun, and you can set your own goals for what vehicles you want to save up money for on your new character! If you get tired of the grind, just switch back to your primary character again and enjoy the wealth. You can even delete your secondary character again to start fresh as many times as you want to.
• Spend Your Money: Having $100 million unused in the bank is just a completely pointless number, and is basically worth the same as having $0 in the bank if you aren't even using it. Unless your goal is to collect a specific amount of money for fun, I'd instead suggest that you actually start spending absolutely all of your money! Because if you can succeed in being perpetually slightly low on cash, you'll have much more reason to care about doing your businesses when you do want to buy something, which in turn drives your motivation to play again! Having a huge stash of money is bad for your motivation to play! Having a huge sash of money is like having an endless "Rich Daddy's Credit Card" in your wallet. Get rid of that credit card, buy a bunch of fun stuff, and enjoy the game more as a result!
• Play the Story: The vast majority of GTA Online players have barely touched the offline story. Why not relax with the story from time to time, gradually making your way through the epic offline story that started it all?
• Take a Break: If you're truly not finding any fun anymore, then take a break, perhaps a few weeks or a month is all you need to enjoy the game again! They also release content updates roughly twice per year, so you'll always have something new to return to in the future! :)

If you're reading this, perhaps you're like me. You have most things you want in GTA Online. You've "done it all". And now you're bored.
But... have you *really* done it all? Turns out, most of us haven't. There's so much to do in this game, and it's easy to get stuck in old habits that prevent us from discovering everything there is to do in Los Santos!
So I began writing down all my ideas for having fun in the game, and basically use these suggestions as guidelines to always find something new to do. It has completely reinvigorated my joy for the game, and I hope it can help you do the same!
If you're having trouble with motivation or inspiration, then I suggest picking something at random from the list and just doing it! You might disccover that you love it, just like I did!
And if you have anything more to add, please share your comments so that we can all help build this list together. :)
​
Let's go!
​

• Break Your Habits: Most people have a routine that they repeat over and over again until they get burned out and bored with the game! Your number one goal for having fun must be to break your old habits!
• Grind Less: If you've played for a long time, there's absolutely zero reason to grind big piles of useless money. People often develop bad habits where they finally grind so much that they forget to have fun. The "wonder" of the world completely vanishes when everything becomes about optimal times and optimal routes and optimal mission rotations. Relax! Start exploring everything that the game has to offer instead! Dare to do the "less optimal" routes, and have the courage to stop stressing about the "time efficiency" when you do the game's content. Sure, perhaps you can do a mission in 2 minutes with an Oppressor Mk2, but why not relax, put on a podcast, and do a relaxing 5 minute drive instead? Relax and have fun!
• Switch Off the Business Mindset: Why grind at all? Why do businesses at all? What do you really need the money for, whatsoever? If it feels like grinding, do something else that's more fun for you! Stop thinking about the money and start thinking about the real-world fun you're having! Start actually enjoying all the things you've previously grinded for! Perhaps you might enjoy treating GTA as a racing simulator where you mostly do challenges/race maps instead? There's so much more to do that isn't purely related to earning money!
• Accept All Invites: When you see invites to races, challenges, missions, etc, accept them! You will broaden your horizons about what you can do in the game, and you will often make the newbies very happy! Of course, if it turns out they're a hopelessly stupid newbie who keeps dying and never improves, then sure, I'd suggest leaving the heist to save your time and sanity. But most of the time, the other players will be smart enough to learn quickly. You can easily make great, new friends this way!
• Protect the Newbies: If you see someone doing a sales mission in a public lobby, why not fly over there in a powerful airborne vehicle (or heck, a missile-equipped Toreador car), and then follow them as their bodyguard against any griefers that may appear!
• Join People's CEO/MC: You can list yourself as "looking for work" via the interaction menu, which will alert other people that there's someone looking for work in the session. You can then join them and help people out with their missions, which is often a fun and relaxing activity for a while!
• Get a Crew: Look around for a crew of like-minded people. They exist. There are crews that specialize in heisting with competent players. There are crews that focus on racing. There are crews for Arena War. There are crews that only do LS Car Meet challenges/races. There's even crews specialized in doing sales missions together, by helping each other with business sales, if that's your thing! Finding a group of people with a compatible mindset and interests really pays off in the end!
• Switch Sessions: You can jump between multiple public sessions until you find one that matches your mood. Perhaps a nice, quiet sessions without griefers, perfect for doing sales missions? Or maybe one where there's a group of people that are actively doing something fun, which you can join in on? Don't just settle for your session. Explore what's out there!
• Do the Stupid Things: Grab your friends or some randoms, and challenge each other to do the most stupid and random things you can think of. The game is a sandbox. So start acting like it! For example, why not challenge each other with things like "everyone starts at the beach without any vehicles, your goal is to get to the Senora Desert convenience store, and you're only allowed to use stolen vehicles, the first person to reach the desert wins", or how about "everyone jumps from the Maze Bank Tower and your goal is to ride your parachute all the way to the ferris wheel". Is that even possible? Who knows! Let's find out!
• Become a Map Creator: If you've had fun making random challenges in freeroam, why not make them into more formal challenges, by creating actual maps? The map creator is very advanced. You can modify the world, add checkpoints anywhere you want, you could make a bicycle race, add pedestrians, enable weapon wheel usage, add parachute jumps, stunt jumps, survival modes, etc. Go wild!
• River Racing: The game has two epic rivers that start at the "Alamo Sea" (desert lake) and head west out to the ocean. Why not do a race with some friends? Get the Blazer Aqua amphibious quad bike and start at the desert, then race through one of the rivers, which is full of fun jumps. Next, decide on a destination (such as the Del Perro Pier) and do the rest of the drive on roads to see who gets there first.
• Stop Flying: Whenever a game lets you fly, you end up skipping huge amounts of content and world design and just flying directly above it all. That's nice if you want to get somewhere efficiently, but it really breaks the game's immersion. Try driving everywhere instead!
• Learn to Fly: Many players are awful at flying (especially the helicopters). Why not practice your flying skills? Perhaps try landing your helicopter at very tight spots, on rooftops, and other fun locations!
• Use Motorcycles: They're more thrilling than cars, because crashing actually has consequences. They're also very fast and agile, which feels awesome while driving through the city!
• Oppressor MK1: Fly around the map, trying to create your own challenges such as flying over the water or climbing Mount Chiliad.
• Climb the Mountain: Find various fun vehicles and attempt to climb Mount Chiliad in them. There's lots of fun to be had with motorcycles at the mountain!
• BMX Tricks: There are so many skate parks and BMX bicycle stunt locations in the city. Why not look at some BMX stunt videos for inspiration?
• Throw Away the GPS: Stop staring at the minimap while driving! This is super fun. Let's say that you need to get to Simeon's shop. Instead of opening up the world map and setting a map marker and following the GPS line like a lemming, try to train yourself to navigate the city! Drive the streets, look at the surroundings and actually navigate! It's so much fun and you'll feel way more relaxed. The city will also feel way more immersive. You can even modify the minimap via "Settings: Display: Radar = Blips", which hides the map so that you can't see the shape of the streets by glancing at the minimap anymore. You can even disable it completely, but unfortunately it also hides the healthbar if you do that.
• Use First Person: You can change the game's camera mode to first person, which is a really unique and immersive way to play the game. Steal some cars and go cruising! It will feel like an entirely different game when you get used to it!
• Take Selfies: Find beautiful locations and attempt to take great screenshots, with perfect framing and composition! You can use the game's built-in snapmatic camera, or you can use your regular screenshot key instead! Collecting photos of your adventures is a nice way to remember where you've been!
• Businesses: There are so many businesses in the game, and it's easy to forget about them after a while. Look at your businesses and begin doing their sourcing and sales missons again! Most of us quit them because they're very grindy, but after a long time away from them, they'll feel fresh again. And they'll feel much more relaxing if you vary between your different businesses and you only do one or two missions at a time, to never get bored.
• Nightclub: Do the promotion/popularity missions, which involve going around town and promoting the nightclub, or helping to remove unwanted or drunk guests from the club. All of that improves your popularity, which improves the passive income you're earning from the club!
• Get the DJs: The nightclub has multiple DJs. Why not unlock them all? Their missions are very fun, and you'll earn new music for your club.
• Bunker: Why not do some manual supply missions, just to relax and have fun? Sure, the optimal way to make money with the bunker is to buy the supplies and do "better" things with your time instead of sourcing supplies, but why does everything have to be about ultimate efficiency all the time? If you're a long-time player, you already have lots of money and you need new things to do!
• Contact Missions: So many people don't even know that you can get missions by calling NPCs on the phone. It's named "contact missions" and they can be very fun. I recommend calling Dax and doing "Request Work" from him, because his missions are very varied and after you've done enough you get various important rewards, such as upgrades for your Acid Lab business.
• CEO/VIP Work: When you're a CEO, you can start SecuroServ missions via the interaction menu. There's lots of fun ones! For example, why not get your favorite car, relax and do the Sightseer mission, seeing where the map markers will take you while you enjoy the relaxing drive? The mission gives you 15 minutes, which is plenty of time to take the scenic route.
• Terrorbyte Missions: Another forgotten relic! The terrorbyte has lots of fun missions which are very good for variation. They used to be the best "active" way to earn money in GTA. Most players who grinded those missions have only done the "optimal rotation", but how about actually doing all of the available missions for fun?
• Rockstar Jobs: There are so many high-quality maps, races and challenge modes in the game. Explore the official list of RockstaCurated jobs in the game's pause menu. There's a ton of them!
• Community Jobs: There's a ton of cool community maps in the game. Remember to favorite the ones you liked so that you can easily start the same again!
• Auto Shop: Do the customer car customization and delivery jobs, and do the heists! They can be done solo.
• MC Club: Do the customer motorcycle customization and delivery jobs.
• Vehicle Warehouse: Do the Import/Export car theft and sales missions. Be sure to use the trick that ensures you only get high-end cars (permanently fill the warehouse with every worthless sourced car in the game, then you will only get high-end cars after that).
• Acid Lab: The best passive income business in the game. Spend some time doing Dax's contact missions to fully upgrade your lab's efficiency and it will become very profitable. Then mix up your gameplay between both sourcing Acid supplies or buying them. And do the sales missions.
• Franklin's Agency: Do the Dr. Dre story missions, then do 201x Security Contract missions until you've unlocked the highest amount of passive daily income (it goes up by $100 every time you do a mission, capped at $20,000 after having done 201 contracts).
• Payphone Hits: They're unlocked after doing at least 3 Security Contract missions. Then you can pick up assassination contracts from ringing payphones. They're very profitable.
• Weekly Time Trials: Do the camotorcycle time trial and the RC car time trial every week, they're a good way to learn how to drive and they give a nice bit of money! Remember that you can hold a key to respawn at the start of the race before the time has ended, if you're sure that you won't make it in time.
• Daily Objectives: In your interaction menu, look at the Objectives and complete them. They're a good way to be inspired to do things you might not do otherwise.
• Daily Collectible Hunts: G's Cache (hunt for the hidden street cache), Kosatka submarine treasure hunt, Street dealer (find it and sell to it every day), etc.
• Get a Fresh Look: Create a new character outfit (clothes, hairstyle, tattoos, mask).
• Use Different Weapons: Challenge yourself to use different weapons than the same old, boring weapon you always use. For example, how about only using the Heavy Revolver? Make those shots count!
• Modify Your Weapons: Change their styles and attachments.
• Tune Your Precious Car: You might have a "perfectly tuned" car that you've been driving for years and that you're always using. Why not modify it a bit? Put a different livery on it, and some different colors at least? What felt "fresh" two years ago would just be contributing to a feeling of "staleness" today. Freshen things up!
• Ride of the Day: Most long-time players have around a hundred vehicles, but most of them collect dust. Why not set fun "challenge" rules for yourself, such as randomly selecting a vehicle and using only that vehicle on that real-life day?
• Outfit of the Day: Why not make it your goal to create a new character "outfit of the day" (or week) whenever you log in? It's a great way to get a fresh feeling every time you play!
• Minigames: How about some Golf, Tennis, Darts or Arm Wrestling?
• Gang Attacks: Find a gang and eliminate them!
• Stash Houses: Find the stash houses and raid them for resources for your businesses.
• Parachute: Go somewhere high up and do a parachute dive! Better yet, look for the Junk Energy Skydives challenges on the map, or do Dom's parachute challenge (which is a special skydive at a random location).
• San Andreas Flight School: Do the flight school challenges! They're at the Los Santos Airport, at the airplane icon!
• Gun Range Challenges: Complete the Bunker's and Ammo-Nation Gun Range shooting challenges!
• Gun Range with Friends: Challenge a friend to the gun range mini-games, where you compete to see who is the most accurate!
• MC Club Missions: Form a MC club with at least one friend, then ride in formation and start MC missions via the interaction menu.
• MC Businesses: Yes, they're the most hated businesses in the game, but why not do them a little bit? You could do a little bit of supplying and a few small sales missions, to ensure that you have small sales. Or, team up with friends and take turns helping each other do larger sales.
• Racing: Do Open Wheel, Stunt Races, Transform Races, and Regular Races. There are so many different kinds of races in the game! The transform races are the newest feature, and are very cool, since you might drive a supercar down the street to the airport, then transform into a plane and fly through the sky, and other epic things, all in the same race map!
• LS Car Meet: Do the challenges, races and rank up your LS Car Meet rank. Try to win the Prize Ride!
• Lobby Car Meets: You can try arranging car meets with other people in the lobby, to check out each other's cars! Just beware of griefers. You may want to do it in the LS Car Meet building to avoid the griefer explosions, or just switch to a lobby with cooler people.
• Arcade: Play the arcade games and try to beat them! Some of them have hidden rewards for completing the game or completing certain challenges.
• Achievements: Look at the pause menu's Stats - Awards section, and pick some award that you'll try to complete! There are so many fun challenges in there, such as attempting to parachute for more than 3 minutes, or robbing every store on the map (you can see the checkmarks on the map to know if you've robbed those stores).
• Stunt Jumps: There are 50 stunt jump locations on the map, which unlock a few rewards and are also really fun to complete!
• Unlock Vehicle Colors: You may have noticed that certain colors are locked behind challenges, such as winning a certain amount of races. Why not finally unlock those colors you've always wanted but were always "too lazy" to unlock? You'll get to enjoy some flashy, new vehicle colors!
• Arena War: Very fun, but unfortunately hard to get a group going for it. But if you can get a group, Arena War is super fun.
• Freemode Battles: Join a large lobby and just do whatever you want while you're waiting for freemode battles, which start every 20 minutes and will alternate between Business Battles and Freemode Challenges. Then attempt to win those battles! Events will only trigger when there are at least 4 players outdoors, and they cannot be in the same CEO/MC.
• Ride with Strangers: Pick your nicest car and then drive around and invite strangers to either ride with you or do impromptu street race 1v1 challenges.
• Freemode Map Markers: Look at the map. There are icons and glowing markers everywhere on the map/streets. Visit whichever icon is nearest your current location and see what's there! Remember that you can go "On Call" (queue) for public races/missions while you're waiting for them to fill up, which lets you stay in Freemode while you're waiting.
• Weekly Bonuses: Look at the Rockstar Newswire to see what the weekly bonus money is, and focus on doing that business/event for a while, to earn some money!
• Max Your Stats: Get all your stats to maximum! Most people haven't finished Strength, which can be gradually maxed for fun by simply punching every civilian you see.
• Invade the Military: Invade the military base at Fort Zancudo with some friends, and make it your mission to steal a Lazer jet plane.
• Heists: Do some heist preps or full heists for fun! Many of them can be casually setup while solo, which is very relaxing! Most of the newer heists can even be completed while solo!
• Change Your Heist Routes: You don't have to always do the same approach over and over again. Most heists have a lot of different approaches. For example, have you ever successfully completed the "Silent and Sneaky" approach at the Casino? Start exploring the different possibilities out there!
• Yellow Mission Markers: The yellow letters/markers on the map show the location of significant storyline missions (such as ULP, Agency, Acid Lab, etc). Visit those locations and start completing the stories that GTA Online has to offer!
• Do the Jobs: Go to "Online - Jobs" in the pause menu, and explore the available options!
• Answer the Calls: There are so many fun missions for English Dave, the various DJs at the Music Locker, the Casino staff, etc. In most cases, you'll also get some kind of reward if you finish them all! You might even get them to stop calling you when you've finished everything, which is a nice reward in itself!
• Check Your Texts/Emails: There's a lot of "mini missions" that arrive via emails/text messages. For example, Simeon asks you to steal certain cars every day. There's also an early game treasure hunt which starts through an email.
• Use Quick Join: There's an app on your phone named "Quick Join". It queues you for a rapid, random job. It's a great way to explore new content, meet new people and to help them with the queues for their own missions.
• Browse the Internet: There are a ton of funny parody websites in GTA Online's internet browser. Explore what's out there!
• Watch TV/Movies: Have you seen all the TV shows and cinema movies yet? If not, relax and have some fun! :)
• Customize Your Phone: You can change the theme, background, ringtone and other settings for your in-game phone. Why not change things a bit?
• Don't Be Annoyed: The phone calls and missions may seem annoying, but try actually relaxing and doing them. Listen to the phone calls. Call the NPCs. Do their missions! They are pretty nice and chill activities which gives you something to do in the game and some challenges.
• Use a Gamepad: If you're a PC player, you'll know that most of the game is too easy, since the aiming and enemy difficulty was balanced for console (gamepad) players. Try using a gamepad on PC! Not only will your driving and flying be massively improved, you'll also have a much more fun fun time when fighting enemies, since you can't just "360 No Scope" everything with your superior pointing device anymore. You'll even get immersive rumble that lets you feel the engine of your cars! How cool is that?! The game's options lets you finetune the sensitivity and aiming mode, and true professionals will use "Free Aim" which completely disables the auto-aiming.
• Meet Different People: If you're mostly a heist person, look for someone who loves cars and start hanging out with them to absorb some of their passion for another aspect of the game. You might learn to love car tuning too!
• Trade Prices: Many vehicles in the game have trade prices which give you a massive discount on the vehicle if you complete the challenge first. So set your eyes on a nice vehicle and do its challenges for fun! The discount you're earning will be like earning a huge sum of money that you put towards that specific vehicle. For example, a 2 million dollar discount on a vehicle you wanted is the same as if you had just earned 2 million dollars that you decided to spend on that vehicle! So don't sleep on the trade price discounts! They're a fun challenge with a very high monetary value!
• Bunker Research: If you have a bunker, try doing the research! You can unlock a ton of cool and super useful vehicle and weapon modifications! The explosive and incendiary ammo are must-haves.
• Mobile Operations Missions: The Mobile Operations Center is a forgotten business. It exists in your bunker, but you can request it via your Interaction Menu. Enter the truck's trailer, and then start missions from the computer in the command room!
• Avenger: Take your Avenger out for a drive! It's an extremely powerful, heavily armored aircraft and can be customized with various fun additions.
• Relaxing Yacht: Why not purchase or upgrade your yacht, and chill on it for a while with some friends? It even has lots of fun water vehicles parked in the water at the yacht, and helicopter pads for easy travel.
• Yacht Missions: You can start the fun "A Superyacht Life" mission series from the captain on your yacht. You'll even get a fun Yacht Captain outfit if you complete them all as host.
• Special Vehicle Work: The Vehicle Warehouse provides various epic missions whose "main" purpose is to unlock trade prices on various weaponized vehicles, but the missions themselves are fun too. Most players only do the specific missions for the vehicles they wanted to buy. Why not complete them all at least once, or play them again for fun?
• Collectibles: The map is full of collectible items, such as USB music sticks, playing cards, action figures, signal jammers (to unlock the best hacker for the Casino heist), etc. Why not relax and do them all for fun? They all unlock something fun or useful!
• Dream Vehicle: Relax, do some research about vehicles are available in the game, and set your eyes on a new "dream vehicle". Then work towards earning it and pimping it just the way you want it! Having a goal is fun!
• Test Drives: Check out the weekly test drives at the "Luxury Autos" shop, at Simeon's "Premium Deluxe Motorsport", and at the "LS Car Meet". You might find your new dream vehicle!
• Collect Vehicle Sets: You might have fun building specific collections, such as all Benny's vehicles in the game, etc. Setting goals for yourself about specific vehicle collections gives you something to strive for, and means that there's a lot of new things you'll need to buy and tune, which will keep you busy for a while!
• Sell Vehicles: Let's be honest, there are a lot of stinkers in your collection. Why not sell them? Just beware of the game's daily sell limit. The limit will be hit somewhere around 30-40 cars sold in 24 real-life hours. I'd suggest only selling 1-5 cars per real life day, which ensures that you'll never face the anger of Rockstar, and you'll have more time to make deliberate choices about which vehicles to get rid of. You'll also be getting roughly 50% of your previously spent money back for each sold vehicle! I'd recommend forcing yourself to drive a vehicle for a while before selling it, and looking at its customizations to see if you'd like it if you changed its style a bit, so that you're absolutely sure that you don't want it.
• Organize Your Vehicles: A lot of people have a complete mess in their garages. Why not begin sorting your cars, such as placing all your best cars at the premium display spots in your office garage? Perhaps organizing the floors by vehicle type? You can have lots of fun and you'll get a much better overview of your available vehicles.
• Relocate Yourself: If you've been staring at the same, old, boring spot for years, it could be fun to move! Most players choose the ugly, industrial, "optimal" locations. Why not relax and move to the beautiful beach instead? The Lombank office, the Insert Coin arcade, the Vespucci Beach MC clubhouse, the Del Perro Nightclub, the Strawberry auto shop, and the Vespucci Canals agency are all very beautiful locations with amazing interior and exterior design and great views! They're also very well placed for all of their business purposes!
• Browse in Person: When you're looking at real estate on the internet, things look very boring and impersonal. Why not take a drive around the city and look at the "real estate for sale" map markers in person? Perhaps you'll find a great new location for your home! However, if it's a multi-apartment house, I recommend checking YouTube for the various room views, to find the room with the best view before you buy it.
• Upgrade Your Properties/Businesses: If you haven't yet upgraded all of the equipment for a business, it's a great idea to upgrade it to improve its efficiency and safety. Or how about changing the interior design for fun, to replace the "same old daily view" with a fresh new look?
• Buy Every Arcade Machine: There are so many fun minigame machines for your arcade. Why not buy them all and pimp that place out? It's a nice place to relax, and even get some rewards for completing the games.
• Get All Passive Businesses: Why not work towards getting and fully upgrading all of the passive incomes in the game? Such as the Nightclub (which automatically generates money in the safe based on popularity, and generates MC business products to sell from its basement), the Acid Lab (which can be restocked with a simple phone call to Mutt, and has easy sales missions), the Arcade (which generates $5000 per in-game day when you've filled all of its interior slots with arcade machines, which can all be the same machine if you want), the Agency (which generates up to $20000 per in-game day based on how many Security Contracts you've completed), Street Dealers (finding the daily street dealer is much faster than regular sales missions, and they pay more than regular missions), Bunker (you can resupply it via one click with the Master Control Terminal in your Arcade, and then simply sell the product when it's still less than 25% full, thus guaranteeing a single sales vehicle every time). An added bonus of having passive businesses is the fact that they let you do other things in the game, such as doing racing and other fun challenges, while your businesses passively produce for you!
• Start Fresh: Did you know that your online account has two character slots? You can actually start fresh by simply withdrawing all of you banked money to your primary character, so that there's $0 in the bank. Then create a new character, which will begin at $0. Then relax and enjoy the ride of building a new empire. I suggest doing things differently this time. For example, if your primary character owns every business, why not just focus on a specific business this time, such as the CEO businesses (cargo crates), or just the vehicle warehouse, etc? Take this opportunity to simplify and avoid grinding, while still building a new playstyle to keep things fresh! Why not skip the Kosatka, so that you don't have the "easy Cayo Perico money" either? This slower, more deliberate, old-school way of making money will ensure that you have lots of fun, and you can set your own goals for what vehicles you want to save up money for on your new character! If you get tired of the grind, just switch back to your primary character again and enjoy the wealth. You can even delete your secondary character again to start fresh as many times as you want to.
• Spend Your Money: Having $100 million unused in the bank is just a completely pointless number, and is basically worth the same as having $0 in the bank if you aren't even using it. Unless your goal is to collect a specific amount of money for fun, I'd instead suggest that you actually start spending absolutely all of your money! Because if you can succeed in being perpetually slightly low on cash, you'll have much more reason to care about doing your businesses when you do want to buy something, which in turn drives your motivation to play again! Having a huge stash of money is bad for your motivation to play! Having a huge sash of money is like having an endless "Rich Daddy's Credit Card" in your wallet. Get rid of that credit card, buy a bunch of fun stuff, and enjoy the game more as a result!
• Play the Story: The vast majority of GTA Online players have barely touched the offline story. Why not relax with the story from time to time, gradually making your way through the epic offline story that started it all?
• Take a Break: If you're truly not finding any fun anymore, then take a break, perhaps a few weeks or a month is all you need to enjoy the game again! They also release content updates roughly twice per year, so you'll always have something new to return to in the future! :)

