Part VI
It was until three nights later when Kay was going stir crazy that I realized Jason had not told her about the dildo.
“God Damn. How am I going to go two weeks without it?” Kay said to no one in particular.
“He didn’t tell you? I was waiting for you to ask about it?” I said.
“Tell me what?”
“He gave me a life size model of his penis to use on you when you need it.”
“What! And you didn’t say anything!” She screamed.
“Sorry I thought I wasn’t supposed to talk about that.”
“You thought! You thought! Your a fucking idiot!” She screamed as she left the room.
She came back in on the phone. “Uh huh. Yeah I told him as much”
“Oh you did?…..yeah ok. How many?……yes I can do it……bye” she hung up. And left the room again. After a minute she called me into the living room.
“Strip.” She said. I quickly took off all my clothes. She threw a pair of panties at me. “From now on these are all you were inside this house.”
“Yes” I said as I put them on.
“God your pathetic. Come over here and bend over the chair”
“What? I’m sorry ok. Can’t we act like it’s somewhat normal around here while she’s gone?”
“Normal? Your standing wearing women’s underwear and you didn’t even fight me on it. Now get over here!”
I walked over and bent over the chair. That’s when I noticed she had gone upstairs to grab one of Jason’s belts he must of left here and I started to worry.
“Please Kay take it eas…..” Whack! “Aaaaah!” I screamed. Whack! Whack! Here come the tears. Whack! “That’s right cry you sissy.” Whack! When did she get so mean? Whack! I was just openly sobbing now begging for it to stop. “I put up with your tiny dick for too long. I am not going back. You understand?” Whack! “You will learn to listen!” Whack! “Oh please stop crying.”
“I’m…..sor…sorry” I tried to get out between tears. “I will listen I promise. Let me show you I can listen”
“I hope so. Met me upstairs with the dildo in ten minutes.”
———-
I entered the bedroom with the blindfold in one hand and the dildo in the other. I sat down on the bed and put the blindfold on. Then I heard the sounds of my wife taking off her clothes. I was instantly hard. It had been so long since I have seen her body. What I wouldn’t give to take a peek. My sore ass stopped me I didn’t want another punishment.
“I see your little hard on.” She said. “You’ll have no need for that”
“I know” I responded sadly. I then took the didlo out and started to guide my way to her pussy.
“Not so fast dear” Kay said. “We need to lube it up a bit.” She grabbed from my hand. “Open up”
“Whaaaa” was I could get out before she shoved it in my mouth.
“There you go” she said as she pumped it in and out. “You’re a natural!”
I don’t know what came over me but I was getting really into it. Trying my best to take as much as I could. Never thought I would be blowing a didlo in front of my wife but here I am getting off on it.
“That should do” she pulled it out. “My god I can’t believe how much you enjoyed that. Sucking cock, wearing panties…. I think we are going to have to give you a l new name. You are no longer the Jay I knew. But first it’s time for you to do your job.” She handed me the lubed up dildo and I guided it into hee soaking wet pussy. I doubt it needed anything to help it go in she was so ready.
I sat on the bed and pumped it in and out of her as she moaned with pleasure. I tired to keep up as she rocked her hips back and forth begging for more. For it faster. For it harder. I could feel her muscles tightening as she was getting close. Until she exploded in an amazing orgasm and collapsed on the bed. “Wow. Thank you” she said. “You can leave now.”
I slowly got up and left the room walked right into the guest room to jerk off but just as I was about to get started she called me back. As I got back to the room I put the blindfold back on.
“I’m dressed you can take that off.” She said. “I forgot to tell you no jerking off.” How did she know? “You have to earn it and honestly right now you are no where near any rewards. Clean up this mess” then she got up and walked out.
————
Oh shit! I forgot part of my instructions! I was supposed to remind Kay of my size while I used the dildo on her. There was still most of the two weeks left hopefully if I do it the rest of the time it will be ok.
The next night we got set up again me in the blindfold and dildo in hand. “You ready for a real cock.” I said. “Not like what I have”
“What do you have?” She asked as I slid it into her. “Ooooh. Yeeeeaaah”
“I have a small penis” I slid it in and out.
“Feels so good…..what do you have?”
“A tiny cock.”
“That’s it keep going” her hips started to move in line with my pumping.
“I could never make you feel like this. I don’t know how you stayed for so long.” She started moaning louder. “You deserve this.”
“Yes! Yes!” She started screaming
“I am forever indebted to you for allowing me to fuck you at all. My tiny cock is yours to ridicule” I was pumping faster and faster.
“YESSSS!” She said as she cam.
“I’m taking a shower. Clean this up” and she walked out.
——— The rest of the two weeks were intense. I tried my best to resist touching myself but there were a few times when I was alone that I was able to quickly jerk it. For the whole last week though I promised myself I would be good.
It was tough each night I would be blindfolded and then use the dildo on Kay. Sometimes she had me suck it first sometimes she needed it badly so I just went in her. Each orgasm was super intense as I could feel her tightening up just before she cam and collapsed back into bed.
On the last night Kay got on me hands and knees and had get right behind her. I was so close I could feel the sweat on her skin. Each moan rippled through me as I used the dildo on her. She got so into it and just hearing her was too much for me. I felt like I might cum myself. But just then she orgasmed and laid down.
“Wow. You are good with that.” She said. “Too bad you can’t do anything with yours.” As she said that she tapped my rock hard dick through my panties. That was all in needed and I cam with that little touch. Cum started leaking through.
“What the hell!” Kay said. “I told you no. And you cum on my bed that I share with Jason!”
“Sorry so sorry it’s just that I was…it had been so long.”
“Get out”
I quickly get off the bed and try and leave the room. But with the blindfold still on i tripped over something and land on the floor.
“Now you getting it all over the room! Jason is back here tomorrow. You have a lot of cleaning to do”
“Yes. I will take care of it. I’m sorry.” I say as I get up and leave the room
———-
The next day I spent most of it getting their bedroom ready for the night. (Woah even in my thoughts it’s their room now. What am I?) When it’s all done I meet up with Kay downstairs. I start to pick up all around her has she hasn’t been doing any chores for a while now and I notice there is a lot to pick up.
“So I have been talking to Jason.” Kay says “and he agrees you need a new name”
“Really. I mean think I have shown I can behave. Isn’t that enough”
“You haven’t shown us anything yet. You messed up Jason’s instructions while he was gone. You did listen to me about not jerking off. Don’t think I don’t know about how many times you touched that thing of yours.”
“Wha…”
“Think before you answer”
“Yes”‘I hung my head. “I did a couple times. But I was good all this week!”
“What was last night then!”
“That shouldn’t count. I didn’t even touch it”
“So it’s my fault!”
“No… “ she was staring at me. Waiting for me to continue. “It was mine. Sorry.”
“You should be. It’s disgusting that you cam on that bed. You should know better”
“Yes. I will do better”
“I hope so. Anyway back to your new name. I talked with Jason and we had a long discussion about the state of relationship we are all in. Do you know it has a name?”
“Aaaa”
“You do don’t you. I didn’t know I until Jason told me about it. But you know right?”
“Yes. I know. Cuckold."
“And you have know about this for a while right. Even before Jason?”
“Yes”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. But basically for as long as I can remember”
She started nodding. “That’s what he said. That you have always known because you have a such a small penis.”
“I guess that’s true” in that moment I got pretty upset. Even with everything that had been going on we hadn’t talked about the truth of the situation together.
“No need to get upset. This is a good thing. Now we both know what you are and we can grow from it.”
“I didn’t mean to hide it form you.” I started crying. “It’s just that I was so ashamed. And I thought you wouldn’t understand”
“It’s ok. I mean you should be ashamed because I expect you to be honest and your should be embarrassed having that small of equipment.” She motioned for me to come and sit by her. I did and I laid my head on her.
“So do you have a new name for me?”
“Yea we do. And I think it is a perfect fit.”
Just then there was a knock at the door.
“Cuck. Go answer the door.”
I got right up and did as I was told.
……

