He did it.
Trump as a garbage man at the Greenbay Wisconsin airport, and you're blackpilling?! pic.twitter.com/ZMXcEO61bE

— 9mmSMG (@9mm_smg) October 30, 2024

Just the memes:

Full post:

This week, actress Anna Kendrick went viral for saying that she wouldn't get involved with any man who hadn't been to therapy. Twitter promptly rushed to dunk on her, pointing out that men who go to therapy are, well…this:

Anna Kendrick's story is a bit more complicated than her randomly deciding to rule out men who haven't seen a therapist, which I know sounds enticingly cringe to the cohort of people whose worst nightmare is an "affluent white female liberal" or AWFL (I just found out about this today, I'm obsessed.) Apparently, for the past seven years she was in a relationship (privately, with an anonymous ex-boyfriend) who was emotionally abusive. But—and this feels almost too on the nose—she also said that her couple's therapist sided with her abusive ex through most of their sessions, up until the end of their relationship.

Anna Kendrick is also not alone in this belief. I've seen countless tweets and posts saying that only when someone has "fully healed" and been in therapy for some period of time (not clear how long) are they worthy of love. As someone with OCD, which I'll always have: lol.

I get where the fiercely pro-therapy contingent is coming from. When I was growing up in the '90s, therapy was kind of taboo. It was assumed that the only people who saw a therapist had serious mental illness. I was around seven when my parents took me to a therapist (the impetus was some uncharacteristically bad behavior on my part—I TP'ed the bathroom at a restaurant, which they saw was a cry for help) and I remember telling everyone at school that I had to go to the "eye doctor" instead. Arguably this made me seem even weirder—what could possibly be so wrong with my eyes that I needed to see a doctor for them every week? But a psychologist seemed much more embarrassing. When my mom told me it was nothing to be ashamed of, I said, "The word psycho is literally in the name."

Like many relics of the '90s—prioritization of carbs over fats, glorification of small butts, Trump being a funny and unthreatening media personality—we have overcorrected. Therapy went from being a shameful secret to a requirement for full humanhood, at least for a sizable chunk of people. This trend began with some normal and probably necessary shifts in perception. We started telling teenagers, a notoriously self-conscious and mentally ill cohort, that it was okay to talk about mental health. Celebrities began opening up about their anxiety and depression. OB-GYNs started talking to moms about the warning signs of postpartum depression. You could argue that this version of "mental health awareness" was overly sanitized and only accepting of "cute" mental illnesses (I've seen how people react to some of the more taboo OCD intrusive thoughts, or personality disorders, and it's not very accepting!) But in general, this shift was needed. People thinking too positively about therapy isn't as big of a problem as other people—especially young men—being afraid to seek help.

But there were, of course, downsides. One thing I noticed was the potential for dangerous social contagion as we "raised awareness" about various mental health struggles. When I watched Degrassi in the mid-2000s, there was a very dramatic plotline where a scene-girl character grapples with self-harm. She was hardly the only representation of this stereotype, but somewhere along the line, being "emo" or "scene" became synonymous with cutting yourself. All of the "raising awareness" seemed to create awareness in kids who otherwise wouldn't have considered doing this. At my school, there was a trend among the more "alt" girls to lightly imply self harm by hiding their arms in particularly conspicuous ways. Most if not all of these girls were not actually cutting. I have to ask: was it actually beneficial that Degrassi and similar teen media had this plotline? What was the ratio of "kids who got help for cutting" versus "kids who started cutting because they saw it, or were friends with someone who saw it?" I don't know! But it's worth examining.

The other downside, of course, is the fact that as therapy became more acceptable for people as part of "self care" instead of treatment for a specific diagnosed mental illness, it attracted people who previously would have just yapped the ears off their hair stylist or bartender. And the "therapy man" who accuses you of gaslamping for asking him not to text his ex-girlfriend is a prime example.

As you might be aware from reading my other articles, I have diagnosed OCD, which wasn't diagnosed until about seven years after I started experiencing symptoms. This was in part due to the fact that it took me that long to see a behavioral therapist. Perhaps I'm a little biased, because straightforward CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) especially paired with ERP (exposure response therapy) is the only thing that's ever helped my OCD, including medication (which did nothing, unless you count s*x drive suppression as "something.") Perhaps it's a radical (or, dare I say, "crazy") belief, but I actually don't think therapy is that helpful if it's not behavioral, or otherwise formulated to target symptoms of a particular mental illness. I don't see a lot of benefit to therapy that basically exists as a series of long expensive conversations.