Catch the full episode: https://www.wealthformula.com/podcast/371-ask-buck-june-2023/
Buck: Welcome back to the show, everyone. And today it's just me. Like old times. And we're going to take questions from the audience. There's actually no audience here in my room, in my office here. But I'm going to take questions from you. And we'll start with the question from Mike. Mike, here you go. Hello, Buckets. Mike Kaye from Melbourne Beach, Florida.
Mike: I was wondering if you were looking at any opportunities out there in regards to investing in distressed assets. I've noticed that rates have gone up in a lot of operators like Western wealth aren't cash flowing and are actually looking for more capital because they've got themselves into trouble. And if rates stay higher than expected, there could be some some pretty good deals as far as bailing folks out.
Buck: So I wanted to get your thoughts on if you were looking for anything out there as far as funds or whatever it may maybe create some opportunity here. Thanks, Mike. Thanks for the question, Mike. The answer well, let's start with this. Obviously, there's a lot of distress in the system right now. Interest rates have gone up a the steepest slope in American history.
And as you might expect, that has not been good for operators, particularly those who relied heavily on floating debt. You know, and this is important, I think, to understand what's going on a little bit, because you might be wondering why in the world would you use floating debt anyway? Well, if it's a long term hold, it never would really make sense to do that kind of short term debt.
However, and with these larger assets, the problem is fixing debt. If your plan is to, you know, ultimately sell. And, you know, 18 to 24 months, you are going to end up with an extremely high prepayment penalty. And so in those situations, the extremely short hold are the shorter hold models, you know, generally ran on floating rate. So if you're again, your business model is to get in and out in 18 months, it doesn't make sense to lock in the rates.
So obviously now they would be better off if we had. But everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Right. That is from Mike Tyson, not from me. But that's that's kind of what's happening across the board here, especially for floating rates. And as for looking into creating this fund, which, you know, maybe you got a rescue fund or something like that, that the answer was whether I, I think that that's potentially something to do is, well, yeah, it's certainly something to consider.
And I have thought about it. These are essentially these sort of preferred equity positions, essentially become the lender. So there's not like any tax benefits or anything like that. But so, you know, I have thought about this, but but before doing anything like that, I want to make sure, you know, the economics makes sense for everyone against, again, perhaps one of the most appealing parts of this fund might actually to be getting into some second positions and maybe be first in line if the property fails and you know it or is distressed, it needs to be taken over.
But I really need to think about it because I also want everyone to have as much dry powder as possible. And because, again, it is no fun to be in this environment and those people who are going to make money are going to be the ones that have like nerves of steel that, you know, are okay to feel like, okay, I'm losing some money on one hand, but there's an opportunity to buy distressed assets on the other side.
And that's where real money is made. And again, it's a psychological thing that happens in every cycle. And the key is to try to keep your wits about you and learn, you know, learn whatever lessons you have to learn and move on and deploy. I certainly am not one who is not learned from this experience. Myself, I absolutely have, and I think it'll make me a better investor going forward.
Unfortunately, we're still in the midst of this mess right now. But anyway, bottom line is the answer is yes, potentially. I've thought about it. And I think like those kinds of preferred equity, essentially debt being in the second position behind the main lender, that is that's potentially appealing. And certainly as an investor, I think it's appealing because essentially you're you're in a lending position. You're not you know, you're not in an equity position, so you're superior to the equity position. Hopefully that helps. All right. Let's go on to the next question here. So it's from John.
John: Hi, this is John Valentino. I listened to your excellent podcast every Sunday morning on my run, walk and find them uniquely interesting and helpful amongst a sea of podcasts that aren't.
Buck: Yesterday you mentioned Terry Loughlin and your late in life swimming experience. I'm 68 now and at 55 I decided to learn to swim. I researched all of Terry's stuff and ended up using a local swimming coach here in Fresno, California, who knew Terry and who had a lot of experience. He had me swimming, breathing and flipped, turning very quickly.
Four years ago when we visited Maui, I did a two mile ocean swim with some master swimmers. I now swam about a mile and a half every Sunday with which the swim coach they taught me. And I do that. I listen to your podcast. I'm sure we could get you swimming and breathing properly very quickly. He Fresno's not too far from Montecito. Good luck with your swimming and let me know if you'd like me to hook you up with Rich. The swim coach.
Buck: Well, John, thanks for that. That makes for a lighter moment in this sea of despair. Ha ha ha. That's funny, kid at sea of despair. He's swimming. Anyway, for those of you who don't know what John is referring to, I'll just take a minute because, you know, taking questions from all kinds.
All types of questions here is back in 2016, I think it was 16, I listened to Tim Ferriss podcast about how he spent his whole life trying to swim and unsuccessfully, I'd say, met up a guy, met up with a guy named Terry Loughlin, who taught his total immersion technique or tie. So I decided, well, gosh, you know, basically Tim Ferriss was talking about my story, like he spent his entire, like, you know, didn't learn to swim as a little kid and then all this and trying to catch up and no one could teach him.
And that was kind of where I was. I do like him numerous, like tries added back in my twenties and thirties, and then I kind of had given up. Then I contacted Terry. He was in New York, upstate New York. So he actually flew out there. I was in Chicago at the time and he taught me to swim in about 2 to 3 hours and it was really unbelievable to me.
And the only thing I didn't learn how to do during that visit was to breathe. And unfortunately, that was so that was like I was there for like a day and a half. And that was the part I didn't get to. So now I can swim, but only as long as I can hold my breath because I can't seem to, you know, I can't breathe and swim at the same time.
Unfortunately, Terry had, end stage cancer. When I saw him and I believe I was his last student before he died a couple of months later, and he'd actually stopped teaching for a while, you know, before I got to be the lucky one that he decided he had enough strength to go back for. So lucky for me. So but yeah, I would love to, you know, John, shoot me an email, you know, where I am and I get well for Malcolm Connect me to your guy.
And I think Fresno might be a little far, but if he's as good as Terry, maybe I could. Maybe I could learn to breathe in a day, too. So, hey, anyway, thanks. Thanks for that. Let's go on to the next question here. All right. This one's from I think it's Garima.
Garima: I am looking to become a real professional on studies. We've been doing real estate for a little bit but wanted to do this. I really need help. If you can guide me well and see.
Buck: Well, I don't know. I can do my best about that, Garima. And first of all, I have to preface this as I always do, that what I'm about to say is not legal or any kind of tax advice. I'm not a tax professional. My degree is in medicine. I'm a former board certified surgeon, but that doesn't qualify me for much. And this in this arena, it's just my understanding of the tax law, which, you know, I spent a fair amount of time thinking about. So it's not like what I'm saying should not be listened to, I think.
But on the other hand, the liability issues, I have to make very clear consult with your own tax professional before anything anyway. So again, probably the best thing I can do in terms of guiding is tell you what I know about the qualification as real estate professionals status. And by the way, I should also point out that the benefits that I'm going to talk about, there's a lot of this similar benefits without having the status in short term rentals.
And that episode, I believe, is 354. So go back and listen to that one. It's I thought that was a pretty interesting episode. But why is agreement talking about this RFP short for a real estate professional So everyone is on the same page? What is the real estate professional designation? Why is it useful? Well, a real estate professional is not the same thing, is in a real estate agent or a real estate broker, which are basically involved with real estate transactions.
They're involved as like the middleman. Right. That's not really the business of real estate. The real estate professional is someone who is who is materially involved with the business of owning and operating business. And the reason that this is important, we'll get to in a minute, but I'm going to go into the qualification parts of this. And again, I'm not giving you advice and basically telling you what I can gather from the IRS website And basically the material participation is one of the first things.
So you can't you can't be a limited partner in a bunch of real estate and call yourself a real estate professional. You have to have some activities that are truly owning and, you know, operating real estate. I mean, you have to be involved in the management operations of your rental properties, right? So the level of involvement is different than obviously if, you know, even if you have a propertyif you have a property manager or whatever, it's still going to be more active than if you're just a limited partner.
But another one of the things that you have to qualify for is you have to spend more than 50% of your total working hours in real estate activities. So in other words, if you know, if you've got a full-time job, you can't really qualify as a real estate professional. There has to be more hours than any other profession. Right? Your participation in real estate activities has to exceed anything else that you're doing in terms of business and employment. There's also something called the 750-hour test, which you must spend at least 750 hours per year on real estate activities. And some of these things that you can do include property management or rent collection or maintenance or advertising, other related issues, acquisitions, underwriting, etc.
I mean, there's a lot of things that, you know, once you own real estate, you can be an active owner, right? So anywhere that's... So why would you want this designation? Because it sounds onerous to go and try to make sure you've got all these things if you're not already doing it. Well, as you may know, the real estate income itself, that real estate income itself is considered passive income.
Right. And similarly, the losses from real estate in the form of depreciation are considered passive losses for most people. Those passive losses cannot be applied to any active income, right? So if you have an income of $500,000 and you happen to have $500,000 of depreciation or paper losses, you couldn't use those losses to offset your personal active income.
The reason is that one is active and one is passive. So you can't do that. And unfortunately, unless maybe you or your spouse, rather, with whom you file jointly is a real estate professional. So in this case, what would happen is those passive losses from real estate would become activated, in other words, their active losses. And you can, you know, you can offset anything with active losses, right.
And even W-2 income. So that's the idea. So, again, theoretically, check with your legal, you know, and tax people and hopefully they know what they're talking about. But see, if you're a C, if you're a doctor, you're making, again, $500,000. And let's say your spouse, who's a real estate professional, generated maybe $50,000 in income, but $300,000 of paper losses, you can deduct that $300,000 from the salary, that is earned income on the doctor's side.
So basically, that is what the huge, big deal is about this real estate professional status. And again, I'm not a tax professional, but this is something that a lot of people in our group do, and it is, you know, following the tax code, that's the key. So Garima, bottom line is I don't know how else I can guide you other than to give you information.
But, you know, I guess what I would do if I were you is, you know, try to figure out how you can actually, you know, get yourself qualified as a real estate professional and make sure that, you know, you fit those criteria and talk to your tax person about it. Okay. Next question is from Mark Hammons. Mark's question deals with tax law, and I'm not sure it's appropriate for this forum.
Feel free to pass on if you feel like addressing it. Well, it's another question. Well, you know how I feel about that. I'll tell you what I think. But
don't take it as tax advice in any sort of way. But okay, so here's the question Mark says. He says, I'm a partner in an LLC that was formed for residential development.
Our project is nearing completion, and this year it will take business income to be taxed at a 20% LLC rate. I will receive income from the sale of raw land and taxed as long-term capital gains. I'm a full-time physician and not actively involved in the business of land development. Can I offset any of this income with accumulated passive losses and leases?
Thanks, Mark, for all you do. Thank you, Mark. And well, as you may have gathered from the previous question and the answer that I gave Garima, you are a full-time physician, my friend, and therefore you do not qualify as a real estate professional, and therefore you cannot use those passive losses against your active income as a physician, and you are stuck in that stratification of income hell, which is that you've got these great-looking losses on the passive side and this great income on the active side, and you cannot do anything about it.
So now, if your wife was doing this real estate stuff and qualified as a real estate professional based on the criteria I mentioned earlier, then you would theoretically be able to apply those passive losses to active income, and boom, all of a sudden, you would have what it is you are hoping for. And anyway, but I do have people in our group who are literally, you know, with that spouse set up.
Well, that's why I brought it up, right, where they literally had a spouse quit their job so that they can switch to real estate professional status. And although their cash flow may constitute a theoretical pay cut from their job, the generated losses, paper losses, are being applied to the larger active income stack. There, in many cases, justifies that because they may make a total gross amount of income that's less.
But because of those passive losses, they actually get to keep more. So that's a complicated answer to a simple question. In my non-professional opinion, Mark, you are kind of screwed. Can't do that anyway. All right. So the next series of questions is from Terry. And let's see, let's start with the first one. Is this one. My understanding is there are U.S. dollars held overseas in the United States.
What would be the impact to the value of the dollar if the overseas cash had to be converted to CBDCs, which is central bank decentralized coins? Well, I'm no expert on this, but from what I know, I'm not sure it would have a material effect on anything overseas because as I understand, CBDCs is a little more than using distributed ledgers instead of central ledgers for digital money, right?
Because the thing is, you have to remember that 90% of the U.S. dollars are digital-only already. They do not exist in the physical world already. So what difference does it make if it's on a single ledger or if it's on a distributed ledger? I'm not sure that it does. As I understand it, the idea would be essentially to make it into like a software update almost, right, where the new digital currencies would be CBDCs.
But of course, I could be wrong, and my understanding of the plan that the U.S. has there is it could be wrong. I'm sure there's a larger plan eventually to use this as a way of maximizing tax revenues and tracking people's spending and that kind of thing. But in the short term, I don't really see how it has repercussions for money overseas.
But if somebody knows of something that would cause that, certainly email me. But I don't know that. Okay. This question is also from Terry. He says, "Rising interest rates have had an impact on existing multifamily operators, and it seems like part of the multifamily model relies on interest rate value being lower than cap rates." That's correct. "Combined with the multiplier effect of low cap rates for value-add projects, do you see cap rates going up until interest rates come down?"
How high can cap rates go before the value-add model is no longer viable? Are rents still rising fast enough to offset interest hikes? Okay. So yes, I do see cap rates going up. Remember, in order for debt to make sense, the interest rates must be lower than the cap rate. So if your borrowing rate is 5%, then your cap rate needs to be above that in order to have positive cash flow.
Otherwise, you're amplifying your losses. That said, often, you know, you may have seen in some cases operators buying things and they'll consider buying things like that. If there's an obvious thing that's going to drive up net operating income pretty quickly. But right now we are seeing rising cap rates. Now, as for the value-add model being viable, I would say that yes, the value-add model is viable in all interest rate environments and with all cap rates because remember, folks, real estate was not people didn't just start making money on value-add.
This has been around for some time, right? There are plenty of people who got rich off of value-add real estate in the eighties despite double-digit interest rates in double-digit cap rates. So what has created so much distress in this system is not the absolute interest rates. It's the pace at which the interest rates went up.
They're the moving goalposts. You see, every time you underwrite a property, you have to model in interest rates and reversion cap rates. And if rates are not stable, it's very difficult to underwrite. And that's why these real estate markets right now have been so illiquid. There really are no stable variables to underwrite with. Rightly, you got to have the goalposts, you got to know where the goalposts are so you can play the game right.
Once you have that stability, though, you can underwrite again, and in value-add real estate, the money isn't made based on interest rates being high or low, but it is made by ultimately creating a positive delta in the net operating income. And that can happen in all interest rate and cap rate environments. So I don't see it being an end to value-add real estate at all.
In fact, one could argue that if you're, say, you're buying real estate, which hopefully we are in the fall, and you're getting great deals on it, you know, the rates are high, but the numbers are making sense. You do your normal net operating income, you do your normal value-add program, you try to increase NOI, and you get lucky.
And by the time you're ready to sell, interest rates have actually come down. Well, in that case, you're going to actually probably get, you know, more for your property than you would otherwise if rates were stable. So I actually don't see this as something that is ending anything. In fact, I think those who, again, take advantage of a higher-rate environment and buy into assets that make sense at high interest rates could seriously make money in the next, you know, several years.
So let's see, the last question from Terry is, "What are your thoughts on portfolio allocation between real estate stocks, cash value insurance, gold, crypto, and cash?" Well, I might not be the best person to ask about portfolio allocation because I think my portfolio would make most money managers think, right? I'm about 75% real estate, maybe 5-7% crypto, mostly Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the remaining investments are things that I believe are uncorrelated.
The most stable thing is, you know, I'm a big fan of cash value life insurance in part because, I mean, it is so stable. I mean, seriously, it is incredibly stable. If you look at the environment that we're in right now, it makes you, again, think you should be buying more cash value life insurance. It's extremely stable.
And this is why it was such a big deal during the Great Depression. People lived through the Depression and had no faith in anything except for cash value life insurance, which is what they were buying. But anyway, I think, in particular, I'm talking about these strategies that we're calling, well, formula banking or various leverage dials, wealth accelerators, things like that.
So there's that. I'm also obviously into other things that we have in our group. We're involved with like ATMs, which, you know, don't seem to have much correlation with the economy per se because people who use that still needed it. Good times or bad and did well even through COVID. You know, there's also things that we're doing, like I'm invested in things like, you know, cargo ships that are delivering essential oil and gas to the country, things like that, where again, it's not something that is significantly correlated with the rest of the markets.
And I think that's one of the things to really make sure that you're not... I mean, listen, I guess in my case, being 75% real estate, I mean, it's not a good time to be 75% real estate right now. Right. I probably... I mean, if I did the numbers, I'm probably less than 75% real estate now because I probably lost quite a bit of value in the real estate.
But I'm not even going to look at that right now for this purpose. But ultimately, though, you know, listen, personal finance should be personal. I don't own stocks, although I'm not against stocks. I'm just, you know, not a guy who really owns stocks except for some big, really, you know, asymmetric plays in the energy space, you know, through Mercatus and things like that.
I don't own any physical gold, although again, I've talked about possibly wanting to do that. I don't really want to right now, but I'm hoarding cash right now because I think there are going to be tremendous buying opportunities in real estate with distressed assets, and I think that's going to be the name of the game in Q4. So but again, I do not think it's a good idea to listen to me about portfolios.
I think I think it's if you want those kinds of things, you probably should, you know, talk to others, talk to, talk to, you know, our RIA's, things like that. But to me, again, personal finance is really personal. And for me, I'm, you know, I'm pretty aggressive on some of the things that I have a lot of belief in.
So, okay. Well, I guess that's my last question. Before I go, I want to remind you that there's another actually, there's actually another podcast that I do now, which is, you know, it's kind of just taking something that I was spending a lot of time learning about and and and trying to process myself and turning it into another show so that I could share with you.
The show is called CPO, CPO. You can find it on pretty much all of the ways that you find this show and
hopefully on YouTube soon too. We haven't quite gotten to YouTube, I think, but the show is, I think, very interesting because, you know, we talk about wealth on the show, but I mean, you know, what do what is more what's more coveted than, you know, actually having health because then your wealth is actually useful.
So a lot of Sabio is really about various types of longevity and wellness type stuff on the science that we know out there. Really interesting stuff to me and would love for you to check it out again at Sabio with Buck Joffrey. Check it out and let me know if you like it. Give me a positive review. That's it for me.
This week on Wealth Formula podcast, this is Buck Joffrey signing off.

Welcome to Camp Redwood! The feel-good camp for ALL AGES.
We toast marshmallows around the fire, tell spooky ghost stories, and hide in random secret military bunkers under the campgrounds! Because SOMETHING IS HERE WITH US.
Camp Redwood is the PERFECT PLACE for a summer getaway where we start EVERY DAY with a CAMP REDWOOD SMILE. Where our counselors disappear every five minutes, and our campers disembowel us for funsies! Did I forget to mention our littles aren’t actually eight years old, but fully grown adults?
We hope you enjoy your fucking stay!
We are also not responsible for any counselors revealing they are not who they said they are—and not who they appear to be.
...
So. There’s a LOT to tell you and not a lot of time to tell it.
Right now, I suppose you could say we are under lockdown—if that is the word. I want to go over the last several days to get you up to date. That’s all I can do right now. I can hope and pray the thing with Teddy’s voice does not get in here, and once again cry out for help—that I know is not coming. Not from the authorities, at least. But hey, if any of you fancy coming to rescue us, we’re in the middle of the Canadian wilderness. The closest rest-stop is maybe three fucking hours away. So have fun. Has it really almost been a week since I posted? Well, we’re still here!
And surprise, surprise, help is not coming. So, please excuse the salt. I am seventeen years old and I have been abandoned by the adults who were supposed to be looking after us.
Who were supposed to act under protocol if something like this happened. I know they were waiting for it—there are specific fucking guidelines on an emergency evacuation for counselors if this ever happened. But then the little shits took over before we could do anything. I guess I’ll start by letting you know that there are two of us left. (three, if we count Rowan, but I’m not). What I thought was going to be a quiet summer getaway with kids my age has turned into a nightmare.
For one, we have been cornered inside the head counselor’s underground secret bunker. If you want to know why she has a secret military bunker, I guess you should keep reading.
Because shit gets weirder than animal crackers having the power to turn adults into kids, and vice versa. When I made my first post, I thought that was it for us. I thought for sure there must have been a self-destruct somewhere—which meant whoever was running this camp was waiting for something like this. I was sure we were going to die, so after making the post, I have to admit with ya’ll—I just slept. I curled up, tried to ignore Harry and Carmel calling our names through childish laugher, and went to sleep with the thought in my head that I was completely at peace with what I had done with my life.
Sure, I was young. Seventeen years old is too young to be ripped apart by littles who are in fact grown adults. But as I was falling into slumber and allowing myself to fall, with my head resting in my lap, my head turned towards a separate pile of files on the other side of the room—I realized I really wanted to know how this was possible. There was so much I needed to know. Why did eight-year-old Eleanor Summers have a file where here birthday dated back to 1979? Why had supposedly innocent sugary snacks turned our adorable littles into mini psychopaths?
These kids were not kids, somehow. But how? How was that even possible? Could it be that the files were wrong?
1979 was definitely 45.
But Eleanor Summers couldn’t be 45 years old. I knew what 45 looked like. I knew that they thought like. They spent half of their time on Facebook laughing at outdated memes, and the other half… I don’t know, working? They have job’s! They’re happily married with kids, maybe soon grandkids! That was not Eleanor Summers. Because Eleanor Summers was most definitely eight years old. I had played several rounds of teddy-bears picnic, and spent hours reassuring her that Harry's ghost stories were in fact not real, enough times for me to know that this little kid was little—and a kid.
But something was bothering me. More than the secret military bunker, and magic age-regressing animal crackers. When I first signed up to Camp Redwood, one of the tag-lines to gain attraction had been, “Solve mysteries in the woods in the dead of night, with nothing but a flashlight and your fellow campers!” I had no idea I would be solving this thing on my own, trapped inside a bunker.
“What are you doing?” Rowan, who was still looking through Allison’s dinosaur laptop, turned to me with half lidded eyes, when I slowly got to my feet, careful not to make too much noise, and crept over to the pile of separate files which seemed to be crumbling apart from age. He kept his voice low, but it sounded almost like a whine. He could have been scared, but from the way he was sitting, cross-legged with a frowny face, I figured something must have been going on with him. The guy looked tired. More tired than normal.
The bags under his eyes were practically shadowing his face, and were an odd contrast to unusually ashy colored cheeks and slightly dilated eyes. Still though, Rowan refused to look vulnerable. I caught glimpse of Harry’s raybans sitting on his head, pinning back thick dark brown curls from falling in front of sleepy eyes. Maybe he was finally losing his cool and breaking out of the well-constructed façade he had been hiding behind since Teddy disappeared.
We had just narrowly escaped a crowd of psycho littles high on age-regressing sugary snacks who were doing who-the-fuck knows to the other counselors who had been captured, so I didn’t blame him looking like that. I guess he couldn’t look me in the eye, because in Rowan’s mind, he was the reason why this happened. He was the leader, and the camp had fallen to psychopathic little eight year olds who had taken half of the counselors hostage, and the other half—most likely taken apart in the physical sense, after what we had witnessed in Cassie’s cabin. Still though, it wasn’t Rowan’s fault. He could sit there and pull a face all he wanted, it’s not like I was going to blow up at him for getting us stuck down here. He actually saved us.
And trapped us, judging from the footsteps upstairs, Carmel and Harry still bouncing around looking for us.
It was a game in their heads. The little’s thought it was cat and mouse. Harry and Carmel were the oblivious cats prowling, while we were the mice, hoping to fucking GOD we weren’t caught and eaten. Ignoring Rowan, I glimpsed what looked like a box full of DVD’S—all of which were labelled with dates and names. I saw familiar ones, my heart racing into my throat. Phoebe. Eli. Cassandra.
Each DVD had one of the kid’s names scribbled on the front, as well as a date.
I found Eleanor’s right at the back of the box.
Eleanor Summers.
08/05/2021. (PM)
Before I could hesitate and think what I was doing, I slid the DVD into the portable player attached to the MacBook. Rowan, to my surprise, didn’t move. But he did make an acknowledging noise when the screen flickered to what looked like video footage. Peering at the screen, I found myself staring at a small white room. There was no door. Only a wooden desk and a chair, and sitting on it was a middle aged woman with dark blonde curls tied into a strict ponytail. She was wearing what looked like a prison jumpsuit.
Her eyes were eerily glued to the camera, unblinking. Her wrists were cuffed in front of her. Though from the look on her face, she saw the restraints as a game. Her eyes lit up with intrigue and I could practically see the cogs in her mind starting to turn as she struggled with them.
As soon as I saw this woman, I felt all of my nerve endings set alight. I wanted to turn the screen off, or look away. But once I was looking at the screen, I couldn’t bring myself to tear my eyes away. “Let’s try this again.” There was a woman offscreen. She sounded young. Too young to be in that kind of authority. I figured there was no way teenagers were being hired as special ops agents, but I guessed I was wrong. She cleared her throat. “It is 4:35 exactly. August 5th 2021. My name is Agent Lemrac,” she stated. “I am asking once again for you to comply with us. As I have said several times, the court are willing to lessen your sentence if you plead guilty with insanity.”
The woman surprised me with a snorting laugh. She seemed to come alive, leaning forward with animated features, her brow reaching her hairline. She was acting like a child, bouncing up and down in the seat, her lips stretching into a wider grin. “What did you just say?”
There was a pause. I could tell the woman was intentionally antagonising the interviewer.
“It means you have been legally declared insane,” the interviewer stumbled over her words slightly. “Mrs Summers, it would be in your best interest to work with us to lessen your current sentence which at the moment is standing at,” the sounds of shuffling paper crackled through the speakers. The interviewer cleared her throat again rustling paper. “Thirty six years. Without parole.”
The woman didn’t speak, only continued to smile—and the interviewer delved further into the sentence. “If you do in fact plead guilty with declared insanity, you will be sentenced to a program which is in the process of supporting and rehabilitating people with your…” she caught herself for a moment. I could tell this interviewer had a biased opinion and it was definitely showing through her interviewing style. I could hear the rapid intakes of her breath as she hurried through what seemed to be a script she was reading from. “Conditions.” She finished. “The Redwood program aims to help people exactly like you.”
Redwood? I thought.
Like… Camp Redwood?
Rowan whistled behind me. I guess I could call that a reaction. The guy was probably still in shock after seeing Café de Teddy splattered all over little Cassie’s cabin floor. I should have fucking know those little bitches weren’t playing Operation for eight hours straight. Turning my attention from Rowan and back to the screen, the woman in the jumpsuit appeared to have changed tactics. Her expression twisted into nonchalance. She leaned back in her chair. “I am not pleading insane because I am not insane.”
“Mrs Summers—”
The woman cut her off. “I am not crazy.” She raised her hands “I am doing what needs to be done.” She leaned forward. “Humanity suffers in the skin. We age and die— and how is that fair? What if we want to see the next millennium? And the next two millennia after that? Why should our bodies dictate our lifespan? Why should we sit here and wait to rot and wither and die when we have the intelligence and mindset to do it? If nobody else is willing to throw ethics aside to take a step forwards in human evolution, I should do it myself.” She folded her arms across her chest, again, like a child. “I did what was to be done.”
“Dr. Summers.” The interviewer’s tone grew stiff. “You and your colleagues conducted illegal and unethical procedures on your family and friends—as well as four other victims.”
The woman inclined her head. “You have a daughter, am I correct? I have a son.”
“A child you killed, Dr Summers.” The interviewer retorted in a hiss which was definitely expressing emotion. She ignored the mention of her daughter, but I could tell it had rattled her to her core. Her voice had cracked. This case was close to her.
That was obvious. Without seeing the interviewer herself, I could sense how uncomfortable she was, shuffling in the chair. Every so often I would hear the sound of her rubbing her hands on her knees and tapping her shoe against the chair leg. She oozed anxiety, not just from her tone of voice, but the way the frame seemed to move with her. “Dr. Summers, you used your son in your research, along with several of his friends. This was not science.” Her voice shook. I heard her sharp inhale. Unprofessional, but very human. Instead of staying stoic and keeping to script, this agent was cracking apart. “It was murder.”
“Agent Lemrac, concentrate on the interview only.” An official voice crackled through what sounded like an intercom on screen.
“Got it.” She spoke through her teeth.
The woman was finding wounds and pressing on them. She was scanning the interviewer for vulnerabilities and preying on every insecurity. She leaned back speaking through a sigh. “Without my son’s sacrifice we wouldn’t have created an answer to death. To growing old and dying, and leaving loved ones behind.” Her voice softened into a murmur, but I didn’t trust it.
After identifying the shattering pieces of this interviewer which were very clear visible in her view, the woman was taking advantage.
“Agent Lemrac, you have a daughter. Am I correct in saying her name is Mari?
“That… that is not relevant.”
“Glioblastoma.” Dr. Summers lips curved into a sickening smile hidden behind mocking sympathy. “A sickness of the brain--which, unfortunately, I cannot fix. If your daughter’s brain was in my hands, I would try. However, not even a brand new body would help her. One which would never age or grow sick. And for that, I am deeply, deeply sorry.” She reached her cuffed hands forwards. “My condolences, Agent Lemrac. Honestly. I have to hand it to you. You are incredibly brave for coming here today and talking to me while abandoning your sick child.” She shook her head.
“Your daughter is dying of an incurable illness, suffering inside fragile skin which will break and fall apart and be unable to keep her standing for much longer. While my son will live on forever. He will see every millennia, a planet which will crumble and build itself back together. And maybe the end of the universe itself.” There was a twitch in her expression and a glitter in her eye I did not recognise. Insanity.
She was fucking insane. I was seeing the pure of it, the depraved and disgusting gleam in eyes empty of remorse and regret. This woman did not care what she had done. I could tell from the look on her face. If she had the chance, she would do this again.
But there was no way they were trying to say her cruelty and complete disregard for her son’s life was due to insanity.
“You are sick, Dr. Summers.” The interviewer said after a moment of gathering herself.
The woman shook her head with a chuckle. “I told you. I am not sick--”
“Sick in the head!” The interviewer’s voice exploded through the speakers in a shriek—a terrified cry she had been trying to hold in. I finally saw her—or at least the back of her. She was a young woman with light blonde hair falling loose on her shoulders. She was trembling. Slamming her hands down on the table, she screamed at the orange jumpsuit woman.
“You are psychologically fucked in the head! You psycho bitch! That is my sister!” She spoke through strangled sobs rattling her whole body. “Mari is my little sister. She is not my child.”
Her breaths were strangled and harboured. I noticed figures looming in the background, but she was continuing. “You killed your own fucking son,” she spat. “You are not legally insane, you are sick!” she shrieked. “You planned and put this together! You sit there and you talk about your son like he’s a… like he’s a tool! You deserve to rot. Do you hear me?” I noticed the orange jumpsuit woman was still smiling, satisfied with the interview’s reaction. Her words were spoken in a vicious poison as she leaned forward and spat directly in orange jumpsuit’s face.
“Agent Lemrac!” Whoever her superiors were—were panicking. “I told you not to turn it off. I knew this was going to happen. Can we stop the demonstration, please? Human emotions present inside an Aceville soldier are too powerful—"
Voices were murmuring in the background, and Agent Lemrac raised her hands. “I want to stop.” She choked out, her hands trembling. She spoke like she still had control over the situation and wasn’t being apprehended. “I want to stop. Do you hear me?” The interviewer was crying, I realized. “Stop the recording! I can’t do this. Oh god, I think I’m going to be sick—”
When the footage ended in a burst of static, I found myself backing away, something slimy creeping its way up my throat.
The woman in the orange jumpsuit who had murdered her son and countless others in what sounded like an attempt at playing god, was Eleanor Summers. I thought back to Teddy’s corpse, and the surgical precision of every organ’s removal. The young interviewer had mentioned colleagues of Eleanor.
Was it possible that Camp Redwood was in fact nothing more than a rehabilitation camp for murderous criminals? There was a loud bang from above, and I was torn from my thoughts.
I turned to Rowan, who had been unusually quiet. And I realized why, when I twisted around to find him three inches from my face, his laboured breath tickling my cheek.
The boy jumped back with a chuckle—like me noticing him was some kind of game, before diving back into the chair. I did notice something odd, as my thoughts spiralled. Rowan couldn’t sit still. Slumped in the leather spinning chair, he fingers tapped a rhythm on the armrests while his feet jumped up and down. In the dim light of the bunker, I glimpsed a sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead and the flesh of his neck. He looked to be… feverish—and now that I was looking at him properly, all of my attention on the boy, I noticed small things which seemed… off about him.
For one, he wasn’t coming up with a plan. Rowan always had a plan. Even if he wasn’t completely sure of it, or was completely winging it. This time though, he was strangely quiet. I found my voice when he stuck out his tongue at me. “What are you looking at?”
“Rowan.” I spoke softly, careful not to garner attention from above us where Harry and Carmel were still clamouring around, playing games. “Are you… feeling okay?” I asked, when he turned back to the laptop, manically biting his fingernails.
“I dunnnooooo, Josie! Am I feeeeeeling okaaaaaayyyyy?” He surprised me with an uncharacteristic laugh.
But I did know it.
I knew it from earlier when he reacted to Allison’s bunker and I had been too freaked out to realize that I was dragging along the enemy with me.
Because the fucking idiot had consumed animal crackers. I had seen him for myself earlier, pouring a pack into his mouth for a snack. Which meant either the ‘kids’ had intentionally dosed him with mind altering sugary snacks, or the more likely, he could not resist those preservatives which was the equivalent of caffeine. It’s not like I could blame him when he harboured the weight of an entire camp, but come on, did he really have to sacrifice his own fucking mind to keep himself awake?
Rowan wasn’t just biting. His nails. He was gnawing. Which he previously thought was a filthy habit. He had yelled at a camper for chewing on her nails a few days earlier.
Now that I was noticing it, I couldn’t… stop noticing it. The boy’s whole demeanour had changed; the way he was sinking into the chair, instead of sitting up straight like usual—- I used to call it having a stick up his ass. The boy started typing on the laptop, ignoring me. But when I watched the pattern of his fingers, he was just typing gibberish. Footsteps pounded above us, Harry and Carmel acting as the kid’s’ brainwashed foot-soldiers. Or, more likely somehow, if the animal crackers had caused the littles, or I guess, the fully grown forty year old criminals, to relapse in age-- then maybe it was possible for the same thing to happen to us. To Rowan.
I could feel myself starting to back away, but there was nowhere to run. I just slammed into a cupboard. My gaze flicked to Rowan again, who was tapping a beat on the laptop tracking pad, swaying back and forth, his eyes elsewhere before his gaze found mine. “Marcoooooo!” Harry shouted from above, giggling with Carmel.
I had to guess their mental age had to be at least 8-10 years old. Which meant I wasn’t just dealing with a camp full of forty-year-old psycho’s, I was also dealing with mentally relapsed counselors acting like toddlers.
Rowan seemed to jolt in the chair, twisting his head around, his eyes suddenly incredibly childlike and playful, and very Un-Rowan, were finding the ceiling, his mouth stretching into a smile, like he was seeing butterflies. His eyes flashed to me, and I caught a twitch in his lip. I knew that look. It was the look on my seven year old sister, who knew mom was mad at me, and wanted to make it even worse.
His cheeks were starting to blossom scarlet from what must have been the overwhelming urge to laugh. Rowan pressed his lips together and held in a breath like a hamster, and the asshole was fucking with me. waiting for me to beat him to it by accident. Kids were fucking ruthless, but there was something terrifying about an 18 year old with a little kid’s mind.
I lifted my index to my lips, miming for him not to even try, but the boy just mimicked me, bugging out his eyes and pressing his finger to his grinning mouth. “Don’t you fucking dare.” I managed to whisper. The boy was definitely playing his own game, moving in twitching movements, baiting me. When he cupped his mouth, I almost let out a cry, but then he dropped his arms with a giggle, as if to say, “I’m just kidding!”
Slowly, I turned around, grabbed the salt I’d found in Allison’s cupboard, and a flat can of soda. Without making too much movement, I poured a handful of salt into the can. But Rowan seemed to know exactly what I was doing. Because in the time it was taking me to advance towards him, with the can of salty soda, one arm shakily ready to grab hold of him, and put him into a headlock, he was cupping his mouth, all logic and everything adult, everything he had been as our leader, igniting in playful eyes, leaving me the last one standing.
“Pollloooooo!”
By the time Rowan had managed to reveal our hiding place in a spluttered laugh, I had hold of the squirming boy, one arm wrapped around his neck, my other forcing the can of soda into his mouth. I had definitely miscalculated his strength. During camp Redwood activities, he was always the last one to come back from the trail, holding his knees and panting. I figured he was unfit. However, I was wrong. Underneath his shirt, the guy had some serious muscles.
It was like attacking a brick wall. However, Rowan was mentally a kid. So, I had my intelligence and logic on my side. When it became obvious I wasn’t going to get anywhere with brute strength, I resorted to tickling him, which made him squirming, squeaking out a laugh. When he opened his mouth to yell at me to stop, I took my chance, thrusting the can into his lips and holding his nose so he swallowed it down.
“No!” His laughter turned into muffled yelling, as he batted his fists at my chest. “No, no, no! Get off, get off!”
His body convulsed as the salt did its job, causing the boy to lurch to his knees and choke up forbidden animal crackers in a gooish sludge which turned my stomach. By the time Rowan seemed half himself and half not, still kneeling, his head pressed against the floor, Harry was poking his head through the door with a goonish grin. “Found you!” He giggled, before forcing the door open, allowing Carmel and Callen, freshly caught mentally turned into littles, to advance down the stairs with equally terrifying grins. There was something wrong with Harry’s face, and I only realized it when the guy himself was hauling me from the bunker, Carmel dragging a barely responsive Rowan. There was nothing in Harry’s expression, only blind childish excitement at winning the game. When he dragged me out of Allison’s cabin and threw me to the ground, I realized he too had insane strength I had not been expecting. But that thought quickly retracted when I was seeing his face in the light of a crescent moon lighting up the sky an eerie glow. Harry’s cheeks were puffy and swollen, his right eye way bigger than it should have been.
When he spoke, his voice was more of a lisp. This was something far more realistic than magical animal crackers fucking with his brain.
“He needs help!” I managed to choke out when Carmel wrapped jump-rope around my wrists. Next to me, Rowan was refusing to get up, still choking up salty soda, groaning into his hands. Every time Callen tried to restrain him, he hissed out like an animal.
“Do you hear me?!” I struggled violently. “Harry needs—”
BANG.
Is what it felt like. The feeling of something—what felt and sounded like a toy car—colliding with my temples, sent me onto the ground, my head spinning itself off of its axis. I remember lying on my back and frowning at the moon which almost looked like it was getting closer to me, blurring into a white ball of light—before reality sunk in, and it was in fact Carmel’s converse coming down to finish me off. I didn’t stay knocked out for long. But I did dream.
I think you can call it a dream? I was lying in bed at home; my room drowned in the dark. I was cosy, curled up in my blankets, when a clammy hand slammed over my mouth, rousing me from slumber. There were two figures in my room. They didn’t have faces. They just existed as shadows, silhouettes. Before one of them raised something above their head, and… impact.
It was the same impact as the toy car hitting me, snapping me back to that night. It wasn’t a dream. Because I remembered his clammy fingers over my mouth, and his hisses for me to shut up as he dragged me from my room.
My parents stood in front of me with expressions of sympathy. Basked in warm light, my mom and dad looked almost otherworldly. “For the best.” Was what they mouthed when my own phantom screams slammed into me, I asked them why, and they didn’t reply, allowing him to pull me further and further from what I knew, from my life as I knew it. But.. that couldn’t be real. I had memories of getting on the bus to camp Redwood. I could recall the whole journey. So, why… why was my tangled mind saying otherwise?
When I gathered myself, the first thing I realized was I was sitting down. I was outside, cool night air grazing my bare arms. There was something attached to me, jerking violently, And it took me several disorientating blinks to understand that I was tied back to back with Rowan. My head pounded, and something wet and warm dripped down my temple. Great. I could add head injury to the long list of things to worry about.
“Let me go you little fucking witch.”
Rowan was back to himself, though from the muffled hissing and the sound of choking—I had to guess he was being force-fed animal crackers.
“Let me—mpphmmm. little…. fucking… mphmmphhmhppmm!”
“Rowan.” I managed to get out in a croak. Through flickering eyes, I caught glimpse of a familiar figure dancing around us. Shivers rocketed down my spine, and I wrenched at the jump-rope restraints, but they did a surprisingly job of restraining my arms behind my back.
Eleanor was with Rowan, while Eli was knelt in front of me. Looking at him, the boy had definitely aged in the face—and I couldn’t help wondering what exactly he had done as a forty something year old to be sent to this place.
“Josie!” Rowan responded in a wail. “Josie. Wake the FUCK up.”
“Stop swearing.”
Eleanor spoke with the cold tone of her actual age.
“Oh, yeah?” Rowan spluttered. “Fuck you.” The boy’s laugh was still rough from almost vomiting his insides out from too much salt intake. “I’m sorry, you were a fucking boomer all along?!” He wriggled in the restraints, lunging forwards, which sent me backwards.
“Stop swearing, Rowan.” Was all the girl responded with calmly.
“Like I’m going to listen to you!” He sneered. “Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fucking fuck!” What are you going to do, huh? Bite me with your false teeth?” The sound of saliva hitting skin made me wince. He was pissed. I had no doubt his completely rational anger was going to get us killed. Rowan was also somehow getting mixed up between forty and eighty. Though he was unwillingly snacking on mind bending sugary goodness.
“Fudge, Rowan.” Eleanor spoke in a giggle.
“What?!”
“Say fudge. Not fuck.”
“No.”
His hiss of pain caught me off guard. I don’t know what she was doing to him, but it was hurting him.
“You fudging fudge! I’m going to fudging kill you when I get out of these fudging ropes—“ his manic cursing became a muffled yell.
“Say fudge,” Eleanor hummed, followed by his hiss when the palm of her hand skinned his cheek. “Fuck is a bad word. You even said so yourself and you’re my favourite counselor.”
He heaved out a breath.
“You fudge,” Rowan spat. “When I get out of this, I am going to fudging kill you, you fudging—” His manic ranting morphed, once again, into muffled yelling, after another fistful of animal crackers were forced into his mouth. When I risked twisting around, I could see his rebellion slowly starting to simmer out as he relaxed slightly. I wanted to yell at him to keep a clear head before cold fingers were dipping under my chin and forcing my head around where I found myself face to face with Eli.
“I like you, Josie,” he said, before untying me and pulling me to my feet. Now at the age of nine or ten, he was a lot stronger. When I tried to pull away, the cruel blade of a knife grazed my gut. I caught his grin. “But we don’t need you.” Eli pointed to Rowan.
“We just want them.”
I followed his pointer finger which went from Rowan to Harry and Carmel, who were just standing there like fucking idiots, probably awaiting the next game. Harry’s face was getting redder. It looked like he was suffocating, and yet his grin was growing wider and wider, splitting his lips apart. “Rowan Atlas.” Eleanor said, dragging him to his feet. Something was stapled to his forehead head, which caused him to howl in pain, hissing another strangled line of “Fudge”. but I couldn’t read what it was.
“Camp leader. Intelligent, and problem solving skills.”
“Harry Carlisle.” Eli nodded his head with a smile. “Quick thinker. Strong minded.”
“Carmel Locke.” Cassie spoke behind me. She had her arms folded, a wry smile on her lips. “Smarter than she makes out—- an independent learner, and can work well under pressure.”
Looking at these kids, I felt sick to my stomach. They were planning something—and had the intelligence of renowned scientists, which was what I gathered from the footage on the MacBook. “What?” was all I could hiss out, as Eli prodded the blade of the knife into my back, ushering me to walk. “What are you talking about?”
“Duh.” He spoke in a more tweeny giggle. “Like I said, Miss Josie. You’re my favorite counselor but we don’t need you, so I’m going to use you for parts.” He laughed when a shiver spiderwebbed down my spine. “See! I told you I was going to show you my collection!”
“But… what do you need them for?”
Eli pressed his index finger to his lips with a laugh before forcing me to face forwards. “That’s a secret!”
When I didn’t, or couldn’t move, he shoved me into a stumbling power-walk, and I managed to turn my head quickly, making feverish eye contact with Rowan.
“Rowan.” I said calmly through the gutter in my throat. “Get…. Get help.”
If I was going to die, I needed him to get a hold of himself and somehow alert the outside world what was going on.
“From whom, Josie?!” He wailed back—and as I was dragged away, I could once again sense the childish undertones in his voice.
I had no choice but to obey Eli’s orders. If I didn’t want a knife in my back. He took me to the main lunch cabin, which, when I set foot inside, almost sent me to my knees.
Something lurched inside me, and I was screaming with no voice, staggering backwards, only to be shoved onto my face. In front of me was what had been the lunch hall, fully converted into the beginning of a laboratory.
What had been cafeteria tables were fashioned into makeshift gurney’s and beds, and I was looking at all of the missing counselors. Yuri and Noah had been skinned completely, their faces laid out on a makeshift surgical table. Joey had been ripped open, his heart and brain removed, a glittering metallic substance creeping its way across his forehead. It was then when I remembered Eleanor Summers words.
She wanted to prevent death and preserve the human mind. Looking at what was in front of me, this was the start of it. There was equipment I had never seen before. Lily’s body was empty, carved out completely, tubes forced inside her. When I glimpsed her fingers move and begin to ball into a fist, I saw red. I saw fucking red. The exit was so close and yet Eli, fucking Eli, wielded his knife. I think that is when part of me gave up. My brain just stopped. It short circuited. Seeing my friends murdered and yet somehow being kept alive through playing god, my body slumped to the ground. I was numb. Completely numb.
I’m not sure what would have happened if those bloody saws and instruments which had been used on my friends were used on me too.
Luckily, that did not happen. Before Eli could get his slimy hands on me, he crumpled to the ground in an almost cartoon-like fashion, and standing over me was Harry. Who was looking better. When he grasped hold of me and helped me up, I only had one word. “Out.” And he was nodding, his eyes glistening as he drunk in our friends’ fate.
“How?” I managed to sputter out, when we made it out of the cabin, ducking behind a tree. Harry turned to me, motioning for me to shut up. There was a group of now ten to eleven year olds already running around, searching for what I guessed was him.
“I’m allergic to peanut butter,” Harry murmured, his grasp tightening on my wrist as he led me across the camp, the two of us stumbling.
“What, and you just magically healed?”
He didn’t respond to that, which bothered me.
“The bunker is our best shot,” I hissed out. “I think we can get in contact with someone down there.” I paused, unable to stop myself. “What makes you so important?”
“Dunno. Maybe I’m their favorite.”
When we found Allison’s cabin, which was more of a safehouse (an exposed safehouse) I found Rowan sitting on the wooden porch with his legs swinging over the side. “Rowan!” Harry hissed. I found it hard to believe their roles had been switched. Now he was the one yelling at the camp-leader. “I told you to stay inside!”
He ushered the boy inside, before barricading the door with some hefty looking equipment. I could tell from the grin on his face that our so-called leader was once again no longer himself.
I had to bite back a groan. “You’re kidding.” I said, pointing to Rowan, who buried his head in his knees and blew a raspberry. “Does he look and act like our leader right now?!”
“It’s Rowan, Josie.”
“He’s a liability.”
“He’s our friend! Wouldn’t Rowan do the same?”
Yes, he would. But. He would also realize we’re lost causes.
“Gag him with something.” I said. “If he makes any more noise, we’re dumping him.”
“He’s a kid!”
“Just the mind of one.”
I don’t know how animal crackers worked, but his age seemed to be progressively younger. This time he just sat with wide eyes watching us.
Harry almost tore apart the place looking for means of communication, before an old fashioned ringing sound made me jump.
“What was that?” Harry turned to me with his lip curled.
“How am I supposed to know?!” I hissed. “Keep looking!” But when I ducked under the table, my hands crawled under the desk, finding a wire—and attached to that, an ancient looking phone which looked straight out of a 1940’s movie, a bright green rotary phone.
Hesitantly, I answered it, lifting the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“Did you awaken the subjects, Agent Salta?"
The voice on the other end was a woman, an oldish sounding woman with the tinge of a British accent.
“What?” I shot a look at Harry before shaking my head. “No. My name is Josie Greenfield. We’re at Camp Redwood, and we need help.”
The woman paused.
“Where is Agent Salta?” She cleared her throat. “This line is reserved for communication with agents only.”
“I don’t know who the fuck you’re talking about!" I hissed out. “My name is Josie, and whatever is happening here, we need help!”
“Josie. Did you awaken the subjects?”
I paused after a moment, shooting Harry a look when he tried to take the phone off of me. “Yes.”
“And… are our agents unavailable?”
“I don’t understand.”
“When a health and safety breach is activated, our agents are awakened to deal with the Project Spearhead subjects if they were to ever go rogue, or become conscious enough to think. Josie, can you tell me what is in front of you? Describe it to me.”
I held my breath. Next to the hidden phone under the desk was what looked like mismatched wires, all of which had been severed. I lowered myself slowly, poking at mess. “Wires. I see… cut up wires.” I whispered. “Does this mean they know about you?”
She hummed. “Ah…That makes sense. The only way to activate our sleeper handlers would be to send out the signal. You appear to have been sabotaged. Unless activated manually, our agents cannot help you. I am sorry. They are your problem now.” The woman paused.
“If I were you, I would hope and pray they have not sabotaged the self-destruct. If you find that, then you may be able to save yourselves and find peace.” She cleared her throat. “Thank you for your service, Josie Greenfield.”
“Wait.” I managed to get out. “Wait, no! You can’t just… you can’t leave us! We need help!”
I found myself yelling at nothing when the phone went dead. The dull tone of the dead ringtone was clanging in my ears before footsteps from up above. “Fuck this.” Harry picked up a lead pipe. “They’re still little kids, right? I mean, their head must still be partly kids—- so let’s fucking beat their heads in.”
He noticed something, then, starting forwards towards the mess of files I had left earlier. Harry knelt on the ground and picked up Eli’s file, his eyes wide. But he wasn’t staring at the dates confirming the little boy’s age.
Instead, Harry pointed at the bottom of the file. “I don’t want to freak you out, Josie,” he whispered. Initially, I didn’t know what he was trying to show before I glimpsed notes scrawled at the bottom of the file, followed by a signature. “But I’m pretty sure that is my fucking writing.”
Harry was right.
I pulled the paperwork off of him, flicking through each file before turning my eyes to him. “Who the fuck are you?” I managed to hiss out.
A clanging sound from above broke the tension, and whatever Harry was about to reply with was strangled in his throat. He slammed a hand over his mouth.
“Guys?”
The voice twisted me up inside, threatening to release a shriek from my mouth I had managed to clamp shut.
Teddy.
“Are you down here?” His voice was strained, and had an odd tone to it. “I can’t… I can’t see you.”
…
Can someone please tell me what the fuck is going on?! It’s been a blur of a week. We’ve managed to stay down here, surviving off of Allison’s rations. Rowan isn’t getting any better. He seems to have stopped mentally de-ageing at the age of maybe six. Harry has spent the last few days trying to get in contact with anyone, but it’s like they are IGNORING US.
I’ve been looking through everything I can find on Project Spearhead, but nothing points to Harry being involved. So. How is his signature all over the files? How is it possible that two friends I thought I knew several days ago, are now complete strangers?
Teddy keeps coming back.
He’s crying out to us.
I think he’s… in pain.
My god, I can’t stand this anymore. Please. CAMP REDWOOD NEEDS HELP.