On top of the usual saving quick saving for boss or event purposes, my personal rule is to create a save for every chapter's start and end. My reason for this is it helps me with memorizing routes and missables whenever I feel like backtracking. What about you guys?

Hey there,
I am creating a sales department for a small business and I've come here seeking the wisdom of more seasoned individuals, should any of y'all be willing to help out somebody that's trying to learn this industry.
Some info about the business: A couple of friends have a small company that sells confections. Everything is D2C through their website. The website currently utilizes shopify for online sales, though in some cases they'll process large orders through Quick Books. This company has one person making the treats and one person on web/product design. They've got fantastic products and have received some wonderful accolades. I'm aiming to create a sales department (me) to help the company grow.
Info about me: I have very little experience in sales, though I've worked in various hospitality and customer service industries. I was a contractor for years and worked in people's homes. I am confident in my ability to talk to and relate to people. I am confident in my ability to market this product, as it's one I truly believe in. Lastly, I am confident in my ability to learn new things. However, I'm very aware that there's a lot I don't know and it's hard to know where to start - that's why I'm here.
Some questions that I have thus far: -What sort of CRM software should I look into? Ideally, something that could take over the D2C online sales and also allow me to make sales on my own. I'd like to find recurring customers and need a way to track this. Ideally something that won't break the bank. -Should I look into classes? I live rather close to a local community college and I'm sure they have some basic courses that might be useful, but I'm curious if academia is more or less useful than learning on the job/researching independently, I guess. -Are there online resources anyone recommends for people starting out? -This one may sound silly, but: is there anything else I need to be asking? I'm not shooting for too much hand-holding, just looking to be put on the right path.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.

I don't know what to do anymore. If I don't do something, I'm afraid my life will be even more miserable, if that's even possible.
Basically, I'm 24 years old, and I've never had a job. I graduated a year ago. From then on, things went downhill very quickly. I shut myself in the house, I don't go out, and I don't have friends. I can't muster up the strength to start looking for a job; the thought alone gives me severe anxiety. I've been very ill for the past few days. I have no one to confide in.
I live with my parents, and they didn't force me to get a job right away. They are good, but they don't understand my anxiety. That's why I need to find a job so that I can afford therapy myself, but I don't know how I will do it with my severe anxiety. Any advice is welcome.

Hi Everyone, So last night my car would not start. No clicks, no turnover. Nothing. The radio plays and the doors can be locked and unlocked from the fob. The only dash indicator is a red car with exclamation. I called roadside this morning and they came quickly, by 9am. Checked the battery, but that was fine. They towed it to volvo. I spoke with dealership, they confirmed my issues and are supposed to call me back with diagnostic in an hour and I'm still waiting. Has anyone else had this problem. Tow truck guy said he has picked up about 3 or 4 of these with this prob in the last week. I'm wondering if it is related to the new software update.

Avery Jane and Jordi need help saving their marriage, so they visit a sex therapist, the sexy Zoe Grey. Zoe believes in a… hands-on approach to therapy, and quickly convinces the reserved couple to start masturbating for her. Masturbation leads to a hot threesome and then to Avery and Zoe sharing a load of Jordi’s cum. It’s an unconventional way to save a marriage, but it works."

I am starting to get quotes for solar. I have received one quote so far with two different options and inverters. One for Enphase and one for Tesla.
Doing some quick research it seems that both of these inverters limit or do not allow local access to the data. That is an important requirement for me.
Are there recommendations for inverters that have a local supported API?
I am in the US if that matters.

Basically what the title says. I'm excited to be on this waitlist for a hormone readiness assessment and to see a nurse. It's about 6-7 months long which is a lot but I'm hoping I might be able to speed up the process with my family doctor who I'm talking to tomorrow. I have friends who are supporting me as well and it's been nice. I wish I didn't have to wait till January for this but it's not the worst thing in the world to have extra time to think imo. I've been moving pretty quick through transitioning since coming out and some time might do good for me. I do plan on continuing to advocate for myself and access to care, I do want to be starting hrt as soon as I can, I guess it's just if I have to wait till January now it's okay. I at least know that I'll be seeing someone eventually.
Anyways I'm just posting to post, no real questions or statements or anything. I'm excited for myself and have been busy thinking of new names to go by. I want to keep the W in my name but find fem names with W aren't that great imo. I've started using exclusively they/them at work and in my own life. No more he, but still no she. Just small things, but I feel a lot more like myself. Even when I feel "manly" inside no part of me really feels like a boy or a man anymore. I'm just doing me the way I know how to and that's one day at a time.
Thanks to whoever is reading this and any commenters. I look at everything when I post even when I don't reply. These trans subreddits have been really helpful these past few weeks in finding some sense of community.