I've known people who were very pro-therapy despite not actually suffering from a mental illness, who treated therapy like a regular part of self-care, akin to haircuts or workouts, and while I'm happy they aren't ashamed to seek therapy, they also (and I'm speaking generally here) tend to use therapy as an outlet for venting about their various nemeses, and concluding that they are the victims of every social interaction.

I say this as someone who is a bit narcissistic—there's something extremely enticing about a narrative in which you are the innocent party whose only fault was being too nice to people who wronged you. As Trump would say, "I've been treated so unfairly." I don't think Trump and I are alone in this. There's a reason that lots of people will talk about how they "always date buttholes" or "always date crazy girls." Usually, when someone says this, it's clear that they are, in fact, the problem. But I think this sort of subclinical pop therapy—which I'll call "green juice therapy"—is extremely tempting to people who are vaguely dissatisfied with their life, but who would probably derive more benefit from tedious manual labor in Siberia than continually examining their relationships on a CB2 couch in San Francisco.

Of course, if someone doesn't have a mental illness, they shouldn't be barred from seeking therapy. Perhaps therapy can help people become better communicators and develop more confidence, even if they aren't mentally ill. I know several couples who successfully attended, and graduated from, couple's counseling for some minor issues in their marriages. But whenever I hear someone talking about how therapy has worked out so well for them, and yet they have been in therapy for multiple years with no actual mental illness or any plan to stop—I'm sorry, I just don't think that's a success story for anyone except the therapist's new beach home. This dynamic creates a very tempting niche to fill. If you're a therapist, it's a pretty sweet gig to "treat" a patient who isn't actually sick, who just wants to talk about all the people who have wronged them and have you nod along with their narrative. And what's even more tempting isn't just to treat this type of person, but to keep this sweet deal going indefinitely.

It's also worth noting that there are many people who count as "therapists" who are not psychologists. This can be fine; one of my best CBT therapists was actually a clinical social worker. But I also think that all the various paths to becoming a "therapist" attract certain grifters who might otherwise become a life coach or dog chiropractor.

This type of therapy also enables the aforementioned "therapy men." No person better exemplifies the idea of a manipulative therapy man than Jonah Hill, who went viral after a breakup with his girlfriend because of the following texts he sent, using what many refer to as "therapy speak" to basically tell her he didn't feel comfortable with her posting photos of her in her swimsuit, as a professional surfer:

I'm not going to write about Jonah Hill very much, because he's hardly the only person to do this. It seems that if you sprinkle words like "boundaries" or "vulnerability" or "trauma response" into your comments, you can kind of justify anything. Take, for example, the viral tweet (now deleted, and I can't find it) about how autism and missed social cues are responsible for repeated infidelity (look, if you can find an neurodivergent guy who has enough rizz to pull multiple hoes by accident, I'll be very impressed.)

Because these buzzwords often mean nothing, they can be interpreted however anyone wants. I saw an interesting conflict go down on Twitter when someone referred to the trauma caused by being cheated on, and they were told that this couldn't be traumatic for anyone because "nobody owns another person's sexuality." Major undertones of "I don't want something to be traumatic if it conflicts with my particular beliefs about what is and isn't acceptable." All over the Internet, it seems like trauma is selectively used as a trump card to condemn or excuse behavior, usually behavior in which you have some kind of invested interest. I can't say how often this happens in real life, though, because I think the people who employ this tactic are rarely spotted outside. But I did have a coworker who described "finally escaping a toxic relationship with the help of my therapist," only to, after a few drinks, refer to her ex-boyfriend as having broken up with her.

But anyway, this is how you get people who, with the help of a particularly compliant therapist, start leveraging "therapy speak" to excuse all their bad behavior and condemn bad behavior from people they don't like. One minute it's, "I need to seek therapy for my self-esteem," and the next minute it's, "Babe, my love language is receiving feet pics from OnlyFans girls."