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Borderlands: The Handsome Collection
Primal Carnage: Extinction
Due Process
SimpleRockets 2
Killing Floor 2
For the King
For The King: Lost Civilization Adventure Pack
Pro Cycling Manager 2020
Tour de France 2020
Infectonator 3: Apocalypse
Warhammer: Chaosbane
Project Highrise
LAST OASIS
The Beast Inside
Terminus: Zombie Survivors
Crown Trick
Discolored
Everhood
Grand Mountain Adventure: Wonderlands
Nomad Survival
Sparklite
The Ramp
Valfaris
Dusk Diver
Neverinth
Tokyo Xanadu eX+
Zengeon
Spirit Hunter: Death Mark
Unmemory
Nigate Tale
Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos
Liberated
Neversong
Nine Parchments
The Walking Dead
Secret Government
Monsters' Den: Godfall
Interplanetary: Enhanced Edition
Learn Japanese To Survive! Hiragana Battle
Learn Japanese To Survive! Kanji Combat
Learn Japanese To Survive! Katakana War
The Eternal Castle [REMASTERED]
THIS WAR OF MINE: COMPLETE EDITION
Cats in Time
Afterparty
Battlecruisers
Astronarch
Save Room - Organization Puzzle
PlataGO! Super Platform Game Maker
Nongunz: Doppelganger Edition
Warhammer vermintide collector's edition
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
Tank Mechanic Simulator
The Uncertain: Light At The End
INSOMNIA: The Ark
Darkside Detective
Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
GIGA WRECKER
Panty Party
Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark
Tannenberg
Golf It!
Heroes of Hammerwatch
The Battle of Polytopia *DLC1. Cymanti Tribe *DLC2. ∑∫ỹriȱŋ Tribe *DLC3. Aquarion Tribe *DLC4. Polaris Tribe
Leisure Suit Larry - Wet Dreams Don't Dry
Lornsword Winter Chronicle
Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty
N++ (NPLUSPLUS)
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair
Virgo Versus The Zodiac
They Bleed Pixels
Maize
Smile For Me
The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game
Frog Detective 2: The Case of the Invisible Wizard
A Hole New World
Sumoman
Shape of the World
Evan's Remains
Ministry of Broadcast
She Sees Red - Interactive Movie
A Long Way Down
Depraved
Helheim Hassle
Neurodeck : Psychological Deckbuilder
Tropico 5 - Complete Collection
Escapists 2
Worms Rumble *Worms Rumble - New Challengers Pack *Worms Rumble - Legends Pack *Worms Rumble - Armageddon Weapon Skin Pack *Worms Rumble - Captain & Shark Double Pack
Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics
Turmoil
Narcos: Rise of the Cartels
Rogue Stormers
Torchlight
Fictorum
Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth
Moon Hunters
No Time to Relax
Overpass
Blood Bowl 2
SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition
Conarium
Brawlout
F1 RACE STARS Complete Edition Include DLC
Killing Room
Tenta Shooter / The 触シュー
Everreach: Project Eden
Railway Empire
Looterkings
Headsnatchers
Battlestar Galactica Deadlock
AIdol
Livelock
The Letter - Horror Visual Novel
F1 2018
Tacoma
Hard West - Collector's Edition
Hard West: Scars of Freedom DLC
Masquerada: Songs and Shadows
The Shrouded Isle
Joint Task Force
The World Next Door
Verdant Skies
DISTRAINT 2
Ittle Dew
Ittle Dew 2+
Oxenfree
Monstrum
Strikey Sisters
Do Not Feed the Monkeys
Cyber Ops
European Ship Simulator
Fishing Adventure
Internet Cafe Simulator
Zen Chess: Mate in One, Mate in 2 , Mate in 3 , Mate in 4 , Champion's Moves (5 games)
Transport INC
Shoppe Keep 2 - Business and Agriculture RPG Simulation
Desolate
GRIP: Combat Racing + DLC
OUTBUDDIES DX
Eidolon
Pizza Connection 3
Spartan Fist
River City Ransom: Underground
Saints Row: The Third
Koi-Koi Japan [Hanafuda playing cards] *Koi-Koi Japan : UKIYOE tours Vol.1 DLC *Koi-Koi Japan : UKIYOE tours Vol.2 DLC *Koi-Koi Japan : UKIYOE tours Vol.3 DLC
Mahjong Pretty Girls Battle
Mahjong Pretty Girls Battle : School Girls Edition
Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire
Princess Kaguya: Legend of the Moon Warrior
Delicious! Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire
Chaos Reborn
Driftland: The Magic Revival
Shadows: Awakening
Caveblazers
Fallback: Uprising
Mordheim: City of the Damned
WRC 7 FIA World Rally Championship
Mana Spark
Autonauts
Nusakana
Shift Happens
Crash Drive 3
Hot Tin Roof: The Cat That Wore A Fedora
Automachef
Demolish & Build 2017
Resort Boss: Golf
Out of Space
Narita Boy
Aven Colony
Alien Breed Trilogy
Tools up
Mount & Blade
Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword
BLACKHOLE: Complete Edition
Detention
Downfall
Miasmata
Overclocked: A History of Violence
Silver Chains
White Night
The Cat Lady
Syberia 3
Textorcist
GARAGE bad trip
Guts and glory
Swag and Sorcery
Fort Triumph
Orwell: Ignorance is Strength
FRAMED Collection
ROTASTIC
As Far as the Eye
Cepheus Protocol
Overruled
Ageless
Giana Sisters 2D
Prank Call
Hotshot Racing
Undead Horde
Streets of Fury EX
Rec Center Tycoon
JumpJet Rex
Hyper Knights
Vectronom
Levelhead
I am not a Monster: First Contact
Papo & Yo
Crookz the big heist
Iron Fisticle
Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2
Fun with Ragdolls: The Game
Reventure
Smoke and Sacrifice
American Fugitive
The Signal From Tölva
Medieval Kingdom Wars
Rebel Galaxy
XIII - Classic
Comedy Night
Darkness Within 2: The Dark Lineage
FLATLAND Vol.2
The Chess Variants Club
Armada 2526 Gold Edition
Toybox Turbos
Sudden Strike Gold
Airport Madness: World Edition
King's Bounty: Warriors of the North
Planet Alcatraz
NecroVisioN: Lost Company
Star Wolves
Konung 2
Men of War
A.I.M.2 Clan Wars
Parkan 2
El Matador
Ascension to the Throne
Peaky Blinders: Mastermind
The Flame in the Flood
When Ski Lifts Go Wrong
Bomber Crew
10 Second Ninja X
The Sacred Tears TRUE
Fred3ric
Lovecraft's Untold Stories
Path to Mnemosyne
CastleStorm
Crush Your Enemies
Semblance
S.W.I.N.E. HD Remaster
Radio Commander
Boneless Zombie
Robot Squad Simulator 2017
Pretty Girls Panic!
Poker Pretty Girls Battle: Texas Hold'em
VVVVVV
Warhammer Space wolf
Blazing Chrome
Car Mechanic Simulator 2015
Pang Adventures
Party Hard 2
REKT! High Octane Stunts
Thief of Thieves: Season One
Trailblazers
Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide
Demetrios - Deluxe Edition
Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues
GemCraft - Frostborn Wrath
Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix
Rebel Galaxy Outlaw
Shadowhand: RPG Card Game
Survivalist: Invisible Strain
We Were Here Too
Blacksad: Under the Skin
Heroes of Hammerwatch
Leisure Suit Larry 1-7
Murder by Numbers
Redout: Enhanced Edition
Rise of Industry + 2130 DLC
Ziggurat
They Bleed Pixels
Sunblaze
Noosphere
Train Valley 1+2
Door Kickers: Action Squad
Vikings - Wolves of Midgard
Vambrace: Cold Soul
The Void
The Vagrant
Republique
Nephise: Ascension
Leisure Suit Larry - Wet Dreams Don't Dry
Knock-knock
Jewel Match Atlantis Solitaire - Collector's Edition
Healer's Quest
Fictorum
A Robot Named Fight!
Skautfold Chapters 1-4
Hero of the Kingdom: Trilogy
198X
Danger Scavenger
Doctor Who: The Lonely Assassins
Dread X Collection
Going Under
My Lovely Daughter
Rage in Peace
Flashback
Garfield Kart
Curse: The Eye of Isis
Amerzone: The Explorer’s Legacy
Black Moon Chronicles
Nostradamus: The Last Prophecy
Red Riding Hood - Star Crossed Lovers
Chicago 1930 : The Prohibition
Sinking Island
Haegemonia: Legions of Iron
Occultus - Mediterranean Cabal
Gevaudan
Windscape
Ultra Space Battle Brawl
Through the Woods
This is the Zodiac Speaking
The Uncertain: Light At The End
The Uncertain - The Last Quiet Day
Tales
Tales of the Neon Sea
Styx: Master of Shadows
She and the Light Bearer
Epistory - Typing Chronicles
A Wolf in Autumn
The Music Machine
Jalopy
Insane 2
Antigraviator
All-Star Fruit Racing
Constructor Plus
Ice Lakes
Knights of Pen & Paper 2
Victoria II
Kingdom Come: Deliverance – Band of Bastards
Kingdom Come: Deliverance – From the Ashes
Mindustry

Games
Cube Runner
Slash It Ultimate
Slash It 2
Slash It
Cybercube
Poly Island
Spin Rush
Upside Down
Neon Space
Hungry Flame
Charlie's Adventure
Neon Space 2
Duke of Alpha Centauri

VR Games
House Flipper VR
Telefrag VR
Slinger VR

Wishlist

https://www.reddit.com/IGSRep/comments/pikmri/calvin324hks_igs_rep_page/
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Region: NA (Canada)
Price are in USD. Fees on buyer.
CTRL + F to find your games in terms of name
Humble Keys <------ Click Here to see a full list of humble keys
Yakuza: Like a Dragon Legendary Hero Edition
Two Point Hospital
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Ultimate Edition
Trek to Yomi
Shadow Warrior 3
BATTLETECH MERCENARY COLLECTION
BATTLETECH Shadow Hawk Pack
Knights of Pen and Paper +1 Edition
Knights of Pen and Paper - Haunted Fall
KNIGHTS OF PEN AND PAPER 2 - DELUXIEST EDITION
Knights of Pen and Paper 2 - Here Be Dragons
Deathloop
Hell Let Loose
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
F1 2019 Anniversary Edition
Valkryia Chronicles 4 Complete Edition
Mafia Definitive Edition
Mordhau
Back 4 Blood
Little Hope
Peaky Blinders: Mastermind
Visage
death stranding
Slay the Spire
Praey for the Gods
Degrees of Separation
Ghostrunner
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
Control Ultimate Edition
Encore Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project
Hyper Light Drifter
Dirt 5
Ultimate Chicken Horse
Kentucky Route Zero - Season Pass Edition
Dreamfall Chapters
Wuppo
Human: Fall Flat
Northgard
The Witness
Borderlands: The Handsome Collection
MO:Astray
Metro Exodus
Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition
Super Mag Bot
Blade Assault
Where the Water Tastes Like Wine
TOEM
Backbone
GreedFall
Wasteland 3
GAS STATION SIMULATOR
IN SOUND MIND
MIND SCANNERS
EMILY IS AWAY <3
OMNO
ATOM RPG Trudograd
Banners of Ruin
Lawn Mowing Simulator
Legend of Keepers
Yes, Your Grace
Endzone - A World Apart
60 Parsecs
XCOM: ULTIMATE COLLECTION
PGA 2K21
Bioshock Collection
Warhammer: Vermintide 2 - Collector's Edition
JUST CAUSE 4: COMPLETE EDITION
Plague tale
Gas station simulator
Mind scanners
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA DEADLOCK SEASON ONE
Gamedec
Command & Conquer Remastered (Origin)
Surviving The Aftermath
Genesis Noir
Dirt Rally 2.0

Stand With Ukraine Charity Bundle
Gang Beasts
Tinkertown
Cloud Gardens
Blightbound
Stick Fight: The Game
Railway Empire
Mad Experiments: Escape Room
ibb & obb Double Pack
The Falconeer
Truberbrook
At Eve's Wake
Interrogation: You will be deceived
Hoplegs
Cannibal Cuisine
Necronator: Dead Wrong
Awesomenauts All Nauts pack
1993 Space Machine
8-bit Adventure Anthology: Volume I
ChromaGun
Baby Dino Adventures
Click and Slay
Swords and Soldiers 2 Shawarmageddon
Cosmonautica
Crash Drive 2
Dimension Drive
The Way
Explosionade
Gelly Break Deluxe
Guppy
Journey For Elysium
Last Resort Island
Lumini
Marooners
Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy! HD
Pizza Connection 3
Pressure Overdrive
Renowned Explorers: International Society
Tales of the Tiny Planet
TaniNani
THE CORRIDOR
AWAKE - Definitive Edition
Treasure Temples
Shu
Combat Tested
Unexplored
Rayon Riddles - Rise of the Goblin King
Circles

Killer Bundle 25
From Space
Breathedge
Police Stories
DOOM 64
Arise: A Simple Story
Patron
Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition
Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition
Turok
Turok 2: Seeds of Evil
THE GAME OF LIFE 2
CHANGE: A Homeless Survival Experience
DESOLATE
The Hong Kong Massacre
Death and Taxes
Lair of the Clockwork God
AMID EVIL
Just Die Already
I Am Fish
Golf Gang
Hypnospace Outlaw
Dark Deity
Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus
DUSK
River City Girls