I wrote a long thread on how to get fedex woth best prices to ship your packages and how to get and use visa credit cards to shop online and how to shop for the best deals and how to get the best suppliers etc etc, i went into details, I posted before about dropshipping tips and this morning it was supposed to be my third and final one with the best useful tips to help people start for real ...
and just when I POSTED IT in the morning, someone wrote me this glorious comment :
"allah la trabhek m3a sbah rabi"
just because i posted few pictures of the men thongs underwear that are trending and selling fast and quick, i tried use them as exemple to show people how to choose the best deals...
by the way i did it for free i was selling nothing looking for nothing i tried help people build an e-business platform using Reddit just like all other communities do (yes they all do but they won't show you how), there are lot of secrets you haven't seen yet on Reddit, its not just a community portal it has lot more to offer !
I am sorry i tried to help but now i understand why Algerians don't help each others and why they keep their business secrets and tips for themselves, even when you try help an Algerian he will always be ungrateful find a way to make you feel down, this is very sad god knows this is painful for me.
So, i guess i won't take risk to hear such words again, let this subreddit just stay as it is , trolls and weird people talking about fake dating stories and god who knows many fake relationship stories about supposed foreigner girls dating Algerian men and complaining about their behaviors and attitudes or whatever (next time check their reddit profils before first).
ok, god bless you guys , salam

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I (f17) is severely lactose intolerant . Anything with dairy in it causes ykw. I have a “bsf” let’s call her Darla (f18)who loves playing pranks. She’s done the simple pranks on everyone like putting a fart cushion or replacing salt with sugar. Lately her pranks have been way too much though.
Last week she wanted to apologize for a prank. even though I was far over the prank l! Just so you know I have known her for more than a decade and our parents trust us fully with each-other. I went over to her house.
When I got to her house the table was set. The place looked amazing like she really put her time Into making this apology. And I was really happy to dig in. The food for me was just chicken and salad and she had mac n cheese and chicken.There was also a glass with apple juice my favorite. While I was eating my salad my stomach felt alright. Nothing was going on I also drank some of the apple juice. She kept watching me too see if I was eating or smth and that should have been my first red flag.
It was about an hour into me eating I have eaten all the food and drank all the apple juice.I felt it. I felt the pain and the watery poo ready to come out.I quickly excused myself and ran to the rest room.
When I tell you I sat down on that toilet and it came gushing out. I started having a mental breakdown right on the seat.It felt like someone was hurting me constantly because this poo was coming out very very hurtful and it just wouldn’t stop. I was already crying and trying not to scream. It was just a normal potato salad and I made sure to ask her if their was diary and she said no.
As I was crying everything clicked. She was looking at me making sure I was eating it she gave me potato salad with milk in it. That just made me cry more. Knowing that someone who I put my trust into did this. When I ended I quickly rushed out got my stuff and left before the second session of pooping came out.
Now fast forward to a couple of days ago. She texted me and saying that she hoped the prank wore off. She also gave a very horrible apology that went along the lines of “hey sorry for not telling you diary was in your salad it was quite funny LMAOOO” She also mentioned she put laxatives in my apple juice. I’m really sensitive and I just started crying and tearing up. When I calmed down I blocked her out of anger.
today her dad texted me that I should talk to her and forgive her because she really misses me. They also contacted my mom and dad they want me too forgive her too and that I’m just being way too sensitive. I personally don’t think AITA because it’s basically like giving someone with a peanut allergy peanuts. So AITA for not talking to my bsf bc of a prank…
Sorry if stuff on this story confuses u I was in a rush and English isn’t my first language

Well in less then 24 hours, the new map suffers the same fate in Breakthrough that the majority of others in that, no one wants to play on defense.
Defense is no fun, the only semi-defendable point is the last point C1 and that just down to the bottle-neck design, and grenade spam.
You just need to look at the score screen to see how quickly people drop out when on defense. Into S5 and Breakthrough still suffers the same problems it has from the start.

Apache

The fact so far

According to “mod_fcgi is NOT a replacement for mod_fastcgi” and “Issues with mod_fcgid and multi-threaded FastCGI application”, mod_fcgid, is not designed to expect FastCGI servers to be able to handle multiple requests at once, i.e. not designed to expect FastCGI servers to be multi‑threaded.
The former says:

They both support the published "FastCGI" protocol, but how they control their FastCGI servers differs considerably. mod_fcgid quickly eliminates FastCGI servers and starts new ones.

The latter says:

it seems mod_fcgid isn't aware of the fact that my server is multi-threaded and is able to handle more than one request.

That's just two quotes among others, there are some elsewhere.

The consecutive issue

Threading is not only about saving CPU and memory avoiding the overhead of creating a new process (creating a thread is known to be lighter than creating a process), and that could be mitigated by hardware or OS performance; this is also a logical matter, which is less easy to mitigate: threads belongs to a same process, that's not only performance, but also logic, ex. process cannot share what threads could share, as process runs in isolation (modulo IPC, but that's not the same).
At least for this logical reason, the question of multi‑threaded FastCGI server may be raised. A FastCGI server, may hold a context (which may be big and costly to share between processes) which is global to all request handlers when it is designed as a multi‑threaded server. Forking a new process for each concurrent request does not allow to ensure a common context any‑more.