I actually think this type of self-indulgent therapy is more popular with women than men, even though men get teased for it. That's not because women are more narcissistic or manipulative, but rather because therapy is more normalized among women in general so there's a larger sample size of women who seek therapy at all. As a result of this reality, men who behave this way may stand out more. But I do think that certain men discover this secret code language of boundaries and trauma responses, and use it to their advantage.

But where does that leave us—people who (at least I hope) care about mental health, including that of men? Therapy, even if you include the green juice stuff, is still a net positive overall. Some men view the ridicule of "manipulative therapy men" as ridicule of all men who go to therapy, and that's certainly not right. If you forced every man in the world to see a therapist for a few weeks, things would probably be better for men overall, and not because they got better at manipulating women into doing threesomes. But therapy is not mandated (at least not yet- just wait until Komrade Kamala takes office and forces men into therapy while she does transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison!!) so it feels especially silly to make blanket statements about how therapy "helps men become abusive," as many jeered at Anna Kendrick this week.

The answer to the manipulative therapy men isn't to condemn therapy, or to say that men who seek it are inherently worse. Some certainly are, but many others are doing the right thing for their mental health. And honestly, I don't even think that consumers of green juice therapy are necessarily doing anything wrong, even when they emerge from therapy with insufferable victimhood narratives. If anything, the therapist is to blame. The problem is that a lot of these people literally just need a group of friends, or even one friend. But the thing about friends is that if they're actually decent, they'll tell you when you're being an butthole. Ironically, sometimes people like this will cut friends out of their life if their therapist, who suspiciously agrees with everything they say, believes their friend is "toxic." And the self-perpetuating cycle continues.

There isn't much to do about this problem, but I don't think shaming men for seeking therapy is the way to go (yes, I joked about it, but I did clarify in my next tweet that I was joking! Hopefully that counts!) And anyway, even if I wasn't just joking about men who get therapy, humor is literally my trauma response and criticizing me for it is violating a really important boundary.

ITS ONLY BEEN 30 MINUTES

!chuds Lol

A University of Michigan student who is from China and not a U.S. citizen allegedly voted Sunday in Ann Arbor and is being charged with two crimes, six days before a pivotal presidential election.

The filing of the charges was revealed Wednesday in a statement from Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson's office and the Washtenaw County Prosecutor's office. The press release didn't identify the student but described him only as "a non-U.S. citizen."

The 19-year-old individual from China was legally present in the United States but not a citizen, which meant he couldn't legally cast a ballot, according to information from the Michigan Secretary of State's office. He registered to vote on Sunday using his UM student identification and other documentation establishing residency in Ann Arbor, he signed a document identifying himself as a U.S. citizen and his ballot was entered into a tabulator, according to the Secretary of State's office.

The ballot was cast at an early voting site at the University of Michigan Museum of Art on State Street, according to the Ann Arbor city administrator.

Later, the UM student voter contacted the local clerk's office, asking if he could somehow get his ballot back, according to Benson's office.

The student's ballot is expected to count in the upcoming election — although it was illegally cast — because there is no way for election officials to retrieve it once it's been put through a tabulator, according to two sources familiar with Michigan election laws. The setup is meant to prevent ballots from being tracked back to an individual voter.

"We're grateful for the swift action of the clerk in this case, who took the appropriate steps and referred the case to law enforcement," said a joint statement from the offices of Benson and Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit. "We are also grateful to law enforcement for swiftly and thoroughly investigating this case.

"Anyone who attempts to vote illegally faces significant consequences, including but not limited to arrest and prosecution."

The person is being charged with perjury — making a false statement on an affidavit for the purpose of securing voter registration — and being an unauthorized elector who attempted to vote. The latter allegation is a felony punishable by up to four years behind bars and a fine of up to $2,000, according to Michigan law. The standard penalty for perjury in Michigan is 15 years in prison, but it's unclear what it would be in this case involving lying on an application to vote.

A UM police detective gave a swear-to on a law enforcement investigation Wednesday morning before 15th District Court Magistrate Tamara Garwood for two election charges against the student sought by Savit, court administrator Shryl Samborn said.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the student had not yet been arraigned. The student is being represented by UM Student Legal Services, Samborn said.