Other Games
Another World – 20th Anniversary Edition
Chess Ultra
Godstrike
Home Sweet Home
Neighbours back From Hell
Pathologic 2
SAMUDRA
STRANGER
Songbird Symphony
The Invisible Hours
I am Bread
Hotshot Racing
Autonauts
Door Kickers: Action Squad
Iconoclasts
Patch Quest
Tunche
For The King
Abandon Ship
Book of Demons
PC Building Simulator
Pile Up! Box by Box
Snooker 19
Speed Limit
Totally Reliable Delivery Service
Youtubers Life
Dex
WRC 6 FIA World Rally Championship
V-Rally 4
PlateUp!
Turbo Golf Racing
Eternal Threads
The Last Campfire
Kingdom Two Crowns
Indivisible
White Day: A Labyrinth Named School
Field of Glory II
Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War
Ice Age Scrat's Nutty Adventure
Soul Axiom Rebooted
A Little Golf Journey
Murder by Numbers
Chivalry: Medieval Warfare
Songbringer
STONE
Rescue Party: Live!
Rise of the Slime
Steel Rats™
Hue
Teacup
Perfect
Arcade Paradise - Arcade Paradise EP
Strange Brigade
Sifu Deluxe Edition Upgrade Bundle (EPIC)
AVICII Invector: Encore Edition
10 Second Ninja X
The Indie Mixtape
Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor
Epistory - Typing Chronicles
Heroes of Hammerwatch
Monster Slayers - Complete Edition
My Big Sister
Red Ronin
Heal
Cat Lady - The Card Game
Undungeon
Tangledeep
Styx: Shards of Darkness
Styx: Master of Shadows
Squids Odyssey
Pendula Swing - The Complete Journey
Mists of Noyah
King's Bounty: Crossworlds
Jotun: Valhalla Edition
Hero of the Kingdom: The Lost Tales 2
Hero of the Kingdom: The Lost Tales 1
Epistory - Typing Chronicles
Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf Special Edition
Undead Horde
S.W.I.N.E. HD Remaster
Stirring Abyss
Scarlet Tower
Blood And Zombies
One More Island
Doorways: Prelude / Doorways: Holy Mountains of Flesh
Slain: Back from Hell
Lucius/Lucius 2/Lucius 3/Lucius Demake
Aragami
Deliver Us The Moon
Anuchard
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger
Darkwood
Intravenous
Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer's Legacy
Interstellar Space: Genesis
Survive the Nights
Blasphemous
Unto The End
NUTS
Cat Quest
Cosmic Star Heroine
Degrees of Separation
Pure Farming 2018
SEUM: Speedrunners from Hell
SUPER CHICKEN JUMPER
Syberia/Syberia II/Syberia 3
The Innsmouth Case
Tinytopia
Sniper ghost warrior contracts
Trine 4
Risen 3
Shadowgate
How to Survive
FORCED
Psychonauts
Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf Special Edition
Sniper Elite 3 + Season Pass DLC
Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 - Season Pass Edition
METAL GEAR SOLID V: GROUND ZEROES
Strange Brigade Deluxe Edition
Call of Duty® Modern Warfare 3™
Sniper Elite 3
Sniper Elite 4 Deluxe Edition
Amnesia: Rebirth
PGA 2k21
Jurassic World Evolution
Darksiders Genesis
Endless Space® 2 - Digital Deluxe Edition
SID MEIER'S CIVILIZATION VI : PLATINUM EDITION
F1 2020
Titan Quest
Euro Truck Simulator 2
Witch It
BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION
CHANGE: A Homeless Survival Experience
Mighty Switch Force! Collection
Gone Home + Original Soundtrack
The WB Batman Collection
Batman: Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition
Batman: Arkham City - Game of the Year Edition
Beholder
Beholder 2
We Were Here Together
Kyle is Famous: Complete Edition
GRIP: Combat Racing *-GRIP: Combat Racing - Cygon Garage Kit *-GRIP: Combat Racing - Nyvoss Garage Kit *GRIP: Combat Racing - Terra Garage Kit *GRIP: Combat Racing - Vintek Garage Kit
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West
Miscreated
Second Extinction
Survive or Die
Breathedge
Dead in Vinland
Die Young
Empyrion - Galactic Survival
How to Survive 2
The Wild Eight
One Finger Death Punch 2
Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid
Slap City
Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered
Layers of Fear: Masterpiece Edition
Civilization: Beyond Earth – The Collection
Borderlands: The Handsome Collection
Primal Carnage: Extinction
Due Process
SimpleRockets 2
Killing Floor 2
For the King
For The King: Lost Civilization Adventure Pack
Pro Cycling Manager 2020
Tour de France 2020
Infectonator 3: Apocalypse
Warhammer: Chaosbane
Project Highrise
LAST OASIS
The Beast Inside
Terminus: Zombie Survivors
Crown Trick
Discolored
Everhood
Grand Mountain Adventure: Wonderlands
Nomad Survival
Sparklite
The Ramp
Valfaris
Dusk Diver
Neverinth
Tokyo Xanadu eX+
Zengeon
Spirit Hunter: Death Mark
Unmemory
Nigate Tale
Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos
Liberated
Neversong
Nine Parchments
The Walking Dead
Secret Government
Monsters' Den: Godfall
Interplanetary: Enhanced Edition
Learn Japanese To Survive! Hiragana Battle
Learn Japanese To Survive! Kanji Combat
Learn Japanese To Survive! Katakana War
The Eternal Castle [REMASTERED]
THIS WAR OF MINE: COMPLETE EDITION
Cats in Time
Afterparty
Battlecruisers
Astronarch
Save Room - Organization Puzzle
PlataGO! Super Platform Game Maker
Nongunz: Doppelganger Edition
Warhammer vermintide collector's edition
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
Tank Mechanic Simulator
The Uncertain: Light At The End
INSOMNIA: The Ark
Darkside Detective
Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
GIGA WRECKER
Panty Party
Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark
Tannenberg
Golf It!
Heroes of Hammerwatch
The Battle of Polytopia *DLC1. Cymanti Tribe *DLC2. ∑∫ỹriȱŋ Tribe *DLC3. Aquarion Tribe *DLC4. Polaris Tribe
Leisure Suit Larry - Wet Dreams Don't Dry
Lornsword Winter Chronicle
Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty
N++ (NPLUSPLUS)
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair
Virgo Versus The Zodiac
They Bleed Pixels
Maize
Smile For Me
The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game
Frog Detective 2: The Case of the Invisible Wizard
A Hole New World
Sumoman
Shape of the World
Evan's Remains
Ministry of Broadcast
She Sees Red - Interactive Movie
A Long Way Down
Depraved
Helheim Hassle
Neurodeck : Psychological Deckbuilder
Tropico 5 - Complete Collection
Escapists 2
Worms Rumble *Worms Rumble - New Challengers Pack *Worms Rumble - Legends Pack *Worms Rumble - Armageddon Weapon Skin Pack *Worms Rumble - Captain & Shark Double Pack
Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics
Turmoil
Narcos: Rise of the Cartels
Rogue Stormers
Torchlight
Fictorum
Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth
Moon Hunters
No Time to Relax
Overpass
Blood Bowl 2
SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition
Conarium
Brawlout
F1 RACE STARS Complete Edition Include DLC
Killing Room
Tenta Shooter / The 触シュー
Everreach: Project Eden
Railway Empire
Looterkings
Headsnatchers
Battlestar Galactica Deadlock
AIdol
Livelock
The Letter - Horror Visual Novel
F1 2018
Tacoma
Hard West - Collector's Edition
Hard West: Scars of Freedom DLC
Masquerada: Songs and Shadows
The Shrouded Isle
Joint Task Force
The World Next Door
Verdant Skies
DISTRAINT 2
Ittle Dew
Ittle Dew 2+
Oxenfree
Monstrum
Strikey Sisters
Do Not Feed the Monkeys
Cyber Ops
European Ship Simulator
Fishing Adventure
Internet Cafe Simulator
Zen Chess: Mate in One, Mate in 2 , Mate in 3 , Mate in 4 , Champion's Moves (5 games)
Transport INC
Shoppe Keep 2 - Business and Agriculture RPG Simulation
Desolate
GRIP: Combat Racing + DLC
OUTBUDDIES DX
Eidolon
Pizza Connection 3
Spartan Fist
River City Ransom: Underground
Saints Row: The Third
Koi-Koi Japan [Hanafuda playing cards] *Koi-Koi Japan : UKIYOE tours Vol.1 DLC *Koi-Koi Japan : UKIYOE tours Vol.2 DLC *Koi-Koi Japan : UKIYOE tours Vol.3 DLC
Mahjong Pretty Girls Battle
Mahjong Pretty Girls Battle : School Girls Edition
Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire
Princess Kaguya: Legend of the Moon Warrior
Delicious! Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire
Chaos Reborn
Driftland: The Magic Revival
Shadows: Awakening
Caveblazers
Fallback: Uprising
Mordheim: City of the Damned
WRC 7 FIA World Rally Championship
Mana Spark
Autonauts
Nusakana
Shift Happens
Crash Drive 3
Hot Tin Roof: The Cat That Wore A Fedora
Automachef
Demolish & Build 2017
Resort Boss: Golf
Out of Space
Narita Boy
Aven Colony
Alien Breed Trilogy
Tools up
Mount & Blade
Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword
BLACKHOLE: Complete Edition
Detention
Downfall
Miasmata
Overclocked: A History of Violence
Silver Chains
White Night
The Cat Lady
Syberia 3
Textorcist
GARAGE bad trip
Guts and glory
Swag and Sorcery
Fort Triumph
Orwell: Ignorance is Strength
FRAMED Collection
ROTASTIC
As Far as the Eye
Cepheus Protocol
Overruled
Ageless
Giana Sisters 2D
Prank Call
Hotshot Racing
Undead Horde
Streets of Fury EX
Rec Center Tycoon
JumpJet Rex
Hyper Knights
Vectronom
Levelhead
I am not a Monster: First Contact
Papo & Yo
Crookz the big heist
Iron Fisticle
Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2
Fun with Ragdolls: The Game
Reventure
Smoke and Sacrifice
American Fugitive
The Signal From Tölva
Medieval Kingdom Wars
Rebel Galaxy
XIII - Classic
Comedy Night
Darkness Within 2: The Dark Lineage
FLATLAND Vol.2
The Chess Variants Club
Armada 2526 Gold Edition
Toybox Turbos
Sudden Strike Gold
Airport Madness: World Edition
King's Bounty: Warriors of the North
Planet Alcatraz
NecroVisioN: Lost Company
Star Wolves
Konung 2
Men of War
A.I.M.2 Clan Wars
Parkan 2
El Matador
Ascension to the Throne
Peaky Blinders: Mastermind
The Flame in the Flood
When Ski Lifts Go Wrong
Bomber Crew
10 Second Ninja X
The Sacred Tears TRUE
Fred3ric
Lovecraft's Untold Stories
Path to Mnemosyne
CastleStorm
Crush Your Enemies
Semblance
S.W.I.N.E. HD Remaster
Radio Commander
Boneless Zombie
Robot Squad Simulator 2017
Pretty Girls Panic!
Poker Pretty Girls Battle: Texas Hold'em
VVVVVV
Warhammer Space wolf
Blazing Chrome
Car Mechanic Simulator 2015
Pang Adventures
Party Hard 2
REKT! High Octane Stunts
Thief of Thieves: Season One
Trailblazers
Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide
Demetrios - Deluxe Edition
Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues
GemCraft - Frostborn Wrath
Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix
Rebel Galaxy Outlaw
Shadowhand: RPG Card Game
Survivalist: Invisible Strain
We Were Here Too
Blacksad: Under the Skin
Heroes of Hammerwatch
Leisure Suit Larry 1-7
Murder by Numbers
Redout: Enhanced Edition
Rise of Industry + 2130 DLC
Ziggurat
They Bleed Pixels
Sunblaze
Noosphere
Train Valley 1+2
Door Kickers: Action Squad
Vikings - Wolves of Midgard
Vambrace: Cold Soul
The Void
The Vagrant
Republique
Nephise: Ascension
Leisure Suit Larry - Wet Dreams Don't Dry
Knock-knock
Jewel Match Atlantis Solitaire - Collector's Edition
Healer's Quest
Fictorum
A Robot Named Fight!
Skautfold Chapters 1-4
Hero of the Kingdom: Trilogy
198X
Danger Scavenger
Doctor Who: The Lonely Assassins
Dread X Collection
Going Under
My Lovely Daughter
Rage in Peace
Flashback
Garfield Kart
Curse: The Eye of Isis
Amerzone: The Explorer’s Legacy
Black Moon Chronicles
Nostradamus: The Last Prophecy
Red Riding Hood - Star Crossed Lovers
Chicago 1930 : The Prohibition
Sinking Island
Haegemonia: Legions of Iron
Occultus - Mediterranean Cabal
Gevaudan
Windscape
Ultra Space Battle Brawl
Through the Woods
This is the Zodiac Speaking
The Uncertain: Light At The End
The Uncertain - The Last Quiet Day
Tales
Tales of the Neon Sea
Styx: Master of Shadows
She and the Light Bearer
Epistory - Typing Chronicles
A Wolf in Autumn
The Music Machine
Jalopy
Insane 2
Clustertruck
Antigraviator
All-Star Fruit Racing
Constructor Plus
Ice Lakes
Knights of Pen & Paper 2
Victoria II
Kingdom Come: Deliverance – Band of Bastards
Kingdom Come: Deliverance – From the Ashes
Mindustry

Games
Cube Runner
Slash It Ultimate
Slash It 2
Slash It
Cybercube
Poly Island
Spin Rush
Upside Down
Neon Space
Hungry Flame
Charlie's Adventure
Neon Space 2
Duke of Alpha Centauri

VR Games
House Flipper VR
Telefrag VR
Slinger VR

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Season 5 “Exotic Pets”
Episode 1 “The Night's Weave”
In any other professional setting, doing what he was currently doing would be considered highly unprofessional. In fact, even in any other precinct what he was doing right now would be very unprofessional. Usually, walking through the front door with your boss clinging to your arm like a swooning teenager would generally be interpreted only one way.
Thankfully, nobody specifically cared about this in this precinct, nor did they come to the obvious conclusion “Thank you, I’ll finish recovering in the break room” she says, with a trembling voice.
“You sure you don’t want me there?” admittedly, playing this role wasn’t really professional either for him but everyone understood the need of it.
“Yes” Keya lets go of Santos’ arm “I’ll just do the thing and drink something cold, then I can start this waking properly” she gently taps her tail on his shoulder “Now go get to work”
He sighs as he walks back to his desk. They had a wonderful two days with nothing happening after the short little session of everything happening, it was unsurprising that she’d start processing things through her nightmares now, leading those being screaming days. “‘least it isn’t the cold bastard yet” he mutters as he sits down.
And so here he planned to spend the rest of his work day getting mighty annoyed at their Regional Firebase. That damned place was in charge of both the fiscal, maitenance and archivistic functions for all the precincts in this area, not only they held the pursestrings of the operation they were also the ones in charge of maintaining equipment, assigning personnel and keeping all the information they needed to work up to date. And they seemed to hate him. Him, specifically, because the problems only started happening when he got here.
Of course he wasn’t just getting annoyed at the Regional for no reason, he was getting annoyed at them for their sheer incompetence, and he hoped it was incompetence, at keeping up data. He’d been hunting down any information about some old unsolved cases, and he’d been getting more luck with random phone calls to other precincts halfway across the planet than an official request to his own Regional.
Sadly, not every plan survives contact with the work day. After some time he feels a presence nearby and turns to look, there is Keya looking mostly like her normal self, except perhaps more tired than normal. She brings her holopad down to put it against his, transferring mission data “Nothing serious, or at least nothing dangerous. But we really should take this call”
He looks down at his device and calls up the mission data he’s just received. Predator sighting near… Orran’s house? Bit too close for comfort, real sightings are usually at the farms, but scarcely any information. Just something small and quadrupedal is the useful information, the rest is just usual ‘predator’ panic speech. “This looks like a ghost call, but sure I’ll go” he stands up and starts heading towards the garage, but stops and turns around “Stay here boss, no need to-”
“Yes there is, don’t worry about me” Keya takes a deep breath “I’m not at full capacity but i’m fine, let’s go” she walks past him.
With a shrug, he follows. As they settle in the car and Keya starts driving, he picks up his holopad to re-read the mission data. Nothing, obviously, has changed but he gives it more attention now. Small quadruped, fast, like a shadow… If there were any other humans here he’d believe it was someone’s pet cat, but without anyone dumb enough to bring an exotic animal to an alien planet in sight that’s unlikely. Sadly, none of the usual trash-diggers quite match either.
But there’s one final detail that’s weird. This… Isn’t the first call. There’s been a lot more calls related to this one, an entire fifty eight different calls all tied to this same incident report. He starts following links to the previous calls and checking them- All of them are the same incident, small quadruped, fast and like a shadow… And they were all marked as minimal priority, and left forgotten and unattended.
With a raised eyebrow he continues to check, seeing the dates of the reports. They were insistent, and have been going on for a while now. They’re not older than his presence here, but aside from them having stopped completely for the previous five days, those calls have been a daily occurrence. And each and every one of them was set to minimum priority by Keya herself, and promptly forgotten. Which indicated there had to be something going on here, because she’d never leave a call forgotten like this, at least not when she woke up screaming.
“Boss-” but before he can say anything, they’ve arrived. A considerably different house than the rest of the residences of the town, Orran had been living here long enough to have completely rebuilt his house in the style of his people, or at least the exterior and a few additions. It was weirdly tall for his size despite being only one floor, the exterior was coated with a material that looked like an earthen-brown daub but the evenness of the striations in the material showed an artistic care in its application beyond the means of manual work. The windows were higher in the walls than in a normal venlil residence and they seemed to have multiple layers, both glass and wood were used in their construction with the final layer being some form of metal.
“Huhn, I wonder if the weather on his homeworld is that wild?” he says, staring at the windows. He’s familiar with that kind of design, it could easily be used to control airflow to various degrees and help regulate temperature. But this entire getup seemed like overkill to him, unless wherever this was used had the breadth of half of Earth’s weather happening in the same area.
“Only about where I lived” Orran’s voice echoes from behind the door, which consists of a mesh door behind a wooden door. The yotul opens them and offers him an ear flick “Nightmare weather that place, used to have a flood gate in the house too. Only good thing the feds to that town was deepening the river to handle the summer floodwaters”
Santos blinks, looks at the agriculturalist, looks back at the car where Keya still is, then back at the yotul “Dang, have I been just staring here for long? I got kind of distracted, haven’t ever actually stopped by to watch your house before”
“Oh, feel free to take it in. Took some effort to get the wattle and daub look just right, not really helping the primitive stereotype much” he says with a joyful wave of his tail “But what can I say, I’m wild nations, feds ain’t the first to call me primitive and i’m still proud of it. Still, to what do I owe the honor?”
He tilts his head to the side slightly, taking in the man’s words for a moment. They made a distressing amount of sense, guess the Yotul would still remember those parts of their own history. But he was here for a job “Yeah, we got a sighting report around here” he picks up his holopad and brings it up “In fact a report in your residence. Do you mind if I look around real quick?”
He notices Orran’s tail stilling “Hrm? I can say I haven’t seen anything, and I live here”
Taking a deep breath Santos stares at the yotul, he knows the flinch isn’t an instinctive reaction “Orran. A few paws ago you didn’t notice the nixa’s claw marks in your kitchen. And this call came in today” then he turns his stare to the side with a sigh “I just want to make sure there’s nothing, alright?”
He can see in his periphery the man going through a wild set of conflicting emotions, only to settle into a defeated expression “Alright… Just, I was uhn… Canning some food. Can you at least spare my dignity somewhat and let me clean up?”
“Sure man, it’s not urgent” he shrugs. As Orran heads back inside he looks back at the car, where Keya is still sitting. Then he looks back at Orran’s door. Something isn’t adding up, and that something is his boss’ behavior.
There is some noise from inside for a while until Orran returns “Alright, got my machinery packed, c’mon in” he mentions before waving him in.
There’s a certain aesthetic clash heading inside, it’s visible that Orran had put in effort into adding in the colors and signs of his people into a venlil residence, but the apparent lack of capacity (or funds) to really change the foundations of it meant a lot of the structure was still that of a normal venlil home.
Still, the walls had been decorated to look like they’re made of wooden planks on the inside with the actual materials only visible near things such as power sockets. The living room itself was decorated in a lightly distressing manner with effectively a circle of couches on slightly raised platforms around a central table, the television has been set up on it with a pivoting base. It looked like someone had repurposed a firepit, or rather the entire setup was designed to evoke the look of a firepit.
There was what looked like, initially, a cloth hanger near the door, but on second look what it really held was a very long string of beads- The way they were strung around it made him imagine Orran wearing those very much like a scarf which also bound around his wrists.
On the wall in the far end was something that looked like a banner, though it was best described as an unframed painting with a tougher canvas. It depicted a distant view of a town in some sandy plateau, the center of the picture was bright and colorful and clearly in the morning but at the sides one could see two long-tailed animals making their way to the center where the town resides, behind them the image was dark and stars could be seen in the sky. The way the nighttime emanated from the creatures it seemed more like they were dragging the curtains of night with their tails. Shaking his head, Santos forces himself to stop ogling Orran’s things and starts looking around.
He wasn’t, sincerely, being serious about this. But not only was this whole song and dance a necessity, but his earlier words WERE true. Just had to check for obvious signs of dangerous things. So a quick cursory glance under the couches, a short moment in the kitchen whose fridge’s scratches still weren’t repaired- Santos stops for a second more staring at the scratch marks on the fridge. He looks at Orran who’s following him, who looks confused. No, this man was not that stupid, he trusted him enough.
Still, that meant he’d have to pay more attention now. Respectfully, without actually touching anything, he continues a visual inspection towards the other side of the house. A short corridor with the doors to the bedroom and bathroom. He passes by the bedroom and stops in front of the closed bathroom door. He sighs and kneels down in front of it.
“What is it?” Orran says behind him
What is it, is that he had heard something “Just… Let me check…” he gently taps the door. And he hears the noise again, light scratching. It stops for a moment, and then he taps the door again, causing them to start for a moment again. He looks back to the frozen yotul, who was apparently actually that stupid “Set ‘em loose if you would?”
Orran doesn’t respond, he just stays there “Look, man. At the very least trust in the fact I’m a human? Not a fan of using my species as a bargaining tool but I think it’s actually relevant here?” Santos stands up again and starts heading to the living room.
He waits patiently for a while, until Orran finally arrives. A small little beast threads through his feet as he walks, not unlike a cat that is doing their best to get kicked, it is indeed a small quadruped with great agility, not only that it has a distinctive striped dark blue coat that is so deep it could be mistaken for black as well as a tail about as long as it’s torso. It’s not a beast Santos recognizes, other than from the painting in the wall, so at least he can’t blame his own kind for this problem. He looks up and sees Orran has another one in his arms, this one looking much more calm and gentle.
Santos rubs his eyes “Really, Orran? You, of all people” he sighs “Come on, not to be racist here but I’d expect a yotul, no, a yotul ecologist to know better.” he waves at the man’s beasts “Did you really bring exotic pets to another planet?! No, not another country, another planet?” he sighs “What even are those?”
“Nightweaver hensa” says a soft voice from behind him, he turns around to see that Keya had finally arrived “An endangered species native to Leirn, called like that after a legend that they were the ones who’d drag the veil of night over the scorching sun” she sounds mostly like herself, but he can feel a flatness creeping up in her delivery.
Santos stares at her for a moment, looks back at Orran with a piercing stare, then slowly lowers his eyes to the hensa he’s carrying “Endangered animals? Are you-” but a light sound draws his attention back to Keya. She simply taps a place in her chest, the motion confuses him for a moment until he looks down at himself. Where she tapped is exactly where the insignia of the exterminator’s guild is in his uniform. He starts exhaling air slowly as he sits down on a couch “Are. You. Fucking. Kidding. Me.”
He looks at Orran protectively holding his pet, looking terrified. The first time he’s seen the man look afraid. He looks down, and notices one of the two hensa had walked up to him. He notices in his periphery Orran flinches when he offers his hand for the feline-like to sniff “Plausible deniability” he says.
When nobody else says anything, he continues “I thought it was weird she made me get inside on my own before her. I am, of course, human. Some things are expected out of us, I’m sure a big fuss is expected out of me over a pet” when the alien feline seems confident enough, it gives his finger a gentle nip and puts its entire head on his hand “So just in case we don’t have any protocol about how to deal with this situation, she can pretend whatever happens is because of me”
He gently caresses the little beast “I thought it was weird you had personally deprioritized fifty eight calls” the tone is not quite accusatory
“He quite clearly had them under control, there was no need to do anything about it” Keya says as if it was the most normal thing
“Why now?”
Keya gently sways her tail “I got tired of it. After the last few paws I don’t think I have the energy to deal with this anymore” it made sense, he knew she had a limit to her emotional energy.
Orran slowly tilts his head to look at Keya “Wait… You’ve known about them?”
She gives him an affirmative ear flick “I even know they’re Nightweavers. They were already an endangered breed before your first contact, for all I know they’re the last two living Nightweavers”
At that, Santos focuses on the one that Orran is holding… Something about it… It’s a she “A breeding pair” this causes the yotul to snap his focus on him “You brought a breeding pair. It would be bad enough if they were just pets, maybe they’d be neutered and the worst damage they’d do would be for however long those fluffball live, but you’re looking at increasing the population”
He sighs “Orran… You know this will cause a disaster, don’t you? Do I need to tell you about the extinction level events that were every goddamn invasive species on Earth? Do I need to tell you the number of species gone extinct because of our cats?” he takes a deep breath “Actually, no, I don’t think I need to. You don’t actually care, do you?” he continues to gently caress the overly-affectionate little feline that at this point had jumped on his lap and burrowed itself under his shirt “Not only you don’t care… Any collateral you cause is probably just rightful vengeance for you is it?”
“It’s not like that!” the yotul shouts “I… I was breeder back home, okay? I wasn’t a farmer, I was a hensa breeder” he thumps his tail on the ground in anger “You weren’t there… You weren’t there to watch what they did to my… When I had a chance to run away and… And save some of them. I just grabbed who I could and just ran.” he holds the pregnant female a little bit tighter “I wasn’t planning on… Anything. I wasn’t planning, I wasn’t thinking… I… I wound up here, eventually…”
Santos brings down his other hand to scratch the little alien kitten. He takes a moment to just take in the little beast, whatever ecological niche it filled had to be infinitely similar to that of cats to be so similar yet so different. The tail movements were so different, a lot more energetic, a lot more in general, made sense since their owners had tails too, they probably could read each other much better. And it seemed to enjoy getting squished for some reason, he wondered why. He had all of those wonders and thoughts while he tried to not think about what he’d have to do.
Those hensa couldn’t stay here. Maybe, a very wild maybe, if they were neutered they could. But those were pretty much for breeding and of a particularly endangered kind as well, so that was out of the picture. Of course, those two space felines would also need to be cared for, they were an endangered species so that was non-negotiable. The UN had some measures for dealing with terran animals in this planet, from relocation to shelters to even a few approved areas they could live in, but they only dealt in terran animals not leirnian animals.
At this point his thoughts are interrupted by Keya’s voice “I don’t care who, anyone that can help is enough” he looks up at her, she has her holopad firmly clenched in her hands and her right eye focused directly on it.
She’s on a call.
---
And here we have it, we meet the two little disasters-to-be while the precinct chief throws their human into the fire as a possible scapegoat for any possible crazy plan they might have to resort to. And in fact, said crazy plan seems to involve a desperate plea over the phone.
Also, I had a bit of fun trying to thinking what Orran's house might be like, and somewhere along the line I got this weird thought: They're certainly not innocent of or about colonialism, so wouldn't the displaced natives of their own world at least feel a tiny bit of vindication watching their own conquerors get conquered in turn? Doesn't make things better but the irony of it all must be sweet.
Edit: FFS. Reddit, LET ME EDIT TITLES

"Whoa!"
As Doctor Neo Cortex was building an army of mutants to conquer the world with, he needed a general. One particular experiment caught his eye, a bandicoot that he would give the name Crashworth Cortex the First. But when it came time to brainwash the marsupial into being a leader, the machine malfunctioned, the bandicoot rejected. Escaping from his creator's clutches, Crash woke up on a beach on a nearby island, immediately setting off to rescue the similarly mutated Tawna. While he would lose contact with Tawna and instead spend his time with his sister Coco, Crash would constantly find himself butting heads with Cortex and his schemes. While he may not be the smartest, his determined athleticism ensured he would find all the crystals, gems, or any other object needed to stop any schemes of world domination.