The question

Are the two above quotations still true (one is dated 2011, the other 2010)? I searched the web on the topic, but could not find anything relevant. If it's still true, then, will it always be true or is there an expected plan for mod_fcgid, to be aware of multi‑threaded FastCGI servers and accept these may be designed to handle multiple concurrent requests?
Answer link : https://codehunter.cc/a/apache/mod-fcgid-multi-threaded-fastcgi-now-or-in-a-planned-future

Is it Friday yet? 🙃
Greetings, internet! I am a 26 year-old male from Southern California! I desire a true, real relationship. One where we start out as great friends and it naturally progresses into a great, intimate relationship. Where we can both just cry in general about our days judgement-free
I'm very career-oriented and have a full time job working for the government (ironic, considering my username here). I live very comfortably on my own but figured it would be great to have someone to share this magical journey of life with. I've made posts on here in the past, but I've had more interactions with bots than actual people (seriously, what's with the bots? I'm not interested in your crypto scam 😭)
I'll try my best to describe myself physically here. I'm on the taller side, white, not overweight but not skinny. Probably not the best description but I would be more than happy to exchange pictures over chat!
As for my personality, I am a huge nerd. I love all the typical nerdy things you can think of and would love a woman who shares similar interests, such as video games, Star Wars, Marvel, etc! Though, that is not a requirement either!
As for what I am looking for: I am looking for a woman to share the rest of my life with! I'm not very picky at all when it comes to who I mingle with as I feel I connect pretty well with various people from all walks of life! Just be honest about your intentions! If you do decide to message me, PLEASE be a woman from SoCal, or at least somewhere from or near California and be willing to travel! (If distance becomes an issue, we would both be splitting this responsibility, so let's be realistic about it!)
In your message, send a little about yourself, and include the word "tomato" so I know you read all of this! (I will ignore your message without the word tomato - nothing personal, but I want someone genuine so I need a way to filter out fake people/bots) I like putting faces to names fairly quickly so be ready to exchange photos after we start talking for a bit! Talk soon!

Hey all,
It's been an amazing run thanks to all of you.
Eight years ago, I posted in the Apple subreddit about a Reddit app I was looking for beta testers for, and my life completely changed that day. I just finished university and an internship at Apple, and wanted to build a Reddit client of my own: a premier, customizable, well-designed Reddit app for iPhone. This fortunately resonated with people immediately, and it's been my full time job ever since.
Today's a much sadder post than that initial one eight years ago. June 30th will be Apollo's last day.
I've talked to a lot of people, and come to claims with this over the last weeks as talks with Reddit have deteriorated to an ugly point, and in the interest of transparency with the community, I wanted to talk about how I arrived at this decision, and if you have any questions at the end, I'm more than happy to answer. This post will be long as I have a lot of topics to cover.
Please note that I recorded all my calls with Reddit, so my statements are not based on memory, but the recorded statements by Reddit over the course of the year. One-party consent recording is legal in my country of Canada. Also I won't be naming names, that's not important and I don't want to doxx people.

What happened initially?

On April 18th, Reddit announced changes that would be coming to the API, namely that the API is moving to a paid model for third-party apps. Shortly thereafter we received phone calls, however the price (the key element in an announcement to move to a paid API) was notably missing, with the intent to follow up with it in 2-4 weeks.
The information they did provide however was: we will be moving to a paid API as it's not tenable for Reddit to pay for third-party apps indefinitely (understandable, agreed), so they're looking to do equitable pricing based in reality. They mentioned that they were not looking to be like Twitter, which has API pricing so high it was publicly ridiculed.
I was excited to hear these statements, as I agree that long-term Reddit footing the bill for third-party apps is not tenable, and with a paid arrangement there's a great possibility for developing a more concrete relationship with Reddit, with better API support for users. I think this optimism came across in my first post about the calls with Reddit.

When did they announce pricing?

Six weeks later, they called to discuss pricing. I quickly put together a small app where I could input the prices and it would output monthly/yearly cost, cost for free users, paid users, etc. so I'd be able to process the information immediately.
The price they gave was $0.24 for 1,000 API calls. I quickly inputted this in my app, and saw that it was not far off Twitter's outstandingly high API prices, at $12,000, and with my current usage would cost almost $2 million dollars per month, or over $20 million per year.

Why do you say Reddit's pricing is "too high"? By what metric?

Reddit's promise was that the pricing would be equitable and based in reality. The reality that they themselves have posted data about over the years is as follows (copy-pasted from my previous post):

Less than 2 years ago they said they crossed $100M in quarterly revenue for the first time ever, if we assume despite the economic downturn that they've managed to do that every single quarter now, and for your best quarter, you've doubled it to $200M. Let's also be generous and go far, far above industry estimates and say you made another $50M in Reddit Premium subscriptions. That's $550M in revenue per year, let's say an even $600M. In 2019, they said they hit 430 million monthly active users, and to also be generous, let's say they haven't added a single active user since then (if we do revenue-per-user calculations, the more users, the less revenue each user would contribute). So at generous estimates of $600M and 430M monthly active users, that's $1.40 per user per year, or $0.12 monthly. These own numbers they've given are also seemingly inline with industry estimates as well.

Apollo's price would be approximately $2.50 per month per user, with Reddit's indicated cost being approximately $0.12 per their own numbers.
A 20x increase does not seem "based in reality" to me.

Why doesn't Reddit just buy Apollo and other third-party apps?

This was a very common comment across the topics: "If Apollo has an apparent opportunity cost of $20 million per year, why not just buy them and other third-party apps, as they did with Alien Blue?"
I believe it's a fair question. If these apps apparently cost so much, an easy solution that would likely make everyone happy would be to simply buy these apps out. So I brought that up to them during a call on May 31st where I was suggesting a variety of potential solutions.

Bizarre allegations by Reddit of Apollo "blackmailing" and "threatening" Reddit

About 24 hours after that call with Reddit, I received this odd message on Mastodon:

"Can you please comment publicly about the internal Reddit claim that you tried to “blackmail” them for a $10,000,000 payout to “stay quiet”?"

Then yesterday, moderators told me they were on a call with CEO Steve Huffman (spez), and he said the following per their transcript:

Steve: "Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million." Steve: "This guy behind the scenes is coercing us. He's threatening us."

Wow. Because my memory is that you didn't take it as a threat, and you even apologized profusely when you admitted you misheard it. It's very easy to take a single line and make it look bad by removing all the rest of the context, so let's look at the full context.
I can only assume you didn't realize I was recording the call, because there's no way you'd be so blatantly lying if you did.
As said, a common suggestion across the many threads on this topic was "If third-party apps are costing Reddit so much money, why don't they just buy them out like they did Alien Blue?" That was the point I brought up. If running Apollo as it stands now would cost you $20 million yearly as you quote, I suggested you cut a check to me to end Apollo. I said I'd even do it for half that or six months worth: $10 million, what a deal!
The bizarre thing is - initially - on the call you interpreted that as a threat. Even giving you the benefit of the doubt that maybe my phrasing was confusing, I asked for you to elaborate on how you found what I said to be a threat, because I was incredibly confused how you interpreted it that way. You responded that I said "Hey, if you want this to go away…" Which is not at all what I said, so I reiterated that I said "If you want to Apollo to go quiet, as in it's quite loud in terms of API usage".
What did you then say?