UM spokeswoman Colleen Mastony directed questions Wednesday to Benson's and Slavit's offices.

In a message to the Ann Arbor City Council members, obtained by The Detroit News, Milton Dohoney Jr., the city's administrator, said there had been an instance of "potential voter fraud in Ann Arbor" involving a University of Michigan student who's a green card holder.

"Through a series of actions, the student was apparently able to register, receive a ballot and cast a vote," Dohoney wrote in an email Monday. "Based upon the scenario that we're hearing this morning, the student was fully aware of what he was doing, and that it was not legal."

Dohoney acknowledged in the email that the story might get "picked up by the regional or perhaps national media."

'An extremely isolate and rare event'

Under a 2018 ballot proposal that voters approved with 67% support, people can register to vote in Michigan up to and including on Election Day. Proof of residency for voting can include a driver's license, state identification card, a utility bill or university records, according to the Secretary of State's website.

The statement from the Secretary of State's website and the Washtenaw County Prosecutor's office described voting by non-U.S. citizens as "an extremely isolated and rare event."

"Let this much be clear: Voting records are public," the statement added. "Any noncitizen who attempts to vote fraudulently in Michigan will be exposing themselves to great risk and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, the state's top law enforcement official, said her office had launched an independent, parallel investigation into the voter fraud allegation in Ann Arbor.

"It is the responsibility of each and every resident of this state and nation to adhere to the law, and Michigan election law makes clear that non-citizens cannot vote in our elections," Nessel said. "We take all allegations of voter fraud extremely seriously, and the public should expect nothing less."

In 2012, during a legal fight over Michigan's voter application requiring individuals to attest their U.S. citizenship under penalty of perjury, then-Republican Secretary of State Ruth Johnson's office said there was evidence of two instances in which Canadians had voted in Michigan elections using state-issued driver's licenses to register.

The presidential race in Michigan between Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to be close. Some experts have predicted it could come down to tens of thousands of votes.

In 2020, Trump lost Michigan to Democrat Joe Biden by 154,188 votes or about 3 percentage points, 48%-51%. After that election, the Republican maintained false or unproven claims that widespread voter fraud influenced the outcome in Michigan. However, bipartisan canvassing boards, a series of court rulings and an investigation by the GOP-controlled state Senate Oversight Committee all upheld the result.

But the accusations about the 2020 election have helped to prompt heightened scrutiny over the 2024 vote.

In recent weeks, Elon Musk, a prominent Trump supporter who has been described as the world's richest man, has been posting on social media about Michigan's voter rolls. And during a rally in Oakland County on Saturday, Trump called Michigan's early voting system "ridiculous" and voiced support for people having "prove" they were U.S. citizens before casting ballots.

"There's bad stuff going on," Trump contended.

Michigan voters approved a ballot proposal in 2022 to provide a right in the state Constitution for at least nine days of early, in-person voting. That amendment passed with 60% support.

The Michigan Secretary of State's website says in every state, "only U.S. citizens are eligible to register to vote or cast a ballot in any state or federal election."

"There is no evidence to support claims that large numbers of noncitizens have voted in past elections or are registering to vote in 2024," the Secretary of State's website says.

this just hours after its declared that won that state

https://rdrama.net/h/kamala/post/312452/marseykamakamakamala-marseykamala-handles-the-crowd-like

The restructuring would mark the first closure of domestic plants in the company's 87-year history and set it up for a battle with powerful unions in Germany, where VW has 300,000 employees. There are 10 plants which are part of the VW's core brand and could potentially be closed.

!cuteandinvalid !lgbt Good morning

Striptease

!cuteandinvalid !lgbt Me on the left

Welcome to the Weekly Sync, where we loop in all site stakeholders on the wins and losses from the previous week.

I have to post this early because I have a cancer screen tomorrow and I think I'll be out of commission on Monday.

General

Ill-legendarized internet pariah Rebecca Black of Friday fame has released a new track called Trust. This song is a slay. She also did a boiler room special and referenced Friday in a self-deprecating manner.

The internet has declared this a win for her and her previous crimes related to Friday have been absolved.