Legend

Strength

Striking - Spinning / Sliding

• Smashes crates and sends enemies flying through the level¹
  • These enemies can include giant alligators³ and lions^N3
  • Hits enemies into a large metal fan to break it^N2
• In a Die-O-Rama, breaks a tree and causes it to fall on him^TTR
• Breaks a stone pillar^T
• Breaks laser generators⁴
• Knocks back scientists with a metal shield^N2
• Sends smaller foes flying^Sky-A
• Sends a robot flying back to damage machines and speakers⁴
• Hits away stone crates^CB
• Spins around large devices with a platform on one side and a net of crates on the other by spinning said net^T
• Skims rocks on water by spinning them^T
• Sends a boulder over a stream of lava to smash against an enemy¹
  • N-Sane Trilogy version^N1

Striking - Other

• Sends smaller foes flying with punches and kicks^Sky-A
• While brawling with Cortex, breaks through a wooden barrier^T
• Smashes Cortex through reinforced crates^T
• Beats up and breaks metal crates^CotT
• Forces open a trap door with a body slam²
• Breaks reinforced crates with a body slam²
• With an ability, creates a shockwave with his body slams that can destroy reinforced crates³
• Hits with a hammer hard enough to make a small shockwave^CB

Lifting / Throwing

• Lifts an dumbbell with ice weights^RR
• Lifts a dumbbell with stone weights^RR
• Lifts a dumbbell with larger stone weights^RR
• Spins while holding onto Cortex and a power crystal^T
• Holds Crunch over his head while slamming him to the ground^MOM
• Throws Cortex over a gap^T
• Throws Cortex into the mouth of a stone statue^T
• Lifts and throws stone crates^CB
• Throws a device an incredible distance to knock a cage off of a blimp^CotT
• Tears up a tree he's chained to^M2

Other

• Throws wumpa fruit at N. Gin's mech to damage and break different parts^N2
• Leaps around a room^Sky-A

Durability

Blunt Force

• Has an extended brawl with Neo Cortex^T
• Smashes through a wooden barrier while riding a mine cart^W
• Sent flying across a street and into a store window^A
• Struck by a ten ton and hundred ton weight^M2
• Hit and run over by a train^BB

Falling

• Drops a large distance¹
• Jumps off of a waterfall^CotT-DS
• Drops into a cave^T
• Belly flops onto stone⁴
• Falls a large distance onto metal^T
• Falls off a cliff into shallow mud⁴
• Thrown a huge distance through the air^T
• Is in a snowball as it drops off a cliff to smash Dingodile's house^T
• Drops out of Neo Cortex's tower and wakes up the following morning, washed up on the beach of another island¹

Explosive

• Can have their kart blown into the air^CTR
• Launched through the air by three crates blowing up beneath him^M
• Blown through the air by a mass of TNT crates^T
• Is in Cortex's lair as it blows up and emerges seemingly unharmed from rubble^M

Other

• Can be crushed flat in a kart^NK
• Electrocuted so his skeleton can be seen for a duration¹
• Electrocuted into ashes before reforming in the same cutscene^MOM
• Is in a space station as it falls to Earth, crashing into a cliff before landing, with Crash appearing unharmed from the experience. While falling he was holding Aku-Aku in front of him, but it's unlikely this provided him any particular protection^MOM

Speed

• Avoids Papu Papu's swings¹
• Evades blasts in a car while Cortex is chasing them in his own^TTR
• Dodges a freeze ray after it was fired when Crunch couldn't react^CotT
• Keeps ahead of giant chasing animals, such as a triceratops³ and a dragon^W
• Rapidly punches a giant robot^Sky-A

Skill

• Can wall jump^CotT
• Wall runs⁴
• Grinds on rails⁴
• Using flames and removing his trousers, distracts Papu Papu to get behind him for an attack¹

Jacking

In Crash of the Titans and Mind over Mutant, Crash can take over foes, mostly large creatures mutated by a substance called mojo called titans, by stunning them and placing Aku-Aku on their face.
Full Titan RT
General

• After stunning a titan, Crash can put Aku-Aku on their face and control them^CotC
• Titans collapse after being unmasked^CotC
• Jacking works on non-titans, with older mutated creatures like Dingodile and regular people like Neo Cortex being jacked^CotT-GBA

Notable Titan Feats

• All titans can break apart masses of stone^CotT and huge stone walls^MOM
• Scorporilla creates a fissure in the ground with its tail
• Spike can send a boulder flying into a huge tree, felling it^MOM-DS
• Ratcicle instantly freezes and shatters a massive amount of ice^MOM
• Grimly can seemingly slow time around it while moving normally^MOM

Other Abilities

Unlocked

• Double jumps³
• Rocket Jump propels him high into the air^NT
• Can spin for longer durations with the Death Tornado ability, using this to glide through the air³
• Can throw around TNT crates and pull in enemies with his spins^Sky
• Slides large distances with the Super Slide^NT
• With one ability can sneak across lines of stable nitro crates without blowing them up^W
• After getting Speed Shoes, can dash through levels³
• A bazooka that shoots wumpa fruit to defeat enemies and break crates³

Other

• Spins so fast he flies through the air¹
• Glides over gaps with a different kind of spin^CotT
• Burrows into the ground while still being able to stick his legs up and spin them^N2

Masks

Aku-Aku
The spirit of an ancient witch doctor, Aku-Aku has been protecting Crash since his first adventure. Since then, he's also played the role of being the fount of knowledge, knowing whenever evil is occurring and how to stop it.
Full RT

• On breaking an Aku Aku crate, the mask follows Crash to protect him from an attack¹
  • Opening another Aku Aku crate strengthens him, allowing him to protect Crash from two attacks²
  • Opening a third causes Crash to wear the mask temporarily, rendering him invincible for the period¹ while smashing through crates, even reinforced ones³
• Crash skates down areas on Aku-Aku^CotT
  • Can create fire around him while being used like this^CotT-DS

Lani-Loli
The quantum mask of space, Lani-Loli is the first to be found in Crash 4 and takes the role of guide and exposition dealer for the adventure.

• Causes certain items to phase in and out of reality for Crash to be able to affect⁴
• When used by a machine, causes rows of tiles to phase out of reality⁴
• Can sense rifts in space and open them when not being rampantly created by N. Tropy's device, with this likely being applicable to the other quantum masks⁴

Akano
The quantum mask of matter.

• Strengthens spins to break reinforced crates⁴
  • Hits back a large mutated N. Brio⁴
  • These spins deflect green magic⁴
• Causes spins to last longer, providing a gliding effect over gaps⁴
• Is forced to empower a machine, causing it to spin while creating extra energy beams⁴
• Launched out of a machine by an explosion before falling to the ground and entering a dimensional rift⁴
• Is notably heavy⁴
  • Traps Cortex beneath himself⁴

Kupuna-Wa
The quantum mask of time.

• Notably slows down time while allowing Crash to move normally⁴
  • Allows Crash to use ice falling down waterfalls as platforms⁴
  • Like this Crash can touch nitro crates and have time to exit the blast radius before they blow up⁴
• When used by a machine, changes the speed of platforms disappearing and reappearing⁴
• Knows of all time, telling that there's a significant event happening in Crash and Coco's near futures⁴

Ika-Ika
The quantum mask of gravity.

• Flips gravity for Crash⁴
• On waking up, flips gravity for several people in front of him⁴
• When forced by a machine, causes the screen to flip upside down⁴

Karts

General

• Jumps up a ledge^CTR
• Drops down a large distance^CTR
  • Does so again^NK
• All karts can take hits that blow them into the air^CTR and crust them flat^NK
• Capable of giving themselves boosts by drifting^CTR
• Karts go faster when wumpa fruits are collected, and when ten are collected the items used are changed to be stronger^CTR
• In Nitro Kart, the karts were modified to be able to drive along walls and ceilings in certain areas^NK
• After driving alongside a teammate for a while, a Team Up meter fills and allows both racers to use unlimited items for a period on activation^NK

Items - Offensive
These are capable of forcing open a door in the original game and remake.^CTR-N

• Bombs which roll along the road in a straight line, exploding on contact^CTR
  • Fully powered bombs have a larger blast radius^CTR
  • These can be blown up early on command^CTR
• Homing missiles^CTR
  • When powered up they are faster with better tracking^CTR
• Creates an electric shockwave around them^NK3
• Releases a warp orb from Crash 3 that chases after the racer in first place, shocking everyone in their path^CTR
  • When powered up it tracks each racer in front of the user in sequence^CTR
• Releases a tornado which targets first place, throwing any racer it meets up into the air^NK

Items - Traps

• Drops an oil slick^NK2
• Beakers which cause anyone running into them to spin out^CTR-N
  • Turn from green to red at full power, adding an extra effect such as slowing down the kart that drives into them for a while^CTR-N
• Crates of TNT which anyone running into needs to hop rapidly to remove before it explodes^CTR-N
  • These change into nitro crates that explode instantly when powered up^CTR
• Ice mines trap foes in a block of ice^NK
  • When fully powered they give the kart ice physics for the duration^NK
• Static orbs short out circuits on karts, slowing foes down while changing their weapon^NK
  • At full power, they draw racers in and reverse their steering for a time^NK

Items - Other

• Shields which protect against any one hit^NK
  • Can be launched like a bomb, with the fully powered shield protecting indefinitely until hit or thrown^CTR
• Speed boosts^CTR
  • Last longer when powered up^CTR
  • Can be used to evade a missile^NK
• N. Tropy's Clocks spin out and slow down all opposing racers for a period^NK
• Call upon Aku-Aku to speed up the kart and render them invulnerable for a bit^CTR

Tag Team Racing Cars

• In Crash Tag Team Racing, all racer's vehicles can merge with each other and break apart again at will^TTR
• Can drive through tree-shaped targets^TTR
• Have a variety of weapons with each car combination being able to swap between two, which can include wumpa fruit launchers and magnetic blasts
  • Missiles
  • A machine gun
  • Electric shotgun blasts^TTR
• Can be rocket propelled^TTR
• Can launch items as large as pianos^TTR

Other Vehicles

Ground

• The atlasphere is a large orb which Crash rolls around in^W
  • Used to seemingly imbue rolling rocks with power for Aku Aku to use^W
  • Can jump in a cage shaped like an atlasphere⁴
• Mine carts^W
• A pogo stick^CB
• Crash's Jeep keeps ahead of a rhino stampede^W
• Motorbikes³
  • Smash through large wooden barriers^N3
• A hovercraft^CB
• Drives a tiny tank which can drop mines^CB
• A tank which shoots ammo which destroys other tanks with one shot and rebounds off of walls^RR
• A mech which has a fruit bazooka on the arm^W
  • Breaks reinforced crates by jumping on them^W
  • Runs away from an explosion^W
  • A variant of it has a water cannon which, when empowered by Aku-Aku, hurts Crunch imbued with the fire Elemental^W
• A boxing mech^BB
• At one point pilots Mecha-Bandicoot, a Neo Cortex creation that can shoot missiles and energy blasts^T
  • Has a chainsaw arm that finishes off another mech^T
  • Flies^T
• A device which can attract and repel balls to hit enemies with while moving side to side^RR
• Any given animal he jumps on the back of, from boars¹ to Neo Cortex^T

Flying

• A hang glider^CotT-GBA
• Biplanes which shoot bullets that destroy the engines of much larger planes³
• Crash's Glider can shoot down tornado generators^W
• The Firefly locks on and shoots missiles which sink ships on repeat hits^W
• The Copter-Pak^W
• Jetpacks²
  • Can come with an energy blaster that can take down a blimp with blasts^XS
• Uses a flying carpet which allows him to shoot magic blasts from his head^NT
• A spaceship which shoots energy beams to rapidly crumple and destroy parts of Cortex and Ripto's machine^RR
• A motorbike which flies through space^XS
  • Appears to quickly circle the Earth^XS
• Rides a bat^RR

Water

• A wakeboard^NT
• Surfboards with engines that allow him to boost through water²
• A turbo boosted inflatable ring^RR
• A hovercraft with a weapon^CB
  • Can drop mines^CB
• An underwater propulsion device which can shoot missiles and dash forwards³
• A submarine which shoots missiles^W
  • Can drop explosives^W

Other Equipment

• Can carry a variety of items to increase health, damage, and turn Crash invincible for a short period^CotT-DS
• Capable of throwing out TNT crates^Sky
  • These crates can contain a jetpack and rocket for Crash to fire at the ground with for a time^Sky
• Uses scuba gear³
• Wields a rocket launcher which instantly turns sheep to ashes^RR
  • Can be charged to launch two rockets at once, and can release bombs^RR
• Throws Molotov cocktails that can destroy large amounts of stone in two attacks, and quickly builds a platform after the platform that was previously there were destroyed by Spyro's Molotov cocktails^RR

Other

• His mutation enhanced his senses and stamina^Sky-A
• Can pick up a 'freejack' which allows Crash to stun any enemy with a kick^CotT
  • Knocks back large foes with this attack^CotT
• Was hit briefly by the ray that turns animals into titans, though the process didn't complete due to a dead battery. Like this Crash had enhanced strength, breaking free of metal restraints and knocking back a titan, as well as the ability to jack them without Aku-Aku, but the mutation visibly appears to be gone by the end of the short^A
• Remotely controls a helicopter to shoot down parachuting devices intent on harming him^RR
• In a Die-O-Rama, creates a fire which quickly thaws out a frozen yeti^TTR
• Walks and jumps on clouds¹
• Only likes wumpa fruit⁴
• Comes with his own theme music^Sky-A

"As for me, heh, let's just say I'm doing just fine."

Background:
The Maryland Port Authority has to constantly dredge the Baltimore Harbor, shipping terminals, and shipping channels to keep them open. Much of the dredge removed from the Baltimore harbor and Patapsco River near old industrial sites is contaminated with heavy metals, oils, and other toxic "forever" chemicals. The Maryland Port Authority (MPA) has to dry and store this dredged material in special "containment sites" because it is unsafe for human exposure. (See https://maryland-dmmp.com/). Before the 1970s, this material was often dumped back into the Chesapeake Bay. After ecological awareness arose in the 1970s and dumping was regulated, MPA was forced to create diked land-based dredge containment facilities to dry and store dredged material.
These sites, once created, are forever contaminated. MPA has done its best to create these sites where they make the least impact - often in already-contaminated abandoned industrial areas. MPA also creates conservation areas to make amends for the harm, makes clean dredge available for shoreline restorations and construction projects, makes contaminated dredge available for re-use research, and in some cases recreates islands lost to erosion (Hart-Miller Island, Poplar Island, and James and Barren Islands) using dredged material.
After significant pushback from communities near Hart-Miller Island for decades and years of litigation, MPA shut down the Hart-Miller dredge containment facility before its completion and shifted their attention to creating dredge containment sites near Baltimore in already-contaminated industrial areas next to Fort Armistead (Cox Creek DMCF) in Anne Arundel County and in Masonville next to Brooklyn. Ongoing dredging activities and plans to fill these sites to heights of 60 feet or higher with contaminated dredge and their runoff are already a significant concern for the quality of the water and the aquatic life in the Patapsco and its tidal tributaries. A potentially even greater concern is that because MPA is running out of land-based locations to contain contaminated dredge, it now plans to create Confined Aquatic Dredge (CAD) sites in the seabed of the Patapsco River to essentially bury contaminated dredge underwater in the sea floor. The first MPA full scale CAD site is planned to be built one mile off the shore of the communities of Stoney Beach and Riviera Beach near the entrance to Stoney Creek.
The planned Patapsco CAD site will be up to 220 acres in size. MPA plans to remove clean seabed material from the site for several months and make it available to construction companies and for shoreline restoration efforts and then replace it with contaminated dredge material for several more months sometime in the next year. MPA asserts that unlike historic dredge dumping, this CAD site will be "capped" and "safe". However, there will inevitably be a significant release of contaminants and turbidity into the Patapsco from this activity and permanent impact within and near the CAD site. Contaminated dredge material suspended in water can't be totally contained. Moreover, long-term ecological impacts from leaching and seabed shifting can't be predicted.
Concerns:
Northern Anne Arundel communities near the planned CAD site are very concerned about several potential issues related to its creation:

1. The noise from planned 24/7 dredging for several months at a time as well as spotlighting at night since this will be over a mile closer to Stoney Beach and Riviera Beach than the shipping channel.
   
2. The safety of residents in nearby waters to swim, fish, and engage in watersports on the Patapsco and in Stoney Creek, Cox Creek, and downstream tributaries during and after dredging from exposure to chemical and biological toxins released into the water.
   
3. The impact of such dredging on aquatic life and ecosystems including waterfowl that depend on it.
   
4. The long-term ecological impact on the CAD site, nearby shorelines, and the tidal waters around it.
   
5. The potential short and long-term geographical extent of ecological and human exposure to released toxins given unpredictable winds, currents, storms, tidal swings, and sea level rise.
   

We have questions related to these concerns and would like a greater understanding of how impacts will be measured and mitigated and what the potential risks to our communities might be - including being exposed to chemical and biological toxins. Of particular concern if this program moves forward is how will toxins be measured, where will they be measured, how will communities be notified if toxins in the water around their shoreline reaches harmful levels, and what might the long-term effects of such toxins be that might settle around our shorelines?
While we are concerned, we also appreciate that MPA is creating conservation sites such as the Swan Creek Wetlands next to the Cox Creek facility and making clean dredge material available at little or no cost to communities engaged in shoreline restoration efforts - including Stoney Beach which is planning an important natural shoreline project to protect a highly eroded natural area at our point where the Patapsco meets Stoney Creek. This greatly reduces the cost of shoreline restoration.

yes. you read that right.
hetalia.
i know, i know! irrelevant, niche, and maybe a little cringy? i don’t care, i adore these characters! i’m looking for an 18+ discord role playing partner who is just as enthusiastic about writing and plotting as i am! i would consider myself an advanced to literate writer, who averages 3-6 (sometimes more!) paragraphs per post. i appreciate someone who puts in an equal amount of effort.
about me? mae, she/her, 29! <3
i highly prefer modern aus over canon or historical settings. i enjoy themes such as hurt, comfort, angst, conflict and resolution, character development, pining (be it mutual or initially one-sided)… the list goes on, but you get the vibe. cliche au settings i enjoy would be things such as: soulmates, high school, adults trying to figure shit out, cafe/coffee shop, ski resort/beach house (or any sort of vacation destination really). it may also be obvious that many of my ships are very “opposites attract,” so i also enjoy plots that lean into that, such as celebrity/fan, socialite/caterer, artist/muse. as a throwback to the edgy early days of rp, i’m stupid for stalkevictim role plays idc idc. throw anything at me, and once we get the ideas rolling i’m the type who is consistently coming up with new plot points/twists/milestones. (bonus: i’ll absolutely end up making rp playlists so you can expect me to send you music, oops!)
now, onto the ships. which is the best part, let’s be real. the listed ships and characters are the only ones that i’m currently looking for.
i write s. italy, you write: prussia france nyo!belarus mmmaybe portugal? interesting…..
i write n. italy, you write: austria! sorry germany. ;(
i write china, you write: rome.
i write greece, you write: turkey.
i write sweden, you write: finland.
i write prussia, you write: poland
and thaaaats about it, folks! hope to hear from someone out there in the void! if you are also a literate writer and you’re looking for some nostalgic rp don’t hesitate to message me! :D

yes. you read that right.
hetalia.
i know, i know! irrelevant, niche, and maybe a little cringy? i don’t care, i adore these characters! i’m looking for an 18+ discord role playing partner who is just as enthusiastic about writing and plotting as i am! i would consider myself an advanced to literate writer, who averages 3-6 (sometimes more!) paragraphs per post. i appreciate someone who puts in an equal amount of effort.
about me? mae, she/her, 29! <3
i highly prefer modern aus over canon or historical settings. i enjoy themes such as hurt, comfort, angst, conflict and resolution, character development, pining (be it mutual or initially one-sided)… the list goes on, but you get the vibe. cliche au settings i enjoy would be things such as: soulmates, high school, adults trying to figure shit out, cafe/coffee shop, ski resort/beach house (or any sort of vacation destination really). it may also be obvious that many of my ships are very “opposites attract,” so i also enjoy plots that lean into that, such as celebrity/fan, socialite/caterer, artist/muse. as a throwback to the edgy early days of rp, i’m stupid for stalkevictim role plays idc idc. throw anything at me, and once we get the ideas rolling i’m the type who is consistently coming up with new plot points/twists/milestones. (bonus: i’ll absolutely end up making rp playlists so you can expect me to send you music, oops!)
now, onto the ships. which is the best part, let’s be real. the listed ships and characters are the only ones that i’m currently looking for.
i write s. italy, you write: prussia france nyo!belarus mmmaybe portugal? interesting…..
i write n. italy, you write: austria! sorry germany. ;(
i write china, you write: rome.
i write greece, you write: turkey.
i write sweden, you write: finland.
i write prussia, you write: poland
and thaaaats about it, folks! hope to hear from someone out there in the void! if you are also a literate writer and you’re looking for some nostalgic rp don’t hesitate to message me! :D

yes. you read that right.
hetalia.
i know, i know! irrelevant, niche, and maybe a little cringy? i don’t care, i adore these characters! i’m looking for an 18+ discord role playing partner who is just as enthusiastic about writing and plotting as i am! i would consider myself an advanced to literate writer, who averages 3-6 (sometimes more!) paragraphs per post. i appreciate someone who puts in an equal amount of effort.
about me? mae, she/her, 29! <3
i highly prefer modern aus over canon or historical settings. i enjoy themes such as hurt, comfort, angst, conflict and resolution, character development, pining (be it mutual or initially one-sided)… the list goes on, but you get the vibe. cliche au settings i enjoy would be things such as: soulmates, high school, adults trying to figure shit out, cafe/coffee shop, ski resort/beach house (or any sort of vacation destination really). it may also be obvious that many of my ships are very “opposites attract,” so i also enjoy plots that lean into that, such as celebrity/fan, socialite/caterer, artist/muse. as a throwback to the edgy early days of rp, i’m stupid for stalkevictim role plays idc idc. throw anything at me, and once we get the ideas rolling i’m the type who is consistently coming up with new plot points/twists/milestones. (bonus: i’ll absolutely end up making rp playlists so you can expect me to send you music, oops!)
now, onto the ships. which is the best part, let’s be real. the listed ships and characters are the only ones that i’m currently looking for.
i write s. italy, you write: prussia france nyo!belarus mmmaybe portugal? interesting…..
i write n. italy, you write: austria! sorry germany. ;(
i write china, you write: rome.
i write greece, you write: turkey.
i write sweden, you write: finland.
i write prussia, you write: poland
and thaaaats about it, folks! hope to hear from someone out there in the void! if you are also a literate writer and you’re looking for some nostalgic rp don’t hesitate to message me! :D

yes. you read that right.
hetalia.
i know, i know! irrelevant, niche, and maybe a little cringy? i don’t care, i adore these characters! i’m looking for an 18+ discord role playing partner who is just as enthusiastic about writing and plotting as i am! i would consider myself an advanced to literate writer, who averages 3-6 (sometimes more!) paragraphs per post. i appreciate someone who puts in an equal amount of effort.
about me? mae, she/her, 29! <3
i highly prefer modern aus over canon or historical settings. i enjoy themes such as hurt, comfort, angst, conflict and resolution, character development, pining (be it mutual or initially one-sided)… the list goes on, but you get the vibe. cliche au settings i enjoy would be things such as: soulmates, high school, adults trying to figure shit out, cafe/coffee shop, ski resort/beach house (or any sort of vacation destination really). it may also be obvious that many of my ships are very “opposites attract,” so i also enjoy plots that lean into that, such as celebrity/fan, socialite/caterer, artist/muse. as a throwback to the edgy early days of rp, i’m stupid for stalkevictim role plays idc idc. throw anything at me, and once we get the ideas rolling i’m the type who is consistently coming up with new plot points/twists/milestones. (bonus: i’ll absolutely end up making rp playlists so you can expect me to send you music, oops!)
now, onto the ships. which is the best part, let’s be real. the listed ships and characters are the only ones that i’m currently looking for.
i write s. italy, you write: prussia france nyo!belarus mmmaybe portugal? interesting…..
i write n. italy, you write: austria! sorry germany. ;(
i write china, you write: rome.
i write greece, you write: turkey.
i write sweden, you write: finland.
i write prussia, you write: poland
and thaaaats about it, folks! hope to hear from someone out there in the void! if you are also a literate writer and you’re looking for some nostalgic rp don’t hesitate to message me! :D

Over the last six months, I’ve been in Asia (and the Pacific) bouncing around as part of a larger trip, but diving being a huge emphasis, accumulating around 200 dives during this period. I’m leaving some of my dive log notes and thoughts of each place since it would probably help people in planning which hotspots to go to within this region and how they compare to each other.
For additional context, I went into this trip having around 200 dives, mostly in the Caribbean and Red Sea, with a little bit of SEA experience.
I know it personally was difficult when doing research, especially when pretty much all of these are described as “wOrLd cLaSs” or “bEsT iN tHe wOrLd” to some varying degree (spoiler: not everything is IMO).
I personally dive because of reef health and fish life, so my notes are written with a heavy bias towards that. I acknowledge that bias so obviously places that only have a big muck / macro presence will be rated lower on here.
A-tier and above is a place I’d gladly go back to and dive again. I’d also recommend these places where you should make plans to travel here or go out of your way specifically to dive.
B-tier and above is good. Maybe not incredibly mindblowing but still good and worth doing nonetheless. But there are some flaws that keep it from being superb.
C-tier is mediocre. I could maybe find a few bright spots, but I didn’t find diving here to be particularly great or terrible at the same time. Just average. I wouldn’t make trips to dive these places specifically. I might recommend diving them if they overlap with some better stuff higher on in the list, but they’re skippable.
D to F-tier is just bad. Very little things to enjoy if at all. Avoid.

S

• Raja Ampat, Alor

A+

• Komodo, Palau

A

• Nusa Penida, Apo Island

A-

• Richelieu Rock, Kimud Shoal (sharks)

B+

• Gato Island

B

• Balicasag, Pamilican, Sipadan, Sogod Bay

B-

• Kapalai, Hin Daeng / Hin Muang

C+

• Panglao, Malapascua (local diving)

C

• Surin Islands, Mabul, Koh Bida, Dauin

D

• Similan Islands

F

• Koh Haa

Malaysia

Sipadan, Mabul, Kapalai (15 dives)
Difficulty:

• I have a good amount of experience in moderate current, but I found that the diving wasn’t particularly difficult when I was here. We had currents on some Sipadan days, but they were gentle pushes at most. I’d say that Cozumel currents were much stronger than what I experienced at Sipadan. Although, I have heard that Sipadan could get wild sometimes, so YMMV
  
• Dives could get somewhat deep, so having AOW is probably advisable before coming
  

Wildlife:

• Tons of turtles and sharks. Probably at least half a dozen sharks from afar and even more turtles every dive
  
• Saw schools of jackfish, parrotfish, and some barracuda here and there, but didn’t see the famous barracuda tornado
  
• Outside of those, not as many fish as I had hoped for. Decent level of biodiversity, but there were lots of places with little fish activity. The smaller, shallower healthy patches had lots of fish
  

Reef life:

• I have mixed feelings about the reef life here. The parts that are healthy are super vibrant, but they were in the minority for sure. A lot of really depressing, barren areas with dead fields of coral outnumbered the healthy parts. Reefs are my biggest reason for diving, so I was most disappointed by this.
  
• Sipadan was likely better in the past, but the overall state of the reef is in much poorer condition nowadays
  
• The fact that the dive shop I went with only took people to the same three “best” dive sites all the days I dove at Sipadan doesn’t give me much confidence that the rest of the sites look that good or better
  

Dive sites:

• Not too much variation in types of dives or topography of the sites. Mostly wall dives with dropoffs. I got a bit bored after three straight days of diving Sipadan and thought that was an adequate amount of time to spend there. Most dive shops also only focus on the same handful of the best dive sites, so it gets repetitive fast
  
• You also can’t dive Sipadan every day that you’re there. All resorts will do some sort of package where if you dive with them for five days, three will be Sipadan, etc. and the others will be in Mabul and Kapalai. I think these sites are, for the most part, boring. Honestly speaking, no one should make the trip out here just for these dive sites, unless you enjoy macro that much. Even then, there are many other places around SEA that are easier to get to that have a better reputation for macro
  

Overall: Sipadan B, Kapalai B-, Mabul C

• I do think Sipadan is fairly overrated, probably due to the exclusivity of the diving because of the permit system, giving the illusion that it’s going to the best dives of your life
  
• Yes, I think the diving is decent, but not exactly “best in the world” as Southeast Asia tends to have a reputation for. I also don’t think Barracuda Point is one of the best dive sites in the world as it’s commonly advertised lol. I think it’s mostly marketing hype. I found lots of areas around SEA with much less marketing behind them to be equivalent or better than Sipadan
  
• Given how hard it is to get to Sipadan, the costs of diving there, and the proximity of Indonesia / Philippines, I’d say that if you’re deciding between diving in Malaysia and the other two, I’d pick the latter every time
  
• If I was already in Malaysia and wanted to tack on diving, then yes, Sipadan is a good addition to your existing itinerary. I just wouldn’t go out of my way or pick it over other options. I will likely not be returning to Sipadan to dive for this reason, especially since you can’t even dive Sipadan every day and the non-Sipadan dive sites are not great
  

Indonesia

Raja Ampat (20 dives)
Difficulty:

• Going into this portion of the trip, I was expecting a ton of currents and difficult diving based off what I read online beforehand
  
• We had currents on most of the dives, but they were pretty manageable for the most part. Many of these dives would be diving with the current, where it felt more like a gentle push, sort of like a slow moving treadmill. Some dives where you fought or swam against the current was more like a tiny bit of resistance where you could still frog kick through
  
• I also didn’t experience down currents, but based on the dive sites we did, I wouldn’t consider them to be anxiety inducing even if they were present. Most of the dive sites had a sandy bottom and weren’t walls or drop offs, so it’s not like they would be particularly dangerous
  
• There was only two dives where I felt that the currents could’ve been overwhelming for a less experienced diver, but they were ones where we hid behind rocks or used reef hooks to look at mantas anyway, so it’s not like you’re actively swimming with or against the currents
  
• Most dives also weren’t that deep, probably around 60-70ft at the absolute deepest. We spent the majority of these dives at 40-50ft
  
• Even putting myself in the shoes of a less experienced diver, I think the diving was manageable for a wide range of skill levels – which I did see many people of varying experience on my liveaboard and at the dive sites
  
• All in all, I think you can comfortably enjoy Raja Ampat with sub-50 dives under your belt or if you’re comfortable underwater. The diving is for the most part, not that difficult and shouldn’t be a barrier for your decision making
  

Wildlife:

• Huge schools of the most colorful fish everywhere you look. You’re swimming with schools of fish on most dives. The highest density of fish I’ve ever dove with across every destination I’ve ever been
  
• Only small criticism here is the lack of pelagic life like sharks, turtles, and mantas (outside of one or two sites), but that’s not a slight on Raja Ampat at all. Seeing pelagics is just the cherry on top of an already amazing experience that you see at Raja
  

Reef life

• Some of the best, most colorful, and healthy reefs I’ve seen in my life. That’s not to say that the entire region is pristine (it’s not), but given the world we live in today, it’s the best I’ve personally seen
  
• I’d consider most sites to be absolutely beautiful, with a handful of them to be “just” good
  

Dive sites:

• Most dive sites were sloping reef dives with maybe some small pinnacles or bommies here and there
  
• My qualm with the diving in Raja Ampat is that the dive experience is relatively the same across all of them. Get in, dive, look around, get up. No towering structures or interesting topography to navigate. You’re here for the beauty of what lives there, not because of how exhilarating or exciting the actual diving is IMO
  

Overall: S

• One of the best dive experience of my life so far. I would come back here to dive all the time if I could. Maybe doing a liveaboard to the southern region next time, as I focused on the central this time. But the barriers to dive here are pretty high. Expensive domestic flights, full travel days to and from Raja Ampat including flights / layovers / waiting for transfers, etc., and the best way to dive is via a liveaboard which is more costly than any other option
  
• Both the floor and ceiling are very high in Raja Ampat. There wasn’t a time where I felt that a dive wasn’t good or that the entire reef looked like it was in poor condition. Every site had something good to write home about
  
• One thing is that Raja Ampat actually isn’t as remote as you think it is. There’s a huge liveaboard scene and random resorts or homestays sprawled throughout the islands. I had phone signal the entire time lol. A handful of dive sites actually felt a bit crowded at times, in case that matters to you
  

Nusa Penida (15 dives)
Difficulty:

• I actually found diving here to be more difficult than Raja Ampat, lol. Currents were present on many dives, but you also had surge and lots of cold water thermoclines to fight against, which I didn’t have in Raja
  
• All in all, not terribly difficult diving either where you should reconsider if you’re newish, but maybe wait to get a few dives under your belt or be comfortable with various types of underwater conditions to fully appreciate the diving here. Although, I think you can also enjoy most of the diving here while being relatively inexperienced as well, as lots of sites have minimal currents.
  