Me: "I said 'If you want Apollo to go quiet'. Like in terms of- I would say it's quite loud in terms of its API usage." Reddit: "Oh. Go quiet as in that. Okay, got it. Got it. Sorry." Reddit: "That's a complete misinterpretation on my end. I apologize. I apologize immediately."

The admission that you mistook me, and the four subsequent apologies led me to believe that you acknowledged you mistook me and you were apologetic. The fact that you're pretending none of this happened (or was recorded), and instead espousing a different reality where instead of apologizing for taking it as a threat, you're instead going the complete opposite direction and saying "He threatened us!" is so low I almost don't believe it.
But again, I've recorded all my calls with you just in case you tried something like this.
Transcript of this part of the call: https://gist.github.com/christianselig/a9d00a47c99a4d1d3d16bc19e05419c0 Audio of this part of the call: http://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-31-end.m4a
(If you take issue with the call being recorded please remember that I'm in Canada and so long as one participant in the call (me) consents to being recorded, it's legal. If anyone would like the recording of the full call, I'm happy to provide.)
I bring this up for two reasons:

• I don't want Reddit slandering me to internal employees or public people by saying I threatened them when they reality is that they immediately apologized for misunderstanding me.
• It shows why I've finally come to the conclusion that I don't think this situation is recoverable. If Reddit is willing to stoop to such deep lows as to slander individuals with blatant lies to try to get community favor back, I no longer have any faith they want this to work, or ever did.

What is an API or an API request anyway?

Some people are confused about this situation and don't understand what an API is. An API (Application Programming Interface) is just a way for an app to talk to a website. As an analogy, pretend Reddit is a bouncer. Historically, you can ask Reddit "Could I have the comments for this post?" or "Can you list the posts in AskReddit?". Those would be one API request each, and Reddit would respond with the corresponding data.
Everything you do on Reddit is an API request. Upvoting, downvoting, commenting, loading posts, loading subreddits, checking for new messages, blocking users, filtering subreddits, etc.
The situation is changing so that for each API request you make, there's a portion of a penny charged to the developer of that app. I think that is very reasonable, provided, well, that the price they charge is reasonable.

Claims that Apollo is "inefficient"

Another common claim by Reddit is that Apollo is inherently inefficient, using on average 345 requests per day per user, while some other apps use 100. I'd like to use some numbers to illustrate why I think this is very unfairly framing it.
Up until a week ago, the stated Reddit API rate limits that apps were asked to operate within was 60 requests per minute per user. That works out to a total of 86,400 per day. Reddit stated that Apollo uses 345 requests per user per day on average, which is also in line with my findings. Thats 0.4% of the limit Reddit was previously imposing, which I would say is quite efficient.
As an analogy (can you tell I love analogies?), to scale the numbers, if I was to borrow my friend’s car and he said “Please don’t drive it more than 864 miles” and I returned the car with 3.4 miles driven, I think he’d be pretty happy with my low use. The fact that a different friend one week only used 1 mile is really cool, but I don't think either person is "inefficient".
That being said, if Reddit would like to see Apollo make further optimizations to get its existing number lower, I’m genuinely more than happy to do so! However the 30 day limit they’ve given me after announcing the pricing to when I will start getting charged significant amounts of money is not enough time to deal with rewriting large parts of my app to lower total requests, while also changing the payment model, transitioning users, and ensuring this is all properly tested and gets through app review.
Further, Reddit themselves said to me that the majority of the cost isn't the server, it's the opportunity cost per user, so the focus on 100 versus 345 calls, rather than the cost per user, doesn't sound genuine. At the very least providing even a bit more time to lower usage to their new targets would be feasible if they've historically provided it, and it's not the majority of the costs anyway.

Me: "Because I assume the majority of it isn't server costs. I assume the majority is the opportunity cost per user." Reddit: "Exactly."

Why not just increase the price of Apollo?

One option many have suggested is to simply increase the price of Apollo to offset costs. The issue here is that Apollo has approximately 50,000 yearly subscribers at the moment. On average they paid $10/year many months ago, a price I chose based on operating costs I had at the time (server fees, icon design, having a part-time server engineer). Those users are owed service as they already prepaid for a year, but starting July 1st will (in the best case scenario) cost an additional $1/month each in Reddit fees. That's $50,000 in sudden monthly fee that will start incurring in 30 days.
So you see, even if I increase the price for new subscribers, I still have those many users to contend with. If I wait until their subscription expires, slowly month after month there will be less of them. First month $50,000, second month maybe $45,000, then $40,000, etc. until everything has expired, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would be cheaper to simply refund users.
I hope you can recognize how that's an enormous amount of money to suddenly start incurring with 30 days notice. Even if I added 12,000 new subscribers at $5/month (an enormous feat given the short notice), after Apple's fees that would just be enough to break even.
Going from a free API for 8 years to suddenly incurring massive costs is not something I can feasibly make work with only 30 days. That's a lot of users to migrate, plans to create, things to test, and to get through app review, and it's just not economically feasible. It's much cheaper for me to simply shut down.

So what is the REAL issue you're having?

Hopefully that illustrates why, even more than the large price associated with the API, the 30 day timeline between when the pricing was announced and developers will be charged is a far, far, far bigger issue and not one I can overcome. Much more time would be needed to overhaul the payment model in my app, transition existing users from existing plans, test the changes, and have users update to the new version.
As a comparison, when Apple bought Dark Sky and announced a shut down of their API, knowing that this API was at the core of many businesses, they provided 18 months before the API would be turned off. When the 18 months came, they ultimately extended it another 12 months, resulting in a total transition period of 30 months. While I'm not asking for that much, Reddit's in comparison is 30 days.

Reddit says you won't get your first bill until August 1st, though!

The issue is the size of the bill, not when it will arrive. Significant, significant charges for the API will start building up with 30 days notice on July 1st, the fact that the bill for those charges being 30 days from then is not important. If you hear that your electricity bill is going up 1,000x and the company tells you, "Don't worry, the bill only comes at the end of the month", I hope you understand how that isn't comforting.

What would be a good price/timeline?