• good tits

MasterLawlz is mad at you

rDrama legend Masterlawlz spent years telling everyone about the terrible movie he is going to make and then the minute the trailer goes up on IMDB he is upset that rDrama made a post about it. ML has requested that all mention of him be further moderated off of the website.

• internal discussions about how to handle this are on-going

• You have giant balls to ask for anything.

Tracingwoodgrains continues to slay

Famed internet journ*list/troll @TracingWoodgrains has had a substack post of his shared to millions via Elon Musk.

• this is good for dramacoin

• Elon Musk is a literal sped so jury is out if this a true win for society.

Carp Killed rDrama.net

Favorite internet forum moderator @carpathianHORRORist accidentally shut down the entire website for 8 hours because he hit the wrong button in the admin settings, This has become known as the DramaGeddon (I just made that up).

• Bard posters still on life support

• Islamic Taytay is so fricking funny you get points for that.

• "he does it for free" except I'm pretty sure he gets paid.

Middle East Bullshittery

Famed stable-country Israel has launched artillery on Iran and it's like WW3 or something.

• If I still have to go work tomorrow it's not a real problem

• Post one

• Post two

• Post three

• I just don't care about the middle east sue me.

Pizzashill commits voter fraud

Site regular @pizzashill has admitted that they are not as "democratic" as they portend to be and intend to commit voter fraud by voting for their (to be fair) equally mentally unstable girlfriend.

• Post about it

• Their gf is kind of an r-slur so maybe it's not that bad anyway?

• My Ex Took My Ballot

• Drama development - PS and Poj are broken up and longer together. The OF r-slur s*x arc is officially dead. Pojom reports that their ballot they probably were never going to use anyway was sent to the wrong address.

• This is terminal white people bullshit.

• Do you think they'd make money doing r-slur s*x on OF? - Inquiring minds

Nerd Shit

/h/Kappa has been doing something. I don't know what /h/Kappa even is but stuff is happening and if you can discern what that is then it might be for you!

• I really hope this isnt some gross s*x thing

• I still don't know what this is

Reddit Abandons New Reddit

There was a post from the admins on Reddit about allowing 1000+ comments to be searchable on a user profile and everyone made fun of them because it's stupid that wasn't a feature to begin with. Comment search was only ever available for the first 500 comments on New Reddit and in their failed app - so this is semi-verification that they are abandoning their ill-thought "New" Reddit.

• rDrama post about it.

• I hope all Reddit admins die of old age.

Bookshit

• Just go read it

Weekly Threads:

These are the old threads. I won't be available to post the updated ones.

Previous week Weekly Threads:

Other Weekly Threads:

Weekly What Are You Reading?

Weekly Drawing Thread

• A ping group was created for this so you don't have to subscribe to the hole. Thread here.

Weekly Video-Nerd Thread

Weekly What Are You Watching Thread

Weekly Anime Thread

i’m actually going to k myself…@DojaCat @Airbnb @AirbnbHelp please elaborate to me why i was allowed to win this contest and i discussed my stan account and being blocked by her in my application and it was approved by your icons staff, just for them to kick me out the event.

— steven is meeting doja today 🩸 (@grandeunext) October 27, 2024

Thread unroll for nibgers who don't be xittermaxxing: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1850386958112952404.html

Also, he is an ugly sexy Indian dude (but I repeat myself):

His letter to her that had security throw him out:

Thread includes:

• A video of his two giant tote bags of weird gifts

• "Her security just doesn't know her as well as I do"

• Talmbout how he's finna lie to everyone he knows about this because he's too embarrassed after telling everyone he was gonna meet her

• Repeated references to how "wronged" he is

• Demands for refunds and such from airBNB

Now, on to the responses:

This dude is apparently a well-known twitter psycho:

i was feeling bad until i read the thread and realized who you were 😩😂 @DojaCat you’re so real for this! You went up 2 spots on my stan list. pic.twitter.com/2kbvvlXduD

— welp. (@YSLONIKA) October 27, 2024

The call is coming from inside the house:

So, you put "frick the parasocial fans" in your letter.

Bro that's you 😂

— Commander Riker (@CommanderRik3r) October 27, 2024

He was gonna kill her:

oh u was gon k*ll that lady, that’s why they kicked u out 😭😭😭😭

— Big Baby Brio (@BigBabyBrio) October 27, 2024

Quote tweets: https://x.com/grandeunext/status/1850386958112952404/quotes

Too much to cap and all but the qts and the replies are a hilarious pile-on with a few confused messages from people who don't recognize whotf this is.