• Most reputable dive shops will cater to your experience level anyway, so I wouldn’t let Penida’s reputation deter you completely. I’ve had friends with < 20-30 dives who rarely dive enjoy Penida, and many people get OW certified here, FWIW
  

Wildlife:

• Honestly, a little lackluster. Most sites, while having beautiful and healthy coral, felt like a ghost town because of relatively little fish on them aside from a few select spots
  
• The manta site that everyone goes to is amazing though. One dive I saw around 20 mantas throughout the hour. Pretty much everyone I know who’s gone to Nusa Penida even for 1-2 days has seen a manta, so I’d say your chances are very high
  

Reef life:

• I was actually shocked at how good the reef health was here. Some absolutely stunning slopes filled with reef life. I had heard good things about Penida, but was actually blown away by some sites here. I think some of the best sites like Mangrove had reefs that are fairly comparable to the better sites in RA and Alor, IMO
  
• On average, I think the overall reef is probably some of the best I’ve seen of anywhere
  

Dive sites:

• I thought the diversity in sites was a bit lacking in Penida. Most sites that you visit in Penida are just part of a long reef that spans the length of the island. Because of this, the topography doesn’t change much, nor does the diving experience
  
• You could spend a whole day diving different sites, but be on the same reef at different parts of the same side of Penida and the experience would be the exact same
  
• On the days you dive Manta Point, you’d probably also visit Manta Bay and Crystal Bay, which are all fairly boring sites. I’d even say Manta Point is fairly boring outside of the mantas and the latter two are straight up mediocre
  
• I spent about five days here overall and thought that was a good amount of time since I got to dive the majority of the sites. I could’ve spent another day or two here to dive the other sites in the channel between Penida and Lembongan or on the other side of Penida, but those are less commonly visited
  

Overall: A

• Really good diving as a whole. If you haven’t dove Indonesia yet, Penida would likely be some of the best warm water diving you’ll do
  
• I’ve heard Penida being described as Komodo with training wheels and I’d agree with that. Good place to get your bearings in diving with current
  

Komodo (30 dives)
Difficulty:

• This is an aspect that I feel is a bit overblown by commenters online. Yes, there is current and yes, sometimes they can get a bit crazy. But that doesn’t mean that as a less experienced diver (<50 dives for example), you can’t enjoy the majority of Komodo. I probably wouldn’t go as a complete newbie with fewer than 20 dives though
  
• A lot of the sites have current, but fairly similar to other Indonesia and Philippines hotspots. The currents aren’t too bad the majority of the time. The sites with heavy currents are limited to a few, and dive shops will avoid putting you on a boat where you’re going to a site that surpasses your skill level (e.g. they’ll have different groups / boats for central vs. northern sites, the latter tending to have more current)
  
• That said, if you want to fully enjoy Komodo with no restrictions or limitations, then yes, you should at least AOW / be more experienced or be comfortable in water. This is mainly in the northern sites like Cauldron, Crystal Rock, Castle Rock, and a handful in the central area which are known for currents
  
• The dives aren’t particularly deep either. Max depth was ~70ft at most for many sites, with the majority of the dives probably spent at 40-50ft for most sites
  

Wildlife:

• The tradeoff between Komodo and Raja Ampat is that the former has more big stuff like mantas, sharks, and turtles, while the latter has more fish activity. Some Komodo dive sites had quite a lot of fish activity, as much as the sites in Raja Ampat, but not comparable on average across all sites. In Komodo, you had a chance to see big stuff on the majority of the dive sites, whereas it was a bit rare in Raja Ampat. The hooked dives in northern Komodo are pretty great too, where you see a lot of fish and sharks swim by, and nothing in Raja can really compare to that
  
• At the end of the day, it’s a toss-up depending on preference
  

Reef life:

• Reef quality is amazing at some sites, just good at others, and non-existent at some. Unlike Raja where you could get amazing reef quality on almost every dive, Komodo’s sites were a bit more diverse. Some sites like Manta Point where you’re not necessarily diving for the reef and more so for manta encounters, were filled with rubble and fairly bare. On the other hand, sites like Batu Bolong and Tatawa Kecil are clearly some of the best in the world
  
• Komodo’s best reefs would be comparable to some of the best Raja sites, but Komodo also had fewer sites where the reef really wowed me
  

Dive sites:

• The good: Komodo has a wider variety of dive sites and dive experiences as a result. The diving here is more “fun” because of the different currents and drifts that let you dive the site differently. The topography of each dive site is also much more diverse, allowing for different dive profiles. You really feel small while diving some of the Komodo sites with all of the towering structures and cliffs. Raja Ampat’s diving, for example, is a bit more “homogenous” in that the experience is fairly similar across all sites
  
• The bad: There are some “poor” dive sites that you will inevitably visit on your trip. For example, sites where the emphasis is on muck diving. Not my favorite as you know. Or if you go to Manta Point and don’t see any mantas. Or sites where the reef isn’t that good. Muck dives aren’t my favorite, and I almost consider them a wasted dive since it’s all predominantly luck based and you could see nothing. You could feel differently, though
  
• I spent around ten days diving here doing 30 dives and thought that was perfect. I got to do every site, even some in the south, and repeated some sites that I liked the most. If I were to come back to Komodo, I’d do a liveaboard and spend my time exploring the south, which you can’t really do via day trips
  

Overall: A+

• I think Raja Ampat is better for fish life and coral health while I think Komodo is more fun for different types of diving, bigger animals, and better underwater topography
  
• As a whole, I think Raja Ampat is a better dive destination for a once in a lifetime trip, especially if you do it on a liveaboard. The whole experience feels very ethereal and special. But if you’re looking for something quicker, easier, and cheaper to do, then Komodo is a very fine substitute
  
• On a tangential note, and I’m gonna sound a bit gatekeep-y, but I think Labuan Bajo has become or is on its way to becoming a backpacking hotspot, and not in a good way either. It’s undergone a ton of development in the last several years, and the Indonesian government is pumping tons of money into directing people there. Things have grown way too fast and the infrastructure just can’t keep up. I’m hearing from locals who work in the dive industry saying how they’re getting priced out. Selfishly, more development and traffic is always bad for places like this as more shitty divers thrash around on the reefs and more pollutants destroy them too. Anyway, I would probably go sooner rather than later because who knows if the Indonesian government will be able to keep the reef in this condition with the increase in traffic
  
• You also notice how popular Komodo is getting because a lot of the dive shops are visiting newbie friendly sites every day which aren’t exactly the best ones IMO. I noticed a ton of people getting OW certified or doing their first few open water dives, and I don’t recommend this at all. I would pick a smaller dive op with fewer reviews on Google and TripAdvisor to avoid the cattle boats and for a more personalized experience to avoid the newbies. You’ll get to dive a wider range of sites and they’ll be more receptive to requests if you dive with them continually
  

Alor (25 dives)
Difficulty:

• This place is not easy to dive. Alor probably had the most dangerous and difficult conditions of places I’ve been to yet. There’s a number of challenging environments: thermoclines or huge temperature drops, deep dives, heavy currents that are frequently changing. I’ve experienced up and down currents before, but they were fairly straightforward and not that quick. Even in Palau and Komodo. But some were violent in Alor. I think the area’s topography is the reason for this. You could be zipping by on a wall on a drift dive when suddenly you could be dragged up to the surface, and right after you exhaust some air in your BC to go down, you could be pulled down and out by a downcurrent with just a few seconds in between. Then right after that, the current could change from left to right or vice versa. It got me breathing a bit hard even at my experience level
  
• Thermoclines also made it a bit more difficult too. The area supposedly gets cold upwellings everywhere that bring the water temperature to the low 70s, but the coldest I’ve experienced were mid 70s only in a specific part of the area. Nevertheless, going from 82-83 to mid 70s isn’t fun
  
• However, because there’s so many dive sites here with all sorts of conditions, even if you’re not the most experienced, you can still see a lot of really beautiful things in the easier dive sites. I would recommend being more experienced, though. There’s no proper hospital or chamber for hundreds of miles, so you’re fucked if something goes wrong
  

Wildlife:

• Tons of sharks and rays (eagle and spotted, not mantas unfortunately) sightings, on many dives Huge schools of fish, pretty much exactly what I was talking about in the RA section
  
• Dolphins in crossing on the surface all the time. Rarer to spot while actually diving, but it's possible
  
• I did a handful of muck dives and we did see some cool nudis, but I can’t definitively say that it’s the best macro diving I’ve done in Indonesia. I enjoyed macro diving more in the Philippines
  

Reef life:

• Almost just as good as RA’s, if not better in some areas. Insanely diverse corals, huge amounts of thick reef coverage where you don’t even see sand at the bottom. I probably give the edge to RA here since I’m fairly sure the diversity in corals is better at RA, but I did a liveaboard that covered more area whereas Alor is more concentrated. The fact that the two are debatable is a good thing
  
• I don’t think there was ever a time where I thought I had just an “okay” reef dive here. I think even the worst reef dives here are spectacular in comparison to everywhere else except RA
  

Dive sites:

• The dive site variety in Alor is absurdly high, probably the single most diverse place I’ve ever dove while being land-based. You have almost every single type of diving here: drift, cavern, wall, pinnacle, sloped, hooked, muck, etc.
  
• There are 70 (and more being still mapped / discovered) dive sites all within a 5-30 minute boat ride. I avoided most of the muck sites, and still felt like I had more reef dies to discover and see after around 25 dives
  
• Since there’s so few dive shops (~5), they all know each other and coordinate which sites are going to be done the following day. I literally never even saw another dive boat on the same dive site the week I was there
  
• The underwater topography here is simply amazing. Similar to some sites in Komodo, you just feel small. But there’s a higher proportion of dive sites like this compared to Komodo
  

Overall: S

• I am obsessed with Alor, and despite diving every day for over a week straight, I’m yearning for my chance to come back and see more of it and see what else has yet to be discovered
  
• I struggle to properly describe Alor. A more fun RA? Komodo with better reefs? I would characterize Alor as a combination of the best parts of RA and Komodo in one. Alor has the reef quality and fish activity of RA, but with the pelagics, currents, and interesting underwater topography of Komodo. Every criticism I had about RA about how “boring” or easy the diving is, is not an issue within Alor. I rank Alor as just as good as RA for me, and I probably flip flop between which I like more
  
• Usually when people talk about the best diving in Indonesia, RA and Komodo are the two that are most named. I whole-heartedly believe that Alor is on its way to becoming the third and it’s only a matter of time before everyone catches on and this place explodes in popularity. It’s that damn good Given the quality of dive sites and how close they are, I feel comfortable in saying that Alor is the single best pound for pound diving location I’ve been to. Nowhere I’ve been has this many quality sites in such a compact area. RA, Komodo, and Palau are technically one area too, but the dive sites are way more spread out and sometimes require hours to get to.
  
• To give you some context on how remote and unvisited it is – you simply cannot decide to walk up and dive this place last minute. You absolutely need to plan it out at least a few months in advance, sometimes 8-10+, and you probably need to be somewhat flexible too. Some dive resorts I contacted were actually booked up this far in advance. There are no hotels, guesthouses, etc., so you need to either stay with the dive resort, or you need their help in booking a local homestay or bungalow. And most dive resorts are small, only catering to 6-10 divers at a time at most
  
• These small group sizes are actually a bit of a negative, IMO. Because most dive shops only have 1-2 boats at most, if you’re overlapping with divers of different experience levels or people have other requests or preferences, you’re gonna be pulled in one way or another based on the group as a whole
  
• Truly wild, wild diving here. There is no tourism industry. Dive sites are still being found and figured out on the spot. Lots to still see that aren’t formally written down or documented. Not even RA is like that anymore. This is one of the final frontiers of untouched diving
  
• It’s kinda funny because no one seems to agree as to what these exact sites and site names are. Google “Alor dive sites” and ask all the dive companies what they call a particular site and you’ll probably get a few different names in return
  

Palau (25 dives)

Difficulty:

• Palau as a whole had some of the more tricky diving that I experienced on this trip. Maybe a bit more difficult than Komodo's diving. I definitely think you need to have a minimum skill level to comfortably dive here. That’ll probably differ from person to person, but overall, I think that while you don’t have to be an expert, you gotta be comfortable in the water at the least.
  
• There were currents on most dives, ranging from mild to rapid. They weren’t necessarily the strongest currents I’ve faced, but they were some of the trickiest. The currents pushed you up sometimes, down others, and changed directions frequently
  
• The strongest currents I faced were on the dives where you hooked in and watched pelagics, so I don’t really consider that to be a difficult situation where you need to dive against or with the current. But it’s worth noting since you might have to swim through or against current to get down there in the first place and hook yourself in
  

Wildlife:

• The most shark activity of any warm water diving I’ve ever done. On the hooked dives, we saw at least 10+ sharks every time, oftentimes many in the same camera frame, in addition to some manta action and lots of turtles too. These hooked dive sites also had a great amount of fish activity as well I saw the most medium to big-sized fish activity in Palau relative to anywhere else in Asia. Lots of groupers and bumphead parrot fish, for example. I went around spawning time and saw loads of parrot fish during this time
  
• The tradeoff is that the biodiversity, density, and color of the fish here isn’t as high as in Indonesia or Philippines
  

Reef Life:

• Wide range in the quality of the reefs. A few sites were absolutely beautiful, most were decent to good, others just okay, and some looked sad (the corner dives for example. They had nice pelagic action but the reef area around where people hooked in were thrashed)
  
• The walls were very nice, with soft corals and every color of the rainbow up and down the entire wall. The reef dives were a bit monotonous. The corals there were predominately hard, brown, and had lots of dead patches in some areas. Funnily, I think one of the best reef dive sites was on a wreck. The wreck was covered in so much coral it was as if it wasn’t even a wreck
  
• The reef quality ceiling is very high, but the floor is pretty low too
  

Dive sites:

• Huge amounts of diversity in the type of diving available here. Probably the strongest suit of Palau. There’s something for everyone: drift dives, wrecks, caverns, walls, reefs, hook dives to watch pelagics, etc. And to be honest, I found the washing machine currents to be pretty fun too. It was the first time I experienced them to that extent, and it was fun enjoying the ride
  
• The diving here is definitely among the most fun I did anywhere on this trip
  

Overall: A+

• I frequently hear people comparing Raja Ampat and Palau as two of the best warm water diving spots there are around the world. I disagree with this comparison and think Raja is a clear step above with its biodiversity. Palau is more comparable to Komodo IMO. I rank Komodo and Palau as a 2A and 2B sort of situation and probably rank Komodo a bit higher
  
• Palau’s best reefs aren’t as good, fish density isn’t as high as Komodo’s, and the biodiversity of both can’t compare, but Palau does have more pelagics
  
• Similar to Komodo, Palau provides a great range of diverse dive sites and “fun” diving. Not every site is also the most beautiful either
  
• I think where Palau does have Indonesia / Komodo beat, is the amount of pelagic action that you see in the hooked dives, with a huge amount of sharks
  
• I also do agree with the common sentiment that Palau does everything well, but nothing the best
  

Thailand

Andaman Sea (30 dives)
Difficulty:

• I was a bit surprised by the difficulty of diving in the Andaman. I had this perception that Thai diving was calm and easy, but I actually had to work on a number of dives. There were a decent amount of dives that had current. Not sure if it was also my liveaboard, but we were going fairly deep too, around 80+ ft and stayed at depth long enough to reach NDL time on each dive. Not terribly difficult diving, but not a leisurely stroll in the park either

Wildlife:

• Lack of fish in many dive sites. At least you’re treated to large schools of sardines and glassfish sometimes
  
• Saw a very low amount of big stuff — less than five turtles and sharks in total across several dozen dives
  

Reef life:

• The reef health in Thailand is in abysmal shape for the vast majority of dive sites. There are no colors, and everything is brown or stone gray for the vast majority of sites. A lot of the dive sites are either completely smoothed over or are just fields of dead rubble. Soft coral is pretty much non-existent except from a few places. The rest is falling apart. Truly depressing to see
  
• That said, Richelieu Rock is one of the few exceptions to this, which I’ll talk about more in a bit
  

Dive sites:

• Southern Similan dive sites are a complete waste of time. I would skip this area if you could. Mostly “rock diving” as the dive guides like to call it, where it’s really just large rocks sitting there because everything has died off, all the fish have left, and all you have left are smooth rocks. Seriously, though, rock diving? I’ve never heard or done anything like it. What a sad excuse for a dive area, and complete waste of money
  
• The northern sites like Koh Bon and Koh Tachai are a bit better, but still nothing to write home about Surin islands are okayish – I thought Thai diving would be as good as this as the baseline, but I guess not. Mostly just brown hard coral that’s devoid devoid of color, no soft coral, and tons of dead areas here
  
• Richelieu Rock is objectively a world class dive site, and an instance where its reputation is well deserved. If I didn’t get to visit Richelieu and dive it four times on my liveaboard, I would’ve considered the liveaboard to be a complete waste of time. Probably the fishiest dive site I’ve ever been to, filled with the most colorful soft corals I’ve seen in Thailand. Richelieu Rock would be considered a great dive site anywhere I’ve been around the world. I’m kinda surprised how good the site is given how shit everything else is around it
  
• I based myself out of Koh Lanta because I heard it had the best day diving, but most of it is just okay. The only trip worthwhile is Hin Daeng / Hin Muang, and even that’s just decent, not great. Not worth going to Thailand just to dive them. Not best in the world by a long shot
  
• Koh Bida was decent, but skippable, and Koh Haa was straight up terrible and not worth the time nor money to go to
  

Overall: Similans D, Surins C, Richelieu Rock A-, Hin Daeng / Muang B-, Koh Bida C, Koh Haa F

• I’ve never felt more disappointed and misled in all my dive experiences than I was in Thailand. I already had lower expectations going into this portion of my trip since I had just dove all over Indonesia, but Thai diving somehow failed to reach those low expectations
  
• Ever since I started diving, and as I was doing research for where to dive in Thailand, I’ve read so many reviews or comments that said how Thailand diving was “world class” or that it was “comparable, if not better than the Red Sea”. This may’ve been the case many years ago, but it’s certainly not the case in 2023. I was expecting at least decent diving, but after a 30round dives all along the Andaman on a liveaboard and daily trips, I would consider at most five dive sites to be at least “decent,” and only a few of those to be actually good. The rest ranged from outright bad to mediocre
  
• I’d say that Andaman diving is more appropriately comparable to Caribbean diving, and I probably err on the side of the Caribbean being better on average as a whole, despite Thailand having one, maybe two dive sites that are better than anything else that I’ve dove in Caribbean
  
• I only recommend diving in Thailand if you have never dove anywhere else warm in the world. If you’ve dove anywhere else in SEA, don’t waste your time and dive in Thailand
  
• I did a seven day liveaboard that spanned the entire Andaman and I would recommend to only do a two or three day one that focuses on the Surin islands and Richelieu Rock only
  

Anyway, feel free to AMA. No pics because I mostly record in video, and I'm too lazy to edit something together for now. Plus anyone can make any dive site look good with select shots.

Note: This is a series I want to create, centred around some given element or facet of worldbuilding and storytelling. Primarily, each post will either be a piece of hard science in terms of physics or logistics or otherwise core elements of the setting itself (such as military structure), or non-physical core elements of the people and their world (such as sports and personal enjoyment matters, for emotional regulation and social stability, among other reasons). In short: all the things that actually create a functional, realistic culture. As such, I simply named it hard & accurate sci-fi. Just know that the focus may not actually be on hard science, or 'hard sci-fi'.
An often overlooked element within space opera (and sci-fi in general) would be all things recreational. You might not find a good way to heavily feature this into your story (or, own game-making of Aion, as the case may be), but it can be something to just touch upon and have in your mind. I wanted to walk through this a little, as it shall become quite relevant at a later date.
The logic is very simple: using humanity as a fundamental base (technically, an axiom), we can conclude that any humanoid or even alien species would have to gift themselves some kind of national sport, wargame, gambling system, or otherwise. The real-world examples literally encompass almost all of culture itself, making me believe that if your people are even remotely humanoid in their fundamental nature, then the recreational is a core facet of culture itself. This is so integrated into our real culture (rather, cultures) that we take it for granted, and don't even think about it when it comes to fiction-writing. But, it's a nice thing to add if you want added realism and stability, or an extra human touch.
Fantasy seems to feature invented sports and the like far more than sci-fi (unless such is the entire narrative of the sci-fi story, of course -- and, then, it's typically car-based). If we look to history, we clearly have the very creation of modern dice (India) as a gambling tool, and we have wargames (Go and Chess, etc.) as either direct military training tools (wargames proper), or abstracted wargames for more general use, since at least 3000 BC. Sports-wise, we see Blood Bowl (Warhammer fantasy sports game), Quidditch (fantasy; Harry Potter, which is akin to football mixed with netball in the air), and a dozen major examples from sci-fi, often featuring murder and cars (which we could see as a kind of replacement for the Roman and Greek sports), or else some kind of American sport hybrid. These include Real Steel, Futuresport, The Running Man, Rollerball, and Death Race (also, movies by the same names).
The aforementioned are obviously plot devices, and possibly don't have a place within your space opera setting and story. But, the fundamental drive and psychology are there. There are a few other examples from sci-fi board games and novels. Not to mention general sports and activities, such as Swimming.
Personally, the Aionic national sport and recreation activity is Swimming. The reason is four-fold: (1) it is a driver for both health and relaxation; (2) it can be social and peaceful; (3) for symbolic reasons; and (4) because there is likely not much water in space, yet humans still have a deep drive towards water (naturally, this is only applicable to any water-based culture, such as humans). It also occurs to me that water is a natural fitting for space, more so, if we take the TV trope, 'space is an ocean' (which does seem to be the natural categorisation, though it's not the only one). Another reason might be that it creates a reward system/social mobility, or at least the implication of such. Maybe, boarding a spaceship and taking a trip to the 'local' Swimming Centre is the week's holiday for your lower class people. On the other hand, maybe the high class types sit in Swimming Centres all the time. Not an uncommon trend throughout both fiction and history, as you might imagine.
That's just my own example, and may act as a springboard (no pun intended). You can justify dozens of real sports and otherwise activities, or invent your own. They may be readily accessible, or limited to certain classes of people or otherwise groups. There will likely be many different activities and sports for all your peoples, just as we see on Earth.
Some of you already know that I already have a major plan in mind for another sort of game: a wargame of sorts, within the game of Aion. This shall be a nested game (at some point), which you can play. It's going to be a violent sports game, akin to Blood Bowl mixed with some elements of Necromunda, both from Games Workshop. It's mostly for the ruling classes, etc. to engage in warfare without having to actually enage in warfare! Instead, they can simply pit warriors against each other in this deadly match of sport! (More on this in the future.)
Now, if you're writing a new story or campaign, just one trip to one sports centre or otherwise will do the trick, assuming you have planted in the reader's mind the notion that this is very normal and healthy for the culture/people. Best is to try and fit it into the wider plot, or else as a passing element (a few pages). One natural way to deal with this is to tie such into a wider theme or plot-point. Don't just have people randomly go Swimming just to inform the readers that they are Swimming. You need to work it in a bit better than that.
Depending on your culture, you may want a dozen violent/unhealthy sports and activities, or you (i.e. your culture's governing body, etc.) may only regulate more peaceful, healthy ones. I would try and tie this into the wider theme, anyway, and take into account the kind of people/culture you have. For example, you may or may not want Football with ant-like robots. On the other hand, moon-tossing for giant space Russians always sounds like a fun game. Like that makes any sense! Maybe bottle-tossing!
If your culture is based on Americans or Hongkongian, for example, then you should think about their native sports and activities, and how that might fit into whatever you're doing with them in space/the future. Other than that, you need to consider the (a) disposition of your culture; (b) the history of your culture; (c) the function of your culture; (d) the state of your culture; and (e) the peoples of your culture. Although this is not an exhaustive list, it should suffice.
It also occurs to me, we just don't see enough sports in space outside of these movies/stories that are wholly dedicated to said sports, which is weird considering how sport-obsessed humans have become since 500 BC (but, especially since 1920 AD). This is often in relation to the ruling classes in rich, urban settings (cities/towns), or the average citizens in urban areas, finding a bit more free time on their hands (i.e. Scotland and England circa 1920 AD). Makes sense: you have bored, work-less nobles, or even workers with nothing to do. They need something to do; thus, they invented all sorts of games, wargames, and sports. You see this with horse-related games, ball-related games, and even something like fox tossing.
Tennis was 'the game' (popular sport) of the middle classes and above by the 1880s through the 1980s (hence, most early video sports games of the 1950s through 1970s were all Tennis-based). Worth noting that most early video games were themselves sports games or wargames! Actually, most video games are wargames circa 2023 AD, with a vast number of the rest being sports. I stress this only to stress the importance of such things to human culture and entertainment... indeed, most of our entertainment is also either war-based (Boxing, etc.) or otherwise sports (Football, etc.). Not shockingly, most modern sports were invented, therefore, in the British Empire (sometimes with French or Dutch roots). Older sports are seemingly universal -- ranging from Africa to Native Americans to India -- and are typically ball-based (classically, often using heads, or else leather balls).
Of course, most sports are impossible in zero gravity, so I'm just assuming you're creating some kind of zero gravity war-based game, or otherwise sport (fundamentally throwing-based or ball-based), or your culture is on a planet or space station of some kind, which has artificial gravity.
Tron is a great example of offering some inspiration (duel type, and others), not to mention Spy Kids 3-D (2003) (car race) and Ready Player One (2018) (car race). Then, you have combat training type games (I'll just call these 'physical wargames') and VR games (Gamer movie, for example), not to mention VR holiday trips.
Speaking of which, I'm reminded of Germany's vast, cheap, powerful cruise trip system by 1938, which saw millions of working (and fairly poor) Germans taking such Party-regulated trips and holidays (mostly a propaganda tool, funded with blood money, of course). In the more modern context, this is what we saw by the 1950s in America and England with various holiday sites, theme parks, modern cruise trips, and beach holidays (though these do date to at least 1920, but typically only by the middle classes and above). Naturally, because the Western trips and parks were not funded by literal blood money, Germany was able to be more advanced than the West, for a short time.
No less, Tolkien himself once came on holiday to the town I live in (on the coast, North of England), which was a famous holiday town back in the 1850s through 1960s. This was commonplace, including long walks through the woods and various built-up areas. Even in the 1700s, people began going to the 'sea air' for so-called health benefits. In reality, this was likely due to the fact the city air was unhealthy. The sea air was simply fresh, clean air (though, it likely is good for you, psychologically speaking, compared to the grey-state of city life). All of this to say that humans have a deep desire to be in nature, and to relax. This is true most of all for the rich and urbanised (as you can imagine).
Space theme park, anyone? Giant cinema on the Moon? Sure, why not. Titanic cruise trip across the galaxy? Doctor Who already did that, but you get my point! There is much to be done, and you only have to add a few such items, and briefly touch upon them, but I think it does wonders for the human connection, and some added realism (assuming such correctly fits your setting and themes).
There are many other activities of note, of course, including but not limited to art groups, acting/plays, drinking games, general board/video games, card/dice/token games, sword-based sports, hunting, Shooting (sport), and actual warfare.
These serve many functions in society, some positive, some negative. I may speak to some of this in more detail at a later date.
I have said enough. Ah, speaking of which: talking might be another consideration for your culture. This is as old as Man, and does count as such an activity in the context of debate. You famously find this within the Jewish and Islamic worlds: likely because they don't enage with the other items I mentioned as much, and their religions require great moral debate and such. On the other hand, Buddhism requires a lot of silent thinking (which is a kind of debate, in a sense). This heavily depends on your culture's primary religion and otherwise. Some cultures are almost purely geared towards warfare, for example, like the Akkadian Empire (though we are likely a bit harsh on them). In this case, the focus would be on action. If your culture is anything like the modern West, then it's also going to be heavily driven by action, purely due to the speed of the culture and its workers. How this manifests itself depends on the type of government and culture you have in place (the Dutch Empire vs. the U.S., for example).
(Clearly, within a cyberpunk direction or more classical space opera context, the primary free-time activities and modes tend to be centred around sex, war, and/or slave-labour, as shown by Star Wars in general, and most cyberpunk stories. This may or may not fit your narrative, however. The other core negative -- rather, mostly negative -- item would be gambling, which is the only item which doesn't innately involve the body, though often bleeds over into various animal gambling games/activities, and is not healthy in most cases. This typically keeps the more lower classes engaged in the 'slums' sector (typically of a planet or star system). Very common trope/theme, as noted in the bright-cyberpunk-space-opera sort of movie, The Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), when they go to a trading hub planet, filled with crime, sex rings, and gambling, including little weird creatures fighting each other, akin to dog fighting or such on Earth. But, again: you don't actually require this, it's just one popular way to go within the wider sci-fi context, and it serves a few narrative purposes.)
Later on, I shall dig deeper into all of this, as it pertains to Aion and the gameplay itself! :)