I hope I explained above why the 30 day time limit is the true issue. However in a perfect world I think lowering the price by half and providing a three month transition period to the paid API would make the transition feasible for more developers, myself included. These concessions seem minor and reasonable in the face of the changes.

I thought you said Reddit would be flexible on the timeline?

That was my understanding as well based on what they said on a call on May 4th:

Reddit: "If there's an entity who's like 'Hey I'm showing really good progress', you know trying to like we're trying to get a contract in place, we're trying to do all that type of stuff, I don't think you're going to see us be like, you know, like overly aggressive on that timeline. And I feel pretty confident about that point by the way based on conversations I've heard internally."

However when asking about more time, such as a 90 day transition period to make the changes, they said:

Reddit: "On the 90-day transition, remember that billing doesn't kick in until July 1. So you won't see your first bill from July until the beginning of August, and it won’t be due until the end of August (It’s net 30 day billing). You do, however, have to sign an agreement to get paid level access on July 1."

Did you explicitly ask Reddit for more time?

Yes, my last email to them (including Steve) said:

In terms of timeline, what concerns me most is the short nature of it before I start incurring costs. I have a large amount of users at price points that I won’t be able to afford to support with 30 days notice. For instance, users who subscribed for a year for $10 six months ago when I had no idea any of this was coming, amounts to $0.83 per month or $0.58 after Apple’s cut. Even if I’m able to decrease my API usage down to the number in your charts, that still puts me in the red for everyone of those users for awhile with no recourse. A situation like this is one that is legitimately making me legitimately leaning toward shutting down the app, but one that I could salvage if given more time to transition from the free API to the paid API.
In prior calls you mentioned that provided I kept communicating and progress was being made, the timeline wasn’t an absolute.
Is that still the case, or is it now the case that the date is set in stone?

That was a week ago and I've yet to receive any further contact from Reddit.

Isn't this your fault for building a service reliant on someone else?

To a certain extent, yes. However, I was assured this year by Reddit not even that long ago that no changes were planned to be made to the API Apollo uses, and I've made decisions about how to monetize my business based on what Reddit has said.

January 26, 2023 Reddit: "So I would expect no change, certainly not in the short to medium term. And we're talking like order of years."

Another portion of the call:

January 26, 2023 Reddit: "There's not gonna be any change on it. There's no plans to, there's no plans to touch it right now in 2023. Me: "Fair enough." Reddit: "And if we do touch it, we're going to be improving it in some way."

Will you build a competitor? Move to one of the existing alternatives?

I've received so many messages of kind people offering to work with me to build a competitor to Reddit, and while I'm very flattered, that's not something I'm interested in doing. I'm a product guy, I like building fun apps for people to use, and I'm just not personally interested in something more managerial.
These last several months have also been incredibly exhausting and mentally draining, I don't have it in me to engage in something so enormous.

Will you sell Apollo?

Probably not. Maybe if the perfect buyer came along who thought they could turn Apollo into something cool and sustainable, but I'd rather the app just die if it would go to a company that would turn something I worked really hard on into something that would ruin its legacy.
To be clear: I am not threatening anyone in the previous paragraph.

Reddit states that the Twitter comparison is unfair

Reddit stated on the first call that they don't want to be like Twitter:
"I think one thing that we have tried to be very, very, very intentional about is we are not Elon, we're not trying to be that, we're not trying to go down that same path. [...] We are trying to do is just use usage-based pricing, that will hopefully be very transparent to you, and very clear to you. Or we're not trying to go down the same path that you may have seen some of our other peers go down."
They now state that the comparison of how close their pricing comes to Twitter is an unfair one, and that when they said that above, they were apparently referring not to the pricing, but to the decision Twitter made to ban third-party apps at a rule level, not a pricing level.
I think regardless of whatever their intent/meaning behind the comparison to Twitter was, the result is the same: the pricing will kill third-party apps, just as Twitter did.
I said this to Reddit, and they responded that they don't think Twitter's pricing is unreasonable, and that if anything, if Twitter reversed the rule about third-party apps, they would probably increase the prices as well.
Just to be clear about how wrong and out of touch that is, without naming names, a formerly very, very high up person at Twitter messaged me on Twitter and said:

"The Reddit api moves are crazy. I’m not sure what choices you have but to move to another network. That pricing is designed to prevent apps like yours forevermore."

So to be clear, even this person thinks this pricing is unreasonable. I do too.

Have you talked to CEO Steve Huffman about any of this?

I requested a call to talk to Steve about some suggestions I had, his response was "Sorry, no. You can give name-redacted a ping if you want."
I've then emailed that person (same person I've been talking to for months) suggestions approximately one week ago about how Apollo could survive this, and I've yet to receive a response.

Do I support the protest/Reddit blackout?

Abundantly. Unlike other social media companies like Facebook and Twitter who pay their moderators as employees, Reddit relies on volunteers to do the hard work for free. I completely understand that when tools they take to do their volunteer, important job are taken away, there is anger and frustration there. While I haven't personally mobilized anyone to participate in the blackout out of fear of retaliation from Reddit, the last thing I want is for that to feel like I don't support the folks speaking up. I wholeheartedly do.
It's been a horrible week, and the kindness Redditors and moderators and communities have shown Apollo and other third-party apps has genuinely made it much more bearable and I am genuinely so appreciative.
I am, admittedly, doubtful Reddit wants to listen to folks anymore so I don't see it having an effect.

Your initial post in April sounded quite optimistic. Are you dumb?

In hindsight, kinda yeah. Many of the other developers and folks I talked to were much less optimistic than I was, but I legitimately had great interactions with Reddit for many years prior to last week (they were kind, communicative, gave me heads up of changes), so when they said they were aiming to have pricing that would be fair and based in reality, I honestly believed them. That was foolish of me in hindsight, and maybe could have had a different outcome if I was more aggressive in the beginning. Sorry. /canadian
(And to be clear, they did indeed say this. They used the word "substantive" and I wanted to make sure we had the same definition of something "having a firm basis in reality and therefore important, meaningful, or considerable")

Reddit: "That's exactly right. And I think, thankfully, the word is exactly the right one. It's going to have a firm basis in reality. I also just looked it up. We're going to try to be as transparent as we can."

Reddit claims they've reached out to developers who were bad users of the API, was Apollo contacted?