To sum it all up:

We just got paid those 4 florins so I go out to spend it. I pick up some slightly better leg armor for Redactor and throwing weapons for Redactor and Yuna. One reason why I want most of the party using throwing weapons right now is that later on we'll be using alchemy, tossing potions in combat. I think (I'm not 100% sure on this) that Thrown Weapon is checked to see how fast and accurately you can do that.

Now I want to find somebody who will give us a raubritter quest, the best quest in any RPG ever. So we'll ask the usual suspects: The Fuggers, the Medicis, and the Hanseatic League.

This guy wants us to go to another city and break in and steal something. I don't do these because they're really dangerous, don't pay well, and they're not really something Christian heroes do.

This guy wants us to go on another fetch quest. It's to Magdeburg. That's way out in the east of the country. Way too far to be worth the effort. (I recently was listening to a podcast where they were interviewing a Cold War fighter pilot. His job if the balloon went up was to nuke the airbase at Magdeburg. It was assumed he would have nowhere to go back to after that because his own base would have gotten got. Some parts of history aren't romantic.)

This guy doesn't even offer us a job. Trying to get a quest depends on a lot of factors including fame, local reputation, and the speaking skills of your leader. And often they just don't have a job for you.

Let's try the mayor. It's risky trying to ask him for a job because he might just laugh at you and call you names and damage your reputation, but I'll risk it for you guys. Wow. We actually got in, but he offered us another fetch quest that would take us into East Germany.

I have a specific quest I want to go on for this episode for dramatic purposes so I'm gonna just play the game for a while until I run into it.

This is what I was looking for. A challenge to fight a raubritter. Germany was fragmented into so many little territories at this time that you could have one butthole who owns a castle and is the dictator of his little territory, robbing and raping with impunity. Actually it's not that different today. Look at Ferguson, Missouri where the cops were just randomly pulling over black guys and giving them tickets and threatening to frame them for a crime if they didn't pay it. This guy has a castle east of Paderborn.

Okay there's his castle. There's many ways to approach this. First let's trying just asking to come inside and ask to spend the night. What a nice guy.

We've gotten into the castle, which gives us the opportunity to try to burn it down. If we're very lucky then it's game over for him. We'll still have to fight him as he and his troops run to escape the castle, but they won't fight nearly as well.

Well so much for that. Obviously we can't ask him to let us in again. We could try to scale the walls and sneak in and try setting a fire again, but I don't like our odds. If our guys fall then they'll get hurt. Instead I think we'll go for a long campaign of attrition. I'll start out by ambushing his squads of troops roaming around the forest shaking people down.

They saw us first so we don't get the element of surprise. Oh well. We can take these guys I'm sure.

We're outnumbered 5-4 but all of these guys are the same level of trash as those street thugs we fought in the beginning. Their leader has roughly the same kind of equipment as us but it's of lower quality and I'm sure he's weaker and less skilled than our guys. I start out by having everyone use their missile weapons against one of the trash enemies. Hopefully we can cut him down and take away their numerical advantage before they even reach us.

It works. After that it's just a free-for-all. I maneuver my guys around a little to try to double team one enemy at a time, but it's not a tough fight. Take a look at the bar on the left side of the screen. The blue, green, and yellow columns show how much endurance, strength, and divine favor you have. The thin little column next to it is the same thing but for your current target. You can see here that Sasha and Yuna have taken minimal damage.

At this point I'm going to grind for a little bit, ambushing one or two more patrols. Every time we wipe one out, we reduce the raubritter's army a little bit. If my guys get hurt, I'll camp out and heal. You can't just camp forever, but I don't expect to get hurt very much.

All right, enough playing around. It's time to lay siege to his castle. Again, every time I beat one of these resupply parties it weakens his army. That means fewer enemies with less equipment.