BeyondtheGM EP 22 featured special guests Doodles CEO Julian Holguin and head of Business Development and Strategy Austin Hurwitz. Great listen where many heard the vision from the Doodles team for the first time.
If anyone wants to listen back: https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1OdKrzqrMbYKX
I've shared some of the Doodles related Q&A and alpha below:
Can you share some details about your latest announcement for those who haven't seen it yet?
Julian: Doodles is partnering with a company called Camp to launch our first ever immersive retail experience and for those of you that don't know what camp is, it's basically a network of hybrid play / shopping experiences where the front of the establishment is basically a toy store, but think of it like a specialty toy store. It's kind of like a modern day FAO Schwarz or something like that. It's got all the viral kids toys. It's not just like walking into a Toys R Us or a Target or something like that, t's kind of got that specialty feel to it. That makes up about I'd say less than a sixth of the space but in the back of that toy store, there's this hidden door and a camp counselor is waiting for you if you purchased a ticket to the immersive experience, you push through that magic door and behind that is essentially a 6000 square foot immersive experience that totally brings the world that you're going into to life. So they partner with some big IP to actually program those experiences. Los Angeles is Nike. It's called Nike Kids Camp.
New York is Disney's Encanto, a really big Disney animation movie that kind of took the world by storm last year. Dallas is Mickey Mouse and friends. Atlanta is The Little Mermaid. So obviously some of the biggest IP in the world. We are launching a new location with them this summer. So basically, we're going to be introduced to a whole new set of potential people in the particular market that we're going to be in because these experiences actually serve a purpose in those specific markets for longer than say 2 or 3 days. They are permanent establishments in those markets. So we're going to stay there for about 3 to 6 months and then the Doodles show will likely go on the road to some of their other locations. The solution that camp solves is what do you do with your family today? What do you do today? Do you have something to do with your kids, which is always on a parent's mind, right? Whether you're taking them to the park or you're taking them to Disneyland or you're taking them wherever you want to go. This is like a 2 or 3 hour thing that is really kind of hard to replicate, that gets people out of the house and you can have truly an incredible time.
My kids love it. So the the cool thing for us is that we get to bring one of our core competencies to life in a really material way where we know it's valuable to pop up at these big cultural moments like South-by and Art Basel, but it's a pretty resource intensive process to do that, and it's a pretty budget intensive process to do that. So we figured it made a lot of sense to kind of reallocate some of that funding into turning this concept into a true business, which is essentially what camp is, One, we're going to be selling merchandise, we're going to be selling tickets to the event, we're going to be selling sponsorships to the event. So there's a real business there but the big opportunity for Doodles is there's going to be thousands of new people that don't know anything about Doodles coming into this experience, and we have the opportunity to bring them into our world. We have the opportunity to bring those people on chain, especially with what we have planned and how the technology is almost going to be invisible to the people that are in there.
It's ultimately just going to be a great digital / physical consumer experience. So really, really excited. The utility that that's going to drive ultimately to holders is VIP all access, it's going to be free entry, whereas everybody else has to pay. There's going to be merchandise credits, there's going to be true like white glove concierge services. So whenever a Doodle holder is going to go to the the space in a given day, week, whatever it might be, they're actually going to have the really VIP experience that's going to come with all the bells and whistles and they're going to feel very, very special and not the kind of experience that everybody else is going to have when they go to the event and hopefully in time that space is going to travel so a lot more Doodle holders are going to be able to take part in it but one of the big things that we've heard in general from holders about our live events is, oh man, it's two days, three days, like what if I'm not able to make it that particular weekend? This is going to enable people to have a little bit more travel plans put together if they do want to make it all the way out here but the cool thing is, it's going to travel.
We're still going to do live events in other parts of the world but this is a big one for us. The other part is that we're actually going to introduce our first line of kids merchandise, goods and apparel, which is something that the community has been asking for. We have a lot of parents in the Doodles community and it's also a way to introduce the brand to a lot of new people. As far as the experience itself, there's going to be like dayparting programing. So kids and family programing is going to be in the day for the most part and then at night there's going to be stuff that's more focused on adults. So multiple generations can take part in this. It's going to be a blast. I can't wait for everybody to see the designs, what the experience is going to look like, how it's going to connect to our collector ecosystem in the studio and bring NFT's to life in a really meaningful way. It's going to be awesome. Can't wait for you all to see it.
I'm looking forward to the day parting. Could share any timelines, anything in terms of location and where we can expect them or should we stay tuned?
Julian: The location is going to be a reveal within itself so I don't want to say that here because the reason we're not bringing up the location yet is because there's a really big opportunity to get a lot of local press. You want the local newspapers, radio stations, local bloggers and everything like that talking about it. So we want to reveal the designs and everything when we announce the location so we get as many people in the particular area that we're going to be in aware of the activation as possible. Timing wise, the experience is going to open in August. There might be a little fluidity in what exact time in August but it's August right before the school year starts for everybody so it's not too far away and then as far as like you asked kind of a leading question with adult versus kids experiences. You know, if you grow up in New York or any of these cities and you do kind of more mellow, like you've been kind of like boozy painting before or doing like casual things you bring drinking like wine and beer into it. It turns into like a really fun night out for adults. This isn't going to be a rage fest kind of thing but the idea is that we're going to be able to serve alcohol and create some really cool friend and family driven experiences that are a lot more geared towards adults. So it'll be a good time.
What's it like working with Pharrell and what's his involvement with the Doodles project at the moment?
Julian: That was the first thing we did, again remember how much interest there was in the blue chip NFT projects back in April, May, June of last year and there were a lot of opportunities for us to work with some major major musicians that have global reach and millions of followers and we really saw the value in working with a creator to help us incubate the brand but they needed to be dynamic and Pharrell is the most dynamic, genius, brilliant creator that in our opinion has really ever lived and he spans music, he spans art, he spans fashion, film, television, technology, everything. So, we had started talking to him basically right when I started and we got the deal done very quickly. Pharrell is a pretty material part of the business, most of the work that he does is kind of behind the scenes, the Pharrell pack and him coming into the Doodles universe as a character was the first big collab that we did but we're working on music together, we're working on audio identity and visual identity and brand development etc and the doors that guy can open are truly unprecedented, the rooms that he's walked us into. I don't want to name drop but top C-suite in the world, top creators in the world, top everything. Pharrell's name comes with so much weight because he has the respect of everybody from business to creative and fashion and everything in between and the thing that surprised me most well, I shouldn't say surprised me, but the thing that I think would surprise most people is how shrewd of a business mind the guy has, he's always leaning into new technology, new ways of doing things. He's kind of contrarian, but he really understands business. He really understands opportunity and he's very leaned into Doodles, which is exciting. We couldn't be more blessed to have his have his support and have his mind on the on the company.
I really enjoyed Scott's (Burnt Toast) version of Pharrell. Could you talk about the expansion of the Doodleverse and the ethos behind it?
Julian: You brought up Scott and Pharrell, the first meeting that we had, Pharrell was talking about how he can hear colors and Scott had this moment where his eyes opened up. He's like, "Whoa, me too" and it was this crazy thing that went completely over my head. It was just this really cool moment between artists that everybody else in the room was like, okay, there's a blank spot in our minds when we try and think like that but these two connected on such a deep level. It was really cool to see.
If you look at the end card to the most recent trailer that promoted the Pharrell pack, Doodles2, the stoodio, everything that we released last month, what you're going to find in that is a bunch of random Doodles characters that could be anybody, could be anybody on this call, could be people in South Dakota, could be people in Hong Kong, could be people wherever.
Then you see Pharrell, who is Pharrell in that universe and then you see our mascot who is obviously going to be the main character of our fictional universe. So you have the real world in there, through their Doodle, you have Pharrell who's also part of the real world in there through their Doodle and then you have the fictional characters from Doodles in that photo as well. So if you think about where we're going as a brand, we're developing this fictional universe of characters that are derived from the original collection. So you've seen the mascot, you've seen the cat, all of that stuff is going to be developed into a fictional line of programing and then running parallel to that is the lifestyle brand that is Doodles, right? You make your Doodle, you buy your Doodle merch, you go to Doodles events, you're on Twitter talking to other Doodles, there are Doodle holders that are more well known than other Doodle holders simply because they engage more and they're more kind of public figures in the community and we kind of believe that as that starts to grow, those two, that kind of lifestyle brand and real world aspect of the Doodles will crash into the fictional world at times.
Maybe you do see a creator or someone that you know in the actual fictional world of the universe, or maybe you as a Doodle holder, whether it be through your Doodle or the customized Doodle that you create, will be in that fictional universe as well, the same way that Lady Gaga was a character in The Simpsons, or The Weeknd was a character in The Simpsons, set in the fictional world of The Simpsons but they're Lady Gaga. They're The Weeknd. So we have this really cool track of programing where you can bring digital identity to the table and collecting. We have this kind of sincere belief that digital identity paired with collecting connected to every single consumer touchpoint, whether it be going to the movies, watching television, buying stuff at retail, playing video games, if you can bring that back to a collecting hub where the brand knows who their most loyal supporters are, who engage with the company the most, who are supporting the most and you can reward those people and create aligned incentives as our business grows. That's something really special that brings the brand and the ultimate collector closer together, which makes them feel like they are part of the universe because they actually are going to be part of the universe. They're not going to be just a passive participant and the best way I can give you kind of a framework for how that doesn't exist today.
If you look at most movie IP, they license the movie rights out to a distribution company that actually puts the movie out, which then goes to theaters so they don't actually own the relationship with their customer. You buy merchandise through another third party, so they license it to another third party. They license their books and publishing rights. They license their music rights. They license everything out and they don't actually own the relationship with a lot of their audience. So they have no way of knowing who their most loyal supporters are, who goes and sees the movie three times, who plays the game, who buys the merch, who shows up at the theme parks and the events? What's really cool about the technology that we all work in is we could figure out a way to track all of that and make sure that those people are not just being seen and heard, they're getting stuff, they're getting more rewards, they're creating this sense of identity being close to this brand because they're actually going to feel like they're part of it with all the activations that we have planned. We think that's a business model and a mindset that doesn't exist today and that that's really where we're leaning in.
Are there any projects or founders or individuals that you guys chat with a lot or anyone you guys want to meet?
Julian: Yeah, obviously day to day work kind of gets in the way of people spending too much time together but Luca and I talk pretty often, he hooked me up with a couple of the plushies for my kids. They loved them. So there's definitely love and support there. I talk to Greg from Yuga every now and then, I've connected with Zag a couple of times but it's not as much as it should be and I think the kind of the real takeaway is that we should be coming together as leaders in this space more often, because if one of us wins, all of us wins and there's so much incredible work being done right now, we just we need to figure out better ways of kind of taking ourselves out of the day to day and the kind of the pitting ourselves against each other that exists so much on the timeline right now and just remember, we're all fighting the same fight, right? We're trying to take market share from all the biggest companies in the world, not from each other. If Web3 makes it, it's not going to be just one of us that makes it. It's going to be a few of us. It's going to be a bunch of us and it's ultimately just going to create more opportunity for everybody building in this space. So more of that 100% needs to happen.
How do you feel about the sentiment? Obviously you guys went through a lot of FUD and now you're kind of bouncing back. How do you feel about the NFT space and where you guys kind of see yourselves fitting in?
Julian: I think anybody who saw our keynote at NFTNYC last year, we are doing every single thing that we said we were going to do. I think there's a misconception in how long this stuff actually takes to develop, to reach millions of people around the world, how long it takes to get music to market and film and television content to market and true partnerships and things like that. You know, especially when you kind of have the bar for quality that Doodles does. I think one of the areas that we've fallen flat is just communication and community building in general and I think that's something that if hopefully you've been paying attention lately, you've seen that there's a real concerted effort internally to try and bridge that gap and to try and rebuild that vibe in the Doodles community. It's something we think about every day. Austin has been invaluable in that regard and truly making the community understand that we are a Web3 company. We do care deeply about this space. We do sincerely believe in the technology and what it's going to do for brands and IP.
We really do feel like every action and activity we take is not just going to benefit Doodles, it's going to benefit everybody in our community and everybody in the Web3 community at large. So has it hurt to see kind of Web3 not as pumped about Doodles anymore? Yeah, it's definitely something we think about, but we're not going to sit here and try and sell, sell, sell to the space on why we're great. What we're going to do is just prove it by shipping product and show people that we really are in this for the right reasons and it'll start to make more and more sense over time. We're kind of sick of talking about what we're going to do and we're just going to show people and think by the end of the summer, by the end of September, you're going to you're going to see a very, very different looking business that the community is truly at the center of. So we're excited for that.
You guys are talking about collectibles and I think Burnt Toast recently shared a photo of a monochrome dude. You guys are working with All Rights Reserved who is definitely a premium art / toy sculpture producer. I would love to know a little bit more about how you connected and maybe a little bit more that around what we can expect for that that drop.
Julian: So this relationship predates me joining but Evan got introduced to SK, I believe through Todd Kramer, who's a big art collector, and he has a gallery in New York and I believe they really hit it off kind of from the beginning and the first vinyl that came out was so successful, people were going crazy for that thing and it became very clear that hese vinyl stand toe to toe with Bearbrick statues and Kaws statues and we had a real opportunity in the designer toy market. So we really wanted to start to double down on that concept and try and play in that space. So we've been developing a strategy for a while on how we actually bring that to a wider audience and get that in the right kind of environment so this, this summer, August, actually, we're going to be doing a big drop tied to the physical's, the vinyl that you saw. There's going to be multiple colorways. There's going to be some really interesting, I'll say expanded things outside of the toy, outside of the figure itself but it's going to have some specialty retail distribution so it'll be at some key retailers, both digital retailers and physical retailers, All those retailers are going to be distributed around the world.
There's some pretty select markets that we're going into and then that is going to lead directly into the camp opening a few weeks later. So it's pretty exciting. The vinyls are definitely a big area of growth for us because we see them as a way to reach new collectors, new people. It's not enough to try and sell everything to the people that are here today, what we need to be able to do is actually bring these these experiences and these products to as many new people as possible. I think one of the things that Luca actually said when they did the toys was, being financially independent so you don't need to continue putting more and more NFT's in the ecosystem. I don't think that means any of us are going to stop producing NFT's but the whole idea of being able to make those experiences incredible because you have a real business outside of it. I think that is a really great takeaway and something that we think is possible through this drop and the other stuff that's coming soon. We're talking so much more man. It's going to be crazy.
How are you trying to bring value back to holders from these events? If I walk into a Camp store, do I know that Doodles is a originated from an NFT project or is there another another strategy like a Trojan horse?
Julian: I think the goal for us and thank you for that question, but the goal for us is more how do you eliminate the technological barrier between someone that has no appetite for it but might be interested in your brand? And as the brand grows and as the technology gets a little bit more seamless and people start to understand what the original collection actually means, that there's a lot more demand for that because there's only 10,000 of them. So if we all of a sudden reach millions of people and those millions of people know that there is this collectible that started it all, it's the original artwork but that artwork is also it's the first edition Pokemon card, right? That's kind of the parallel that I'd say and then that art is attached to this essentially membership, that is the ultimate access pass within the ecosystem, right? Like the Pharrell pack, there was only 300 of them, but you couldn't get one if you didn't have an original Doodle So that was basically a free airdrop. You had to hit certain metrics, engagement metrics within the community to actually get the pack but that was just one iteration of it. We'll have that for a lot of drops where, there will be, a certain amount of things that are free and the free thing will always come to people that own the original Doodle and then the free entry specifically speaking about camp, free entry to the experience when everyone else has to pay, merchandise credits and then a true white glove concierge service where you're you're going to reach out to Doodles before you go and then you're going to be set up with this kind of VIP experience at that location.
If you believe that Doodles has the opportunity to grow and turn into a bigger brand, you know that free airdrops and claims and free claims on merchandise in one location is not going to be all the utility that there is for the original collection. We're going to build a lot more than that and that is kind of how we see value trickling back down to the original token, we're also going to be licensing people's Doodles to use in media, to use in products. We haven't done it yet because we just haven't figured out the right way to make it scalable. It's kind of a big thing to set that precedent this early, especially if you have the kind of ambition we do to go as big as we want to go but we are thinking about that and we are going to bring that to market soon and then the last thing that I'll bring up is just the Doodle bank, which is honestly, I feel like a really under the radar thing. We have a $5 million or so fund that only people with a Doodle can access to build businesses around the Doodles brand, to build creator platforms around the Doodles brand. I would love to see a Doodle holder try and access the Doodle brand to actually build some of the stuff that you've been able to build, right? How can we help subsidize costs so they can create their own podcast studio so they can advertise their content a little bit more all through the Doodles brand, which is ultimately aligned incentives
You as a creator get bigger. Doodles gets more of a microphone because you're getting bigger as a creator and then the last couple pillars of the Doodle bank is also rewards , so how can we use the funds in the Doodle bank to actually create more rewards for Doodle holders, is it sponsoring a concert tour? Is it trying to get memberships to a specific social club? There's so many different things that we can use to drive value back to the original token with this fund and ultimately empower the creators and the entrepreneurs that exist in our ecosystem. So I'd say we're doing so much to try and drive value back to the original token, but I think people will I think people will start to see that when there's truly like real world utility Pharrell pack was one iteration. We've done an airdrop with the Dooplicator, we're doing this experience with camp and it'll keep going from there.
Have you guys kind of like established your council? How do you guys kind of think about the Doodle Banks as it operates as I guess a "DAO" tied to Doodles itself? What does the structure look like, high level?
Austin: In terms of where we're at with it right now. We've installed the first class of the DoodleBank community council, which consists of a chair to oversee the council, a treasurer who is distributing the funds and tracking the finances, an events lead who is going to be building out community global programing, a grants lead, which is really when Julian speaks about how do we empower individuals to build businesses, whether it be through grants or ways to prop up businesses through their IP and then a rewards lead who is focused on how can we bring in additional benefits to holding a Doodle. They have been live since the top of May and right now are developing the processes for how approvals come in, what the approval process looks like, effectively what are our guidelines and what we're looking to support, our budgets overall per quarter and then have also been fielding questions and feedback from the community. So it's been great. They serve multiple roles in addition to just their remit, given their different titles. They're also really our first line of taking in feedback and doing product reviews.
Austin: They're all under NDA and really have a clear sense of where we're going. So it's been great to be able to build with the community in that way but our intention is that in pretty short order, like within call it the next few weeks, we want to get these processes out to the community for feedback and start taking in the first set of proposals. We also really love the nouns model of like the prop house RFP, so for things that we know we need to do as a company, but we want to be able to empower the community to be able to help build with us we effectively want to have bounties that we can put out there, whether it be to create content or create merchandise or whatever the case may be, have it be more of a two way street than just reactively taking in proposals. We're we're moving really quickly. I'm literally in a Slack channel with with the council right now as they're giving me all of their weekend updates but it's been progressing and hope to have more for the community soon.
I think we've noticed that you need a processes, onboarding and kind of filtering and controlling budgets and you sometimes see proposals that are grossly overestimated so being smart about allocation, making it efficient etc
Austin: It's a great point to illustrate and we are very fortunate with the few individuals we have as Treasurer and the grants lead. John Shank, who is our Treasurer was a CFO for a large corporation for a long time and really focused on having a balanced budget. How do we ultimately bring additional funds into the bank and what are the checkpoints over time? So instead of distributing all those funds up once, how do we ensure that we're getting the necessary reporting and then Eyal who is our grand lead has actually run incubators in the past and ensuring that we have the right checks and balances as we're deploying that capital to ensure what you just said doesn't happen, that we're not put in a situation where we're deploying funds and we're not seeing the direct action that's being taken against them.
Does it mean that there are no more pop ups this year?
Julian: It definitely does not mean no pop ups. That's core to our DNA and it's also such an incredible onboarding opportunity, when we went to Something In The Water festival, Pharrel's festival in Virginia Beach, there were so many spokes to that partnership where we basically brought a 30 by 30 space. We sold the new collaboration that we had on site with ice cream. So all these people now have Doodles products that were there and bought the merchandise and right next to that was kind of a live demo of Doodles2 where we were able to capture people's emails so we can send them marketing after the fact. We got a few thousand emails at that activation, we sold a bunch of merchandise and we basically introduced a lot of people to the brand and on the other side of it like, okay, what does that do for the holder apart from growing the ecosystem, which we do find pretty valuable to ultimately Doodle holders and our entire ecosystem but we were able to secure 50 tickets that we gave to the community for free in a raffle and they were VIP tickets. They were super close to the stage, there were credits involved in them and for the people that went, it was a really awesome experience.
The other piece is that when you talk about creators in our community. JKB, I'm not sure how familiar any of you are with them, but they're very prominent members of our community. They've been around for a very long time have basically started their own media brand based on their Doodles PFP's and this is the second time that we've actually had them kind of live blog and create content on behalf of Doodles at the actual festival. So you saw them kind of do like A day in the life with Doodles and JKB, taking content of like festival goers, the stages, the experiences and then distributing that stuff, on Twitter and their other social channels. So it was a really cool thing that we could do for creators in our space and what I'll say kind of directly answer your question is, Something In The Water was just the first festival thing that we've done this year. We're going to show up at other music festivals. We're going to continue to do live events and what we built for something in the water was an activation that can travel a lot more easily. So South by Southwest, Art Basel, those things were very hard to pack up and repurpose, we have aspects of that, but this new activation that we've built, we can actually ship it from place to place and we can continue to add on to it depending on the actual activation itself. So festivals will always be and other live events will always be a way to drive utility for holders and also onboard new people into the ecosystem. Doodles is about fun, man. We want to color the world with joy. We want everybody to feel the vibes and it's incredible to work on it every day. It's hard keeping things a secret, it's painful sometimes.
Can you tell me anything about the Pharrell album? I understand it's with Columbia, who are part of Sony Music. Is there anything you can kind of say on the project and when that could be landing?
Julian: So the album's not actually going to roll out as a traditional album where there's like a bunch of songs they're going to roll out. It's going to roll out kind of song by song and more as a platform on a perpetual basis. Columbia is going to distribute the music and I don't want to give too much detail because there's going to be a lot of hype in the reveal but you're going to see things like a music video set in the Doodles universe featuring whatever artist is going to be on it. Pharrell curated or produced tracks. Collectibles that are paired both physical and digital with the actual music itself and wide distribution so the songs are going to be on Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, radio, etcetera. So that's kind of how it's going to come to life and if you looked at Pharrell as a Doodle and Pharrell coming into the Doodles universe as a character, imagine some of your favorite artists coming into the Doodles universe as a character too. It's going to be a pretty eclectic mix of artists and it's going to roll out again, like I said, over time. That really is all I can say at the moment, but we'll update everybody as soon as we possibly can. All I can tell you is it's going to be fire.
You guys recently made an amazing acquisition with GoldenWolf Studios. Can we expect more animations and stuff on the Socials? What's the sort of direction with Golden Wolf and how did that come about?
Julian: That's a great question. So we acquired GoldenWolf back in January. They are an Emmy nominated creative studio. They're one of the most highly regarded animation studios in the world. Lot of brand notoriety from them in the entire animation industry. The goal, if you think of what Doodles is, there's a term in media called transmedia and that essentially means you tell stories on different channels, right? So different channels means you could be telling stories through live events, you could be telling stories through the distribution of toys, you could be telling stories through social media, you could be telling stories at the box office with a big film and the whole point is, you're not trying to fit one story or one thing for each of those channels that have very unique characteristics from a distribution standpoint. Doodles is the kind of brand that needs to tell stories across all of these channels and meet people where they are, where they're actually spending their time versus trying to put the same thing out across the board. So GoldenWolf, which is very much specializes in social content and brand identity in advertisement. They're an incredible partner to keep kind of the always on content flow pumping out for Doodles, which is just starting to ramp up now and at the same time, with all the incredible creators, plus Scott and the people that we're working with in the traditional entertainment industry, bringing the actual story together, the universe that is Doodles, who the characters are, what adventures they go on, what is the backstory? What's the conflict?
GoldenWolf, Scott and a few others are actually developing that now and that is going to manifest itself through all of our content, through all of our product, all of our storytelling opportunities, while we're also developing long form content. So what does Doodles look like as a streaming television show or a motion picture? How does Doodles go into music videos like GoldenWolf is going to produce the music videos. So from a creative standpoint, we have, in my opinion, the best creative studio in the world, developing Doodles content and brand and I'll just say we just started the integration recently, there's kind of been really nothing yet. We've gotten started. It's been amazing, but there's so much coming from GoldenWolf soon and then I'd say on the flip side, GoldenWolf being in Web3 is not an insignificant thing either. So yes, it's amazing that they're going to help develop the Doodles IP but GoldenWolf has a lot of other ideas that NFT's and blockchain technology could be a really great format for incubating that IP or bringing new stories to life and new projects to market and leveraging the tech in new ways and Ingi who founded that company ten years ago is one of the smartest guys in the entire space, he's a true innovator, leaned into tech really leaning into AI tooling and how that can help Doodles as a business, how that can help the whole animation industry as a business. So we're just kind of seeing a little fruit from that partnership right now, but it's going to continue to grow pretty, pretty significantly from there. We really do have a crazy, talented team like Scott and then also Sammy and Alfie. There's so many brilliant creatives at GoldenWolf, and you'll get to know a lot of them soon.
Have you guys made any new key hires or are you guys planning to make some key hires to kind of push this forward?
Julian: We kind of wrapped up the majority of our hiring after our head of business and legal affairs came into the company about a month or so ago. I mean, we're at 60 people right now across Doodles and GoldenWolf, so we're pretty staffed well, there's some more product and engineering resources that we're going to be bringing in so we can be quicker to market with a few things but I'd say we're pretty well staffed at this point.
So to build on top of what you've said, I was wondering if you guys could give us any insights into the Doodles culture, the work culture.
Julian: I love that question. So we just opened an office in Miami a couple months ago. Our team is distributed, so we have some people that are remote. We have some people that are here in Miami. We have an office in New York. We have an office in London and again, there are people that are remote. So for the people that are in Miami, the office is pretty awesome. It's got a pretty, pretty cool view. It's right in a really good area of the city and when you walk in, it's very much neutral tones and colors and things like that and then we make the space pop with product that we have. So there's vinyls all over the office. We bring other IP into the office like we have this gold Mickey Mouse that that Jordan donated, it was a Fantasia Mickey Mouse with him holding a Bitcoin instead of a magic ball, just a lot of different artists and IP that we respect to try and inspire some creativity in the space. We have this really cool synthesizer that Evan got made, where people come in, play it. It's actually like a Doodles synthesizer.
We have a merchandise kind of like retail display. We have all of our statues on display so you can check out our brand, learn a little bit more about us. We also have this pretty cool ice cream machine set up then the New York office couldn't be a different vibe. It's more of a grunge studio, true artsy vibe and then it's the same kind of thing in London - the original GoldenWolf office.
It's awesome. I think what we're trying to bring to life is the inspiration of creativity and trying to emulate a lot of the incredible IP that we respect so much and we do remote work sessions, so we try and bring people all together, at least once or twice a quarter so we can all get those creative juices flowing, build relationships with each other because if we're going to truly be a community outside of the company, we got to be one internally first so it's been really cool trying to build the culture here and I think we've been doing a pretty good job.
I'm wondering for future activations, will there be places where people can actively onboard into the community, whether that's Doodles2 or the original collection?
Julian: Definitely at what I'll call Non-endemic to Doodles stuff, so festivals and more consumer facing events. The reason why we showed up at South by Southwest and Art Basel last year was because we were this really hot Web3 brand in a sea of some of the biggest companies and brands in the world. Whereas as when you go to the when you go to the NFT events, you're like the headline. Right? I think the opportunity to gain notoriety in those environments is really a big opportunity, but it's also an opportunity to bring your holders close to the action that all the influencers of the world, are part of. So when Doodle throws the massive event at Art Basel and it's like one of the tickets of the weekend and our holders are the VIP entrance into that thing we're going to continue to do stuff like that. We really love that concept and at the same hand, use that opportunity to bring new people into the brand. The goal right now is to onboard, people into kind of like information gathering until the stoodio product is actually out of beta. So we're collecting emails so we can retarget these people and make sure that they understand who we are, what we're doing etc so that's kind of the strategy for us.

Aloy's actions during "The Twilight Path" quest present a highly flawed and arguably self-righteous stance.
The situation involves a group of loyalist from the old overthrown immoral Shadow Carja regime who have chosen to occupy a mountain path for their religious rituals, disregarding any other rightful uses of this common area.
One of these rightful uses was claimed by the Hunter, Tolland, who downed a storm bird atop the mountain. However, due to the loyalists' persistent occupation and their willingness to resort to violence, the hunter was kept from retrieving his hard-earned loot. Despite his patience wearing thin after several days, the loyalists refused to budge. The hunter was understandably poised to assert his rights forcefully. The important thing to note is that the aggressive party is not Tolland. All he intends is to use the Mountain Path which he has a right to. It’s the Shadow Carja who would become violent if he were to, forcing him to become violent as well.
Enter Aloy, our protagonist, who should ideally bring justice to such a situation. Instead, she takes it upon herself to gift the storm bird loot, which is not hers to give, to the loyalists. He has no choice but to accept lest he wishes to fight Aloy. This move is questionable at best. By doing so, she reinforces the loyalists' belief that their cause justifies their unjust actions, thus enabling and promoting a form of moral bankruptcy. This loot rightfully belongs to Tolland and it is not Aloy's place to determine its distribution.
What's even more concerning is the fact that the loyalists have other options. With Petra’s approval , Chainscrape could have been an option for them to seek refuge and support. The loot from the storm bird wasn't a necessity for their survival, but Aloy seemingly ignored this fact.
Furthermore, it's important to note that the loyalists' current predicament as refugees is largely self-inflicted. They chose to flee due to their unwavering support for the fallen regime. Their situation doesn't grant them the right to infringe upon others' rights. Aloy's support of these individuals and their actions, despite these points, underlines a deeply troubling self-righteous attitude on her part.
Here’s an analogy to further illustrate the point:
Imagine, post-WWII, a small group of unrepentant Nazis have fled to an isolated mountain path that is public land but seldom visited by locals. They're holding a prolonged vigil for the fallen Third Reich, claiming exclusive use of this public space.
Now, consider a local explorer who discovers a valuable artifact on this path. It's his find, but due to the Nazis' occupancy and threats of violence, he is unable to retrieve it.
Enter Alice (Aloy), a respected local mediator. Instead of confronting the Nazis (Old Shadow Carja Regime) about their unlawful occupation and enabling the explorer to claim his find, she decides to take the artifact and give it to the Nazis, believing this will help them in their plight. However, this artifact isn't Alice's to give, and there's a nearby city where the Nazis could have sought refuge and support.
Their current refugee status is a direct consequence of their refusal to let go of their allegiance to the defeated and morally bankrupt Nazi regime. Alice's decision not only fails to address the Nazis' wrongful occupancy but also undermines the rights of the explorer who discovered the artifact.
Lastly, painting Tolland as an evil person that deserved it due to things that happen after the quest are post-hoc justifications. At that moment, this is all the information we and Aloy have access to and she should be judged based on them.