On May 31st Reddit posted a chart of large excess usage by some unlabeled API clients, and stated: "We reached out to the most impactful large scale applications in order to work out terms for access above our default rate limits via an enterprise tier."
To be clear, Apollo was never contacted, and I've been told from someone internally that Apollo is indeed not one of the unlabeled API clients.
The only time that Apollo was reached out to by Reddit in any capacity about usage was late last year when we received an email about a 6 minute period where Apollo's server API usage increased by 35% before lowering again. Despite 35% for 6 minutes being a comparatively small blip (the above post references clients that are over by 500000%), we responded within 2 minutes. We offered to jump on a call with Reddit engineers if they needed an answer ASAP, identified the issue within several hours and Reddit thanked us for the fast investigation.
Full email transcript: https://gist.github.com/christianselig/6c71608cf617d2f881cd2849325494c1

Claims that Apollo has made no attempt to be a good user of the API

On the call with moderators, Steve Huffman said:

"I don't use the app, so I'll give you the best answer I can -- he does scraping so that he can deliver notifications faster, but has done NO EFFORT to be a good citizen of the internet."

First off, Apollo does no scraping, it's purely through authenticated calls to the API and has checks in place to ensure it stays within Reddit's API rate limits. I've open sourced the server code to show this.
Secondly, to say we have made no effort is categorically false. I have so many emails reached out to Reddit on multiple occasions expressing concern about and bugs inefficiencies in the API, or ideas on how to improve things, or significant Reddit bugs that made things hard on us. When Reddit has had questions for us, as discussed above, we immediately jumped into action to get an answer as quickly as possible.
Here's an email of me giving a heads up to Reddit of IP address changes on our server:

Me: "With the new change it'll be maybe like, one IP address. This is all obviously still within the API rate limits as the requests are from individual user accounts that have signed in. Again, long story short the result will be more optimized if anything, I just wanted to give a heads up and ensure that it'd be okay if Reddit suddenly saw the server go from a bunch of different IP addresses to a single one which might cause some confusion if I didn't give a heads up."

Me wanting to make sure we were doing everything as best as we could:

Me: "Everything is going well, we just had a few questions about best practices making sure we’re following any suggestions your team has. Is there any way we could poke someone on your team with a few questions we’ve been having and have a tiny back and forth? We were just seeing some elevated response times, and just thought it would be great if we could maybe describe what we’re doing and see if anything seems off/suboptimal."

Me reporting to Reddit that the API has a serious bug in recording rate limits:

We obviously respect the rate limit headers and if a user comes close to approaching it (within 50 requests of the 600 every 10 minutes limit) we stop their requests until the refresh period occurs. However we're seeing some users have very, very weird rate limit headers. Things like "requests remaining: 0, requests made: 17,483, reset: 598 seconds left" which indicates they've somehow made over 17 thousand requests in two seconds which seems hard to believe.

Me suggesting to Reddit improvements that could help improve efficiency of notification API calls:

Me: "So like little stuff like that, where even if there's a streaming client or some way to minimize the calls there, I think it would help us both out enormously."

Further, when making suggestions to your own employees, they themselves have expressed concern about how terrible the public API is:

Call on January 26, 2023 Reddit: "I cannot tell you how painful it is to use our API. [...] The API needs to change. Like it's just unusable. I am surprised that you're able to build a functional app on it to be honest."

Claims that third-party apps are not interested in talking

Steve: "Why not work with the third party apps? Their existence is not a priority for us. We don't use them. I don't use them. It's a part of our traffic but not a lot, and it's a lot of work on our side to keep them alive. If I have to choose where to put our effort, we're going to focus internally. I'm kind of open to it, but I haven't – and I can't convince you, but I don't get the sense that they want to work with us either."

I'm genuinely not sure where Steve has got the impression that I don't want to work with him. Despite reaching out multiple times and him declining to talk, I've stated multiple times on calls, literally saying the words "I definitely still want to talk".

Reddit: "What I'm hearing is like, Yeah, great. We have this disagreement on pricing methodology, etc. But any feasible number that we get to, any number that's even in, the zip code of what we're sharing with you is unfeasible from your perspective financially. So it's like arguing around the edges of that price thing is like, it just won't make any sense to you. And I presume also just given the NSFW stuff and the removal of ads that makes it even more trickier." Me: Yeah. I mean, to be very clear, I'm not saying I'm walking away from the negotiation table and taking my basketball and going home and just gonna kick up a storm. That's not my intention at all. I definitely still want to talk. I'm not asking you to lower the price by a hundred times or something. I don't think – depending on what you mean by zip code – I don't think I'm so unreasonable that I'm requiring you to bend over backwards here."

I've also emailed Steve and the other contact directly stating that I'm interested in talking, and including ideas for how we could come to a solution:

Me: "I understand where Reddit's coming from in this. A free API, while appreciated, is not tenable for you especially heading into an IPO, and my only goal here is to come to a solution where we both feel understood. I also hear you that killing third-party clients isn't actually the goal, and in that spirit have been working on how to address your concerns from my end: [...]"

I don't know how you can say I'm not interested in talking when you haven't my most recent email in a week. To say it once more, I was very interested in talking.
On the other side of things, per the transcript, Steve and the other admin on the call don't even know when the discussions with third-party apps began.

Steve: "When did we start talking with them?" AnAbsurdlyAngryGoose: "What month did you first start?" Steve: "FlyingLaserTurtles? Do you remember? April or May of this year." FlyingLaserTurtles: "Maybe late March? But yes."

Claims that Reddit has been talking to developers for months talking about these changes

Steve: "We've been in contact with third party apps for MONTHS, talking about these coming changes."

When you announce that the API will be charging developers, the most important portion of that conversation is what will be charged, which was not available for almost two months after the initial call. From the time developers were told the price, to the time developers will be subject to the price, is 30 days, not "months". Months would have been very helpful, in fact.

What about existing subscriptions?

I've been talking to my rep at Apple, and over the next few weeks my plan is to release something similar to what Tweetbot did (Paul has been incredibly helpful in all of this) where folks can decide if they want a pro-rated refund on any existing time left in their subscription as Apollo will not be able to afford to continue it, or they can decline the refund if they're feeling kind and have enjoyed their time with Apollo.
For the curious, refunding all existing subscriptions by my estimates will cost me about $250,000.