Whoa! This is it. This is gonna be a tough fight as the raubritter is equipped with plate and chainmail armor, much better than ours. He's carrying a two-handed sword that will chop through us like butter. And we can expect him to be much more skilled than his minions. Fortunately since we've killed so many of his men already he only has three to accompany him. They are pretty well equipped though, comparable to us. This is going to be far tougher than any fight we've been in yet. I don't know if we can pull it off. My strategy will be to kill off his thugs as fast as possible so we can all gang up on the raubritter. Even with plate armor we should be able to take him down then.

I got one just with missiles. Good start.

I got two! That's Nathan with the bow who landed the 13-point hit.

I think we're alone now, there doesn't seem to be anyone around.

Now it's time to finally explain how combat works. It's complex but it's also pretty intuitive so you don't have to worry too much about the math if you don't want to. The most important mechanic is armor penetration. Armor comes in 5 levels of thickness. Each weapon has a rating for how good it as at penetrating armor. If the weapon's penetration rating is the same as the armor's thickness, damage is cut to 1/3. If it's lower it's cut to 1/8, which often means no damage at all. So as you can it's extremely difficult to take down a well-armored opponent.

The raubritter is wearing plate (5) and chainmail (4) on his limbs. (You hit the limbs 50% of the time.) Unfortunately I didn't remember to reequip Nathan with a better weapon and his long spear only has a penetration of 2. Sasha's longsword has 3. Yuna and I have maces with 4. (One of the reasons why we want a mix of weapons in the party is some of can specialize in penetrating thick armor while others specialize in dealing out maximum damage to less armored opponents.) At least our people will get a few bonus damage points for being very strong, but clearly we'll need to use some new tactics to beat him even 4 on 1.

First though, Yuna has taken a heck of a beating so let me see if I've got any saints who can heal her. St. Anthony hears Redactor's plea and actually heals her quite a bit. Now it's time to gang up on him.

Throughout the game up until now we've just been using the standard attack mode. But to take down the raubritter we're going to have to switch modes.

• Standard - The most appropriate in most situations, but not this one.

• Vulnerable - Try to hit the enemy in a vulnerable spot. This adds 1-4 penetration when you hit, but you also attack much more slowly. We put Sasha and Nathan in this because otherwise they'll never penetrate and only do a couple points of damage if they're lucky.

• Berserk - Just go all out on the attack like you're on PCP. We put Redactor in this mode. You're much easier to hit, but since we're just hitting him from behind that doesn't matter. Each attack is slightly less likely to hit but you attack much faster. Hopefully with that rain of blows we'll frequently hit his limb armor and do moderate damage.

• Parry - Concentrate on defending yourself. You're much less likely to be hit, especially if you have high weapon skill, but your attacks are slower. We put Yuna in this mode as she's holding off the raubritter while the rest of us attack him from behind.

It actually goes much easier than I expected and we take him down quickly. I think what was happening was that with all four of us on him at once, we were hitting on every attack. Sasha and Nathan couldn't make a lot of attacks as they were in vulnerable mode, but if every one hits that's good enough.

Now off to collect our reward. The 8 florins are nice. With that I can afford to buy at least one of my people a high-end weapon. Next time we run into a heavily armored opponent I want at least one guy to be able to penetrate easily. Pretty soon I might even be able to afford to dabble in alchemy. We get less tangible rewards as well: 40 reputation in Paderborn and +20 fame. (I think we got +3 for that satanic village.) Local reputation helps in a number of ways: better prices, better chances of being offered a quest, and people are just more likely to cooperate with you.

But maybe the biggest reward is the haul of loot we got from all those thugs we butchered. Look at all this stuff Sasha is carrying. Since they like us here in Paderborn it's a good place to sell it all. That brings in another 8 florins. The raubritter had below-average plate and chainmail. Nathan might be just barely strong enough to fight effectively in this, depending on what weapon we get him. There's also a two-handed sword. This has 4 penetration, so I'll keep it for Sasha to use against heavily armored opponents. The longsword is probably better for everyday use as it's much faster and lets us use a shield in the other hand.

Next episode: Let's spend some of this money!

!cuteandvalid

how the heck is and literally having so many pr things coming out in the span of like 2 weeks whereas and literally having a twitch stream

like am i just blind and dumb and not noticing any PR the is doing or is this really the election of hides in a cave until the election?

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/27/trumps-madison-square-garden-racist-00185770