TWBS Previous Next
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--- Hr3101m973S’s perspective---
---Tuesday, 31st of October, 2682 Terran Calendar---
---Southwestern Scotland---
I ride the speeder at an altitude of 307m over the rural landscape.
I have 158 other bodies making similar deliveries across Britain right now, as well as 29 in Ireland and 11 in Doggerland. Though, none of them have quite as spectacular a view as this one does so, for the moment, this is the body whose sensory feed I’m paying the most attention to.
I see a large herd of mammoths walking at the edge of the Galloway Forest.
Though it has a better view, the news I’m carrying with this body is just as grim as all the rest.
In hindsight, it’s probably a good thing that I was such a spendthrift with regard to my fleet of courier bodies… If I hadn’t been, if I’d selected abilities that let them do much more than deliver things, they may well have been requisitioned for military use… which, I suppose, they were anyway… but there’s a big difference between delivering notices on Earth and fighting on some distant planet!
Still, if sacrificing my replaceable bodies would save even a single irreplaceable life, I would definitely have done it.
The city comes into view.
Calling it a ‘city’ may be a little generous… it only has 2,507,963 inhabitants.
That may have been a respectable city in the 22nd Century but, for context, nearby Dumfries has 7,491,509 and Glasgow has 24,339,192!
Stranraer occupies a rare middleground between the historic hamlets that are allowed to exist in the countryside and the megalopoleis where around 98.32% of people on Earth live.
I land in the northern part of the town and step off my speeder.
I get some raised eyebrows as I walk from the landing pad to the residential home.
I don’t blame them!
Before the War, every single one of my courier bodies had a full suit of elastomer over their entire body, to make them seem more lifelike… Now, though, that’s considered a luxury and, so, this particular unit is walking around with its metal endoskeleton bare, bar its uniform.
The effect can be a little offputting… though, in truth, it may also have to do with the news they’ve inferred me to be delivering to some unlucky soul.
I cross the wall into the garden and begin walking up the steps, through the mosslawn shrouded by pinus sylvestris trees, to the house on top of the little hillock.
It takes me 12 seconds to reach the door from the gate… I can’t rush, I need to give this girl her due respect.
I rap on the door 3 times and hear the knocks echo through the cavernous hall behind.
A man opens the door.
I begin, speaking in the most popular local dialect of Lallans Scots that I know to be this man’s primary speech register “Greetings, Mr Baird. I don’t know if you remember me but…”
“I remember you! I’m organic, not daft! You’ve been here enough times already…” interrupts the residential care manager, his demeanour gruff and no-nonsense “…Come in, Hermes… You can wait in the kitchen while I go get her.”
I step into the building, passing below the lowest of 5 balcony walkways into an open space with a skylight ceiling, allowing in the natural light.
I let the man lead the way to a large kitchen.
He pulls out a chair for me.
“Thank you, Sir, but I believe I ought to remain standing to make this delivery.” I respond, politely.
“Suit yourself…” he shrugs before walking off, presumably to fetch the girl he knows I’m here for.
I wait several minutes before he reappears.
The girl he has in tow is the perfect match of the file photo (though a few years older). She is average height, 178cm, and has an average build. Her skin is pale, her eyes are emerald green and her hair is long, absurdly voluminous, curly and vividly red.
She looks to be in fine physical health and is making no pretence of illness or injury, though she is scowling at me.
The grey bearded man shuts the door, leaving me alone with the girl.
“Could you tell me your name, please?” I ask, already knowing.
“Esme Reid.” she answers, truculently.
“And your date of birth, Ms Reid?”
“31st of October, 2664. Come to give me a birthday present, have you(?)” she says, folding her arms, pursing her lips and looking away to the kitchen counter by the window.
“Thank you…” I say, reaching into my bag to withdraw a letter and a large holopad with a stylus attached.
I hold the letter out to her and say “This is your conscription notice, Ms Reid. Please sign receipt of it here.” indicating the holo.
Her eyes flick from the paper to the screen before she drily answers “I don’t suppose, if I don’t take that or don’t sign for it, that’d mean I couldn’t be drafted, would it(?!)”
I shake my head and respond “I’m afraid that no such loophole exists, Ms Reid… If you have a conscientious objection to fighting, you could request a nonmilitary national service. However, you would be asked to provide some proof of your conscientiousness and…”
“I’m no bleeding heart…” she says, snatching the letter from my hand, irritably “…I’ll sign for my bloody death warrant!” scrawling her name on the pad.
Without looking at the pad, I check the signature she provided against the one on file and find it a close enough match to proceed.
“Thank you, Ms Reid. Please report to your local recruitment office in Stranraer within 14 days for your physical and psychological fitness assessments. They’ll then interview you regarding your preferences for training and deployment and they’ll try to take those into account when assigning them.
“Great(!) Maybe if I can convince my evaluator that I’m cracked enough in the head, I won’t get sent off to die like my mam and dad did(!)” she quips, sarcastically.
“I don’t think you’ll have much luck with that strategy, Ms Reid… Sol’s government have had quite the interest in weeding out malingerers these past few years… I would put the odds of success below 1%.” 0.75619902%, actually, but that’s too many decimals for most biologicals’ patience(!)
She frowns up at me and demands “I’m being such a brat about this… Why are you still being so friendly!?”
I laugh “Ms Reid, though I strongly encourage you not to express the same demeanour to your drill instructors as you are with me, you are far from the worst person I’ve delivered this news to in even the last half hour!… Right now, I’ve got a draftee in Leeds who’s explaining a hairbrained scheme involving unethically cloning a replacement to fight in his stead, I’ve got one in Bristol who’s trying to beat up my body but only really succeeding in hurting herself, I’ve got one in Edinburgh that’s run away in an attempt not to be served… by comparison, a bit of scowling and sarcasm is rather tame!”
“Huh!… Guess I’m not quite the bad girl Ms. Larch always told me I was, am I(!)”
“It seems you shall simply have to work harder(!) I believe there is a leather jacket emporium in Stranraer that still does business…”
She smiles and laughs for the first time that I’ve seen.
That’s the real reason I don’t get touchy about the attitudes expressed to me by draftees: It makes my job so much easier when I soften the blow with good manners and good humour.
As unfair as it is that so many choose to shoot the messenger, it’s understandable when you consider the messages I carry.
“Ms Reid…” I start, seriously but softly “…if you truly do not wish to fight, you know there are alternatives? You can discuss them with your recruitment officer but…”
“I got no special skills, Hermes… Nothing I can do that an AI couldn’t do faster and better… The Merchant Navy’s basically as dangerous as the Navy Navy, just less armed… the Humanitarian corps has a waiting list so long that the War’d be over (one way or another) long before they got to the point of considering me… I know where I’m going… no use in fighting it…”
“Alright, Ms Reid… I wish you the best…” I say, turning to leave.
Mr Baird shows me out of the house.
Rather than walking back to the landingpad, to retrieve my bike, I walk the other way.
My bag is still heavy with conscription notices… it only makes sense to deliver all the ones in this town first…
---Oskar’s Perspective---
---Southern Doggerland---
The evening sun plays off of the calm waves of the North Sea.
It should be raining on a day like this…
This gorgeous weather is slapping me in the face and telling me to be happy, to be content…
I know the weather does not care for the happenings of people… I know that, if it rained everywhere and every day there was a funeral, the whole world would flood… I know this… and still… I hate this contrast between my grim, internal misery and the tranquil sun drenched beach where I stand, this autumn day… There’s barely even any snow on the grass…
When this War started, I was fourteen and had two loving parents…
My Father was too old to serve, at 51…
At 37, my mother was not…
Yet, it’s not my mother’s funeral I am attending right now. That was two months ago.
No… the strongly built 55 year old man, dressed in a long white robe and clutching a Norse langsverð, despite having been a fishfarmer and not a warrior, is my father… Lars ‘Walker’ Taylor.
His eyes are closed and he lies within a wooden boat, around 80cm wide and 3m long.
This boat was never meant to touch the water… I bought it from a supplier in Bankland that specialises in funerary boats for Doggerland’s Forn Siðr community.
I already recited a poem… there’s nothing else for me to do until the singer begins.
I’m not listening to the Goði prattle on about Valhalla and Ragnarök… I’m just looking at my father’s face… oscillating between hating him for doing this to me and hating myself for doing this to him.
The sermon concludes and a blonde woman, like everyone else present, dressed in snow white funeral clothes, steps forward.
One of the three men behind her brings his bow to the three strings of his tagelharpa, another raises a flute carved out of a cow’s leg bone to his lips, the last begins banging out a slow beat on his drum.
The band would definitely be larger if so many of the Hof’s musicians hadn’t been called up to serve.
The men begin playing a mournful tune and the woman begins a wailing, melismatic melody, not in English, the first language of most here, not in my father’s native Frisian, not even in New Norse, the liturgical language of his faith…
She sings in a strain of Norwegian that was spoken centuries ago, when there were barely any Forn Siðr practitioners living.
mf♫ Eg songane søkte
Eg songane sende
Då den djupaste brunni
Gav meg dråpar så ramme
Av Valfaders pant♫mf
I have a final part to play in this ritual.
The Goði picks up the torch and lights it against a flaming brazier before beckoning to me.
I step forward from the small crowd.
In contrast to most, whose clothes are pristine white robes and tunics and such, I wear the same simple white suit that I wore two months ago.
I may be a nonbeliever but no one at my father’s Hof challenged the idea that I was the most fitting person to perform this last rite for him.
I take the torch from the man and walk to my father’s side.
I hesitate before I touch it to one of the mounds of high energy, smokeless fuel that surround his body… but only for a moment…
The flame quickly takes and, before the current verse of the song is even finished, the entire boat is engulfed in fire.
I toss the torch in and step back from the conflagration.
Minutes pass as I watch the inferno consume the entire pyre.
I barely notice the music stop.
I barely notice the crowd thinning as people leave.
I just watch as the man’s existence is wiped from the Earth.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to do now, brother?” asks a voice from beside me.
Without looking at the Pagan cleric, I dully answer “I have.”
“And, what is that… if I may ask?”
“My birthday’s in January… I’ll be drafted… but I don’t have to wait… I’m going to go to the recruitment office and request an early start to my training… by the time it’s done, I’ll be 18 and they’ll be legally able to deploy me.”
“I… see… that’s certainly… an option… Have you thought about…?”
“I haven’t, Tormund. This is what I’m doing.” I state, still looking at the blaze.
“I see… I wish you well then, Oskar…” Tormund says, sincerely.
---
Support me on Patreon for to access the entire series, now.
---
TWBS Previous Next

Why does my drinking Bud Light offend you?
May 30, 2023 4:39 pm • Last Updated: May 30, 2023 4:41 pm
By Mike DiMauro
Day Assistant Sports Editor
[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
News item: Anthony Bass, a pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays, shared a video Monday via Instagram endorsing an anti-LGBTQ boycott of brands such as Target and Bud Light.
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"Here's the reason biblically why I believe Christians have gotta be boycotting Target, Bud Light, and any other corporation that's pushing the things they're pushing,” Bass said. “I think a lot of people make this into a political issue, or they say, 'Oh, what's the big deal?’
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“This is evil, this is demonic, we won't stand for it, we're not going to go to the stores anymore and we're not going to give you our money.”
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It would be impolite to wish that Mr. Bass, who throws a ball for a living, blows out his elbow. Perhaps then he could simply blow it out his tailpipe.
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Because I’ve grown tired of sanctimonious and hypocritical moral outrage over what Target and Bud Light are “pushing,” while it’s permissible that Bass and his ilk get to “push” their beliefs on the rest of us.
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Example: In the last two months or so, I’ve been questioned a half dozen times in public as to why I’m drinking Bud Light. Seems people like Bass have objected to Anheuser Busch’s marketing partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Their boycott of Bud Light has led to a decrease in sales both locally and nationally. (Local bar and restaurant owners say Bud Light sales are down almost 30 percent.)
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It is their right, of course, to boycott the product. I’m just curious as to why what I’m drinking is their business. I drink Bud Light because I like it. And I’m still drinking Bud Light because I will not marginalize people based on gender, race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. I’m respectful enough to support someone else’s desire to evolve into another gender. And I’m not stupid enough to believe that my decision to drink Bud Light changes who I am or what I stand for in any possible way.
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But I wonder why it’s so important for people — and the questions to me haven’t all come from men — to announce their disdain for a bottle of beer, tacitly implying their sexuality is “normal.” Remember this one and write it down: If you are truly comfortable with who you are, you needn’t announce anything to anyone.
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And yet to further illustrate how screwed up this country really is, there’s this: Anheuser-Busch hasn’t merely been accused of alienating its traditional customer base with the partnership, but some LGBTQ+ campaigners have also criticized the company for not defending its ties with Mulvaney.
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Amid all the finger-pointing and fear-fanning, the truth hides in the corner, too scared to emerge. The truth is that we are supposed to think critically, weigh evidence from both sides and then make up our own minds. Instead, we’ve become a country hell bent on legislating whatever cause we think is right and just, while burying the other side from all consideration.
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It’s political tribalism. All or nothing. One side or the other. If you’re not in agreement with every morsel of the transgender movement, you are a snarling, hating, infidel. If you’re not in total agreement with Anthony Bass and his beliefs, you’re going to wither in hell.
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But what if — and hold on to your ascots here — two conflicting positions can still be true? Example: What if I support Bud Light’s decision to use a transgender influencer, but also believe that transgender high school athletes belong in their own division?
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I disagree with the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference’s policy complying with a state law that requires all high school students be treated according to their gender identity. We should consider a sports-centric law that acknowledges sports' unique challenges and accommodates the physical component for success that exists virtually nowhere else in society.
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Sex discrimination in education, health care, housing and financial credit have no place in this country. But we must — must — realize and accept that sports require a physical component to succeed that calls for different guidelines.
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Put it this way: Applying to a school or for health care, housing or financial credit requires no physical component to succeed. Sports require speed, strength and agility and do not fit under the same umbrella. And yet sports are routinely shoved into the same arguments about unfair treatment. Injustices get piled on for rhetorical usefulness, even though they're not applicable.
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The male born composition has inherent physical advantages, rare exceptions noted. But in the aggregate, there are physiologic differences between biological males and females. I don’t believe writing that makes me transphobic. We should respect a person’s pronoun of choice. But that doesn't mean we have to blindly agree with claims that are not supported by science.
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Yet that appears to be the new end game in this country. Blind agreement. Their side or yours. And here I sit, sipping my Bud Light, trying to figure out why so many of us act like the last three letters of Anthony Bass’ last name.
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This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro
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Comment threads are monitored for 48 hours after publication and then closed.
READER COMMENTS
Philip BroseJune 1, 2023 at 16:30Report
Robin great points the right can’t even keep track on who to be mad at. Why are they so sensitive? I here Chick-fil-a is evil now for they “ensuring equal access,” “valuing differences,” and “creating a culture of belonging,” under the title, “Committed to being Better at Together.” what monsters!
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Philip BroseJune 1, 2023 at 16:27Report
William Peter the guidance councilor?
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Joseph B De La CruzJune 1, 2023 at 15:15Report
This article pretty much sums up exactly how I feel about the situation. Bud Light basically sent someone a can with her image celebrating a milestone. The fact it turned the beer into enemy number one doesn’t surprise me considering the vitriol that has become commonplace in our country. I have had plenty of private messages regarding a video I posted supporting a beer, and more importantly a human being. Most have been vehemently against my support of both and relish the chance to send me a screen shot of Bud Lights stock on a daily basis with a “Go woke, Go broke” ending. I believe much of the vitriol comes from news and talk radio which is why Spotify now fills my vehicle with music instead of talk. I ask everyone to limit their news intake to 30 minutes per day regardless of your party affiliation to center your life. Sometimes my radio will land on a “news station”, and I can feel my blood pressure rise as the most divisive topic of the day is being discussed with a majority of the facts not being considered. I am not recommending folks to ignore what’s happening in our world, but would point out that our country has survived many decades without the need for “up to the second” news reports. Most of the things we worry about will never happen and it seems our country is living in a constant state of fear which is certainly to blame for the vitriol. There will never be a point where everyone in the country will collectively say we are all happy with everything, but I still have a deep believe that with constructive conversations and true empathy we can get us close. When I get my boat in the water I would love to have an ice cold Bud Light while listening to my relaxing boat playlist, and of course talking with my favorite sports writer. That’s an invitation Mike. Great article.
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Robin DaudaJune 1, 2023 at 13:41Report
“Bud Light sales are down between 26% and 35% nationwide additionally Budweiser and other AB brands (Michelob Ultra, Busch Light and Natural Light to name a few) have also taken a hit of around 11%.”
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All the more reason to explain what set this off. Completely unhinged.
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“My take, buy Coors stock now”
And that statement reinforces my point since Coors has been a decades long supporter of LGBT rights probably the biggest supporter (it all began with a workegay alliance boycott ironically… or not)
“Coors Light has been a sponsor of The Center and Denver PrideFest for decades,” says Rex Fuller, CEO of The Center on Colfax. “The work we have been able to do at The Center over the last four decades would not be possible without this support and we are grateful for it.”
Beyond supporting Denver PrideFest, Molson Coors has a distinguished history of supporting LGBTQ communities across the country, with significant support for organizations such as Human Rights Campaign (HRC), Matthew Shepard Foundation, National Amateur Gay Athletics Association of America, National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, LGBT Victory Institute, Out & Equal, and One Colorado.
In addition to these partners, Molson Coors works with local LGBTQ organizations in key communities through its Tap Into Change program. Annually, the summer program donates more than $100,000 to these organizations with a consistent growth in impact each year. Events take place in each city to help raise additional funds, awareness, and support for the missions of these local organizations. Over the past 10 years, Tap Into Change has raised nearly $600,000 for local LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS nonprofits.
https://denverpride.org/coors-light-supports-the-lgbtq-community/
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This is even though like 2006, 2010 and 2014 they had to go through boycotts for this. And they did shrink back in response, but also came right back and didn’t move backwards for long.
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And what will I do?
Continue drinking Corona because I drink what I drink.
It’s damn near impossible to do a successful boycott long term. The web of corporate connections means when you think you’re hurting one, it’s actually benefitting another one connected to it.
The beverage brand that owns Budweiser, Corona, and Stella Artois, is suing US beer-maker Constellation Brands for using the Corona brand name in a hard seltzer, according to a lawsuit filed Monday.
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Beverage giant Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) acquired Corona’s parent company, Grupo Modelo, in 2013, but US antitrust regulators required it to sell the company’s US-based business to Constellation. AB InBev retained rights to the products in other markets, and the deal gave Constellation the rights to produce Corona and other Modelo brands in the US.
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William PeterJune 1, 2023 at 13:36Report
The virtue signalers didn’t like my harmless comment. I guess being offended by an opposing view is reason enough to silence someone in 2023
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Richard GoldenJune 1, 2023 at 12:57Report
Robin- not certain this article nor all the comments will move the needle. Bud Light sales are down between 26% and 35% nationwide additionally Budweiser and other AB brands (Michelob Ultra, Busch Light and Natural Light to name a few) have also taken a hit of around 11%. Bud Light has been the best selling beer in the USA for over 20 years and the normal volume of sales is 27 million barrels a year or 1134 million gallons. A 30% drop equals a loss of 340 million gallons a year. My take, buy Coors stock now
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Chris JawakaJune 1, 2023 at 10:12Report
People are allowed to drink or not drink whatever beer they want and for whatever reason they choose. End of story.
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Robin DaudaJune 1, 2023 at 09:05Report
Do people realize that Bud Light sent a pack of specially made cans with the person’s face on it and did a minute long or so bit released on like TicTok? It wasn’t some big nationwide PR campaign yet it rubbed someone the wrong way (or so they would like us to think) and it snowballed into this.
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I don’t ever want to hear about people calling “the libs” snowflakes or use their center liberal stances as a weakness. These champions of “conservatives” are gullible whiny babies.
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I watched in real time a bunch of idiots blow something up out of nothing and then saw them flocking to the internet people with their influencer pages and podcasts and publications where immediately they were being hawked “anti-woke” beer and all these other wares, often made by the same places they are boycotting for double the price.
There is a whole market opening up to people that will only get their businesses off the ground (temporarily for a quick cash grab) by using these outrage tactics and capitalizing (literally) on impaired brains that as Mr. DiMauro correctly observed “Blind agreement. Their side or yours”
Bless your little void of empathy and common sense hearts. Don’t spend all your money in one place now, spread the wealth to these people selling you overpriced junk.
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Paul LevasseurJune 1, 2023 at 07:47Report
Mike is discussing one of this election cycles right wing culture war hot spots.
If you can’t get elected because of your governing skills you’re going to have to try to get elected by getting people angry and hateful. The right wing loves doing that. It’s their bread and butter.
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TOM DONNEEJune 1, 2023 at 06:46Report
Preaching hate and preaching tolerance ARE NOT the same Evan
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DANIEL STORMSJune 1, 2023 at 05:56Report
I always liked this formulation: “In the first place, what makes it any of you business? And in the second place, my reasons for saying yea to [whatever it is that offends you] are at least as valid (and maybe more so) than yours for nay. And in the third place, what makes it any of your sodding business in the first place?” I agree wholeheartedly with your plea for reason and tolerance. Not to seem argumentative but rather to add information to the discussion, though, you might be interested in this blog post from a biologist about the supposed physiologic advantages a trans man or woman has over a cis athelete: https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2023/05/31/we-hunted-the-rabbit/
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Evan AndriopolousJune 1, 2023 at 03:10Report
For me… Bud Light as a “beer” sucks. I would rather support local breweries that provide far better beers. As far as this column… as far as AB selecting this influencer in their campaign I have no opinion on it or that person. Up to each to decide for themselves.
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Regarding this column actually Mike what you are writing is basically the same as the boycott and the changes in attitudes (political divide) of the country. Often used by politicians on BOTH sides of the aisle screaming to be open, defending one´s right to choose, freedom of speech etc.. and this is the most important part..”unless it does not validate their opinion or view”. This is exactly what you are writing. So if someone elects to boycott something and we know the WOKE police and Leftists enjoy not only condemning opposing viewpoints to the point of boycotting, attacking employers for the “views” of their employees etc… and demanding they be removed from the position their are in. So if someone boycotts something let them… I would ask you… why does it offend you that others are using their constitutional right by boycotting (freedom of speech). I always respect other´s opinions and even when we do not agree. Sadly we live in a world where people are afraid to speak up due to the potential ramifications. None of us will always agree and I know the powers to be are trying to “force” us to all be uniform in our opinions which is sad. And btw Bud Light is terrible anyway… How about you focus on sports.
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Benoit BenoitMay 31, 2023 at 20:12Report
Ironic you drink because you like it but will continue to drink it because “ I will not marginalize people based on gender, race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.” Not just because you like it.
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William PeterMay 31, 2023 at 17:46Report
This comment has been removed for violating The Day’s commenting policy.
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JAY DEMPSEYMay 31, 2023 at 16:53Report
TY Mike….. I drink Bud Light most all the time unless in Ireland…and support Levine Distributors in our area and my friends that work there. I think the cancel culture is terrible whatever your political party of choice is. Very sad that social media has done this to us. I have good friends that I can no longer talk politics with because of the “great divide” that enriches social media giants.
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ROBERT WARNERMay 31, 2023 at 16:45Report
I suppose a similar question could be asked, “Why does a person wearing a MAGA hat bother some people?”
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David NowakowskiMay 31, 2023 at 14:30Report
great column, Mike. I’d like to think there are far more folks who see this subject and all its nuances the way you do…but you are probably right again in saying that it is tough to go against your chosen tribe on any component, regardless of how you might actually feel. thanks again!
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Andrew RogersonMay 31, 2023 at 13:33Report
Mike DiMauro – well said sir, on all counts.
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Lynn YoungMay 31, 2023 at 13:28Report
Drink what you like. Be who you are. Live and let live.
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Richard GoldenMay 31, 2023 at 12:36Report
Light Beer is like Sex on the Beach….****ing near water.
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Paul NUNESMay 31, 2023 at 11:44Report
Does anyone remember the first light beer and the commercial featuring a slice of bread?
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THOMAS MORIARTYMay 31, 2023 at 11:05Report
Richard, must have been some other brand light. Bud Light? It was probably 10 years ago. But he could have been messing with me.
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Richard GoldenMay 31, 2023 at 10:17Report
Malcolm- The moral of the story is; if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
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Richard GoldenMay 31, 2023 at 10:16Report
Thomas- as far as I knew and as far as I can tell Guinness is the most popular beer in Ireland holding a full 25% of the market share. Bud Light does not even show up in the top ten (https://www.beer100.com/best-selling-beers-ireland/) I think the guy was pulling your leg. Bud Light only became available in Ireland in 2020.
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Malcolm JulesMay 31, 2023 at 09:32Report
A corporation decided to target one of their products to a specific community and failed….end of story.
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Margaret KliseMay 31, 2023 at 09:12Report
Agree/agree. Good article, Mike.
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SUSAN HOTCHKISSMay 31, 2023 at 09:06Report
I always enjoy Mike’s opinion pieces. In total agreement about the transgender athlete issue.
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THOMAS MORIARTYMay 31, 2023 at 09:00Report
Tom, hope all is well with your daughter.
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THOMAS MORIARTYMay 31, 2023 at 08:57Report
A Bud Light story: Several years ago while in Ireland my son and I toured the Guinness brewery. Of course there’s a pub on the top floor and while getting a pint of Guinness the bar I notice several taps Bud Light. I asked the bartender “why in God’s name are you serving THAT stuff in here?” He replied that it’s the best selling beer in Ireland. Go figue!
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THOMAS MORIARTYMay 31, 2023 at 08:51Report
Good column Mike. These anti “woke” zealots claim to support democracy but would be no different from the Taliban if they had their way.
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Richard GoldenMay 31, 2023 at 08:42Report
All this talk of beer makes me thirsty…but I have found that drinking beer has become an unwelcome undertaking. No beer allowed at the beach, nor while night fishing in Waterford, nor surf fishing at Avery Point, nor at any state boat launch, nor is state parks- try walking down the street with a cold one….
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Chris JawakaMay 31, 2023 at 08:08Report
IMO The left loves their cancel culture but gets all grumpy when the right does the same. Hey it can go both ways. That said I really don’t care about the Bud thing. Its not like they sold beer with its face on it.
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Matther TookerMay 31, 2023 at 07:35Report
Thoughtful piece as always Mike. Perhaps the best offset for the 30% decrease in Bud Light sales would be a 30% increase in church attendance. I am betting that won’t happen. (Matt Tooker)
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KEITH J. ROBBINSMay 31, 2023 at 06:11Report
You drinking Bud-Lite does not offend me, although it is a horrible beer. What is my concern is a guy using the ladies room that my nieces use!
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TOM DONNEEMay 31, 2023 at 05:55Report
Agree Phil. Well done Mike!! Waiting for my daughter to come out of surgery. Then we’ll stop for a cold one, think I’ll make it a Bud Lite!!!
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Philip BroseMay 30, 2023 at 16:59Report
Mr. DiMauro is always thoughtful and intelligent. The best writer at the day. Give the guy a raise.

First off, we’ve been together for four years so our relationship technically constitutes as gr00ming. However, we’ve had a very strong relationship and I’ve always seen him as being extremely respectful. A few months ago I got into an amazing university out of state and he told me he would not move out of state and that I should attend an in-state university.
After a lot of consideration I chose my education and accepted the out of state school. Yesterday I sent him a long break up text stating that I have to go and that I can’t pass a once in a lifetime opportunity. He shockingly said that he’d be willing to move with me.
I’m happy but I was also kind of excited to be single? I’ve never felt independence. I’ve been dating someone since 14. I hang out with him all of the time - I don’t really have hobbies because all of my time is spent with him. That’s not really his fault and could most likely change if I spoke with him about it.
I just feel slightly restricted I suppose. I don’t have parents so I feel like he took on that role. If I go out at night I have to ask him. He basically always says yes but it comes with the list of how to be safe each time. I lovee going to late night cafes with my friends and he hates it. He says it’s dangerous but i’m typically with around 5 girls when i’m there so to me it’s fine. He often asks for me to be home by 10.
Once I went to a cafe with my friends and after we walked around - it was busy and not dangerous. He watched me on life 360 and saw that and commented on how it’s unsafe. I went to watch the sunset with friends on the beach and it was unsafe to him. He told me to leave.
I know he’s caring for my well-being but at the same time I can care for myself? I’m not an idiot. I bring pepper spray and i’m always with a big group. I’ve never been to a real party, and in college I wanted to at least go to one. I feel like he won’t even let me. I feel like he won’t let me do anything if the sun is SLIGHTLY down.
My university recommends for freshman to not bring a car. I said I probably won’t. He said if I don’t bring my car then I can’t do anything after 6pm????? Maybe that comment is what sent me into this spiral. My university has excellent transportation that specifically caters to the students and provides safety precautions for those traveling late at night. Again, i’d have friends with me and i’d have pepper spray.
He has so many great qualities but I can’t help but feel restricted. I’m not doing crazy things. All i’m trying to do is walk around downtown at night or watch a sunset and I look down and see a bunch of unsafe unsafe unsafe come home texts. Men HAVE harassed me many times and i’ve been put in a lot of scary situations so I don’t fully blame him, I just wish he’d be a little less strict. I also kind of needed a parent. He basically saved my life because I was a poor no parent kid with no prospects and he helped me become a high achieving student that got a full ride to a great university.
ALSO, if he moves then we’re basically married. Cant really break up with someone if they move across the country and leave everything behind to be with you. Am I ready for that commitment? I don’t know! I don’t really know myself! Maybe I want to be single and I want to try new things but it feels like i’m already married with kids or something. I’m likely being dramatic. I know I have something great but wouldn’t it be nice to explore while I still can.
TL;DR: My boyfriend worries about me so much to the point where it’s making me second guess