A nice send off at WWDC

Apollo got mentioned a few times during Apple's 2023 WWDC keynote, even by Craig Federighi himself, and even during the Vision Pro announcement showing Apollo as one of the existing apps compatible with the headset (I'm sorry I won't be able to see that happen).
I was lucky enough to be there in person and it felt incredible. Some folks asked if there was any deeper meaning behind that, and while that would be cool, in all reality these things are so well produced that they've been done for a while now, so I'm sure it's just a coincidence, even if it's a really cool one.

Extra icons

A funny amount of people have reached out wondering about all the extra monthly icons I had queued up for Apollo. I love them, was so excited for them, and I'll make them available immediately for the short time left, but if you're curious here's a screenshot of all of them: https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/remaining-icons.png
We ended up with well over 100 custom icons created by incredibly talented designers, and I'm really sorry to those designers who didn't get to see their work launched in the app (to be clear, don't worry, I paid them all – there isn't some bs "exposure" agreement – but it's fun to have your icon launch and I feel bad!)

When is Apollo's last day? What will happen?

In order to avoid incurring charges I will delete Apollo's API token on the evening of June 30th PST. Until that point, Apollo should continue to operate as it has, but after that date attempts to connect to the Reddit API will fail.
I will put up an explainer in the app prior to that which will go live at that date. I will also provide a tool to export any local data you have in Apollo, such as filters or favorites.

Thank you

I want to thank a lot of people who have made this last week bearable. First and foremost, the communities, Redditors, and moderators who have reached out in support of third-party apps, making Reddit's gaslighting a lot more bearable in making me feel like at least someone was understanding me and in my corner.
My girlfriend's been absolutely incredible and supportive. This year was our 10th anniversary, and Monday was her 30th birthday. We're down in California for Apple's WWDC and had a bunch of things planned to do for her birthday afterward, and I feel terrible that we're flying home early to deal with all of this instead of making her 30th special. I'll make it up to her.
André Meidoros worked on the Apollo server component with me for the last two years, and it's been an absolute joy to work with a professional who knows so much on that side of things.
The iOS developer community has been unbelievably kind to me over the past several weeks, I've spent the last week with many of them, even staying at an Airbnb with a bunch of them (they ordered me pizza as I wrote this post!), and I've got so many hugs and condolences haha. Specifically want to thank Paul Haddad of Tweetbot/Tapbots/Ivory, Ryan Jones, Brian Mueller, Curtis Herbert, André Meidoros, Quinn Nelson, Paul Hudson, Majd Taby, Ryan McLeod, Phill Ryu, Larry Hryb, Charlie Chapman, Mustafa Yusuf, Adrian Eves, Devin Davies, Jordan Morgan, Yariv Nassim, Will Sigmon, Barry Hershman, Joe Rossignol, Michael Simmons, Joe Fabisevich, my family, and so, so many more.
Also want to thank everyone at Apple who have gone out of their way to be incredibly kind here (I don't know if I'm allowed to name names but you know who you are).

I'll be fine

No bullshit, I'll be fine. Through pure chance last year I spun off my silly Pixel Pals idea into a separate app, and that actually makes good revenue on the side. I also have savings. Recently (like last week) my city had its worst wildfires in history with over 100 homes destroyed. That's brutal, losing an app is sad, but it's been helpful to me to recognize how much worse it could be just literally down the street from me.
Honestly. Apollo had an incredible run, I met the coolest people, by my last count talked with folks over 15,000 times in our subreddit about Apollo, and raised over $80,000 for my local animal shelter through Apollo. I feel incredibly fortunate.
I think I'll rewatch Ted Lasso though.

Supporting my work

I build a second app called Pixel Pals that I spun off from Apollo that's thankfully done pretty well and I'll be spending more time on going forward. If you like the idea of digital pets it's a really fun app to check out. https://pixelpa.ls

Media

If any media/press folks have any questions, please shoot me an email rather than messaging me on Reddit, I missed a few last week because my inbox was blowing up. My email is [email protected]

AMA

I think I covered everything, but if there's any questions feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer!
In the event that this post is taken down or you want to link somewhere else, it's also available at https://apolloapp.io
Thanks for everything over these last 8 years,
- Christian

My family and I (26F) just moved across the country recently. My husband (29M) went ahead of us to get the house ready since we have two young children under the age of 5. When he moved into our new home, he was greeted by neighbors with both welcomes and warnings.
The warnings were about a woman we’ll call Cassie (35F), who lives with her parents three houses down from ours. She has down-syndrome and not only has a history of trespassing and breaking into neighbors houses, but actively tries to do even to this day. They further warned him that if you’re nice or friendly when talking to her, it would trigger these events of trespassing and breaking in. She’ll try to do so on multiple occasions. This is because she assumes you’re her friend, and will invite herself into your house, car or yard, even if the gate and doors are locked.
When asking why her parents aren’t getting involved to help stop this behavior, all the neighbors had to say, was that the parents were approached with this multiple times, but they simply don’t care. My husband confirmed this when he later spoke with the parents himself when he found Cassie trying to get into his car. They simply told him to call the police, and that they don’t want to be involved in the mess their daughter causes to herself.
I am someone who’s usually an anxious mess and extremely awkward in social situations that make me feel uncomfortable. This is especially true if I’m warned about someone who is potentially harmful, and if said person is around I try to avoid them at any cost. This is something I am working on because I know it isn’t healthy.
Yesterday, when grabbing groceries out of the back driver side of my car, I feel a tug on my purse. I essentially jump out of my skin because up until then there was no-one outside when I got home, and I especially wasn’t expecting anyone to sneak up on me let alone touch me. Of course, it was Cassie, who I hadn’t met prior to this interaction. She was still clutching onto my purse and was telling me it was very pretty, and then started asking an assortment of questions like who I was, if she could use the purse, where I came from, and if she can come into the house because she’s seen a cat through the window and wants to pet it.
I continued to stare at her in shock until she tried unzipping my purse, because in her words, she wanted to know what was inside. I admit, it wasn’t my best moment, and it would make me an asshole. Out of panic, I yank my purse away, and say, “Es tut mir leid, ich spreche kein Englisch.” Cassie stares at me and asks “What?” I quickly close the door to my car, lock it and run inside my house groceries in hand, horrified of what just happened. Once inside with a door between us, and bags on the kitchen counter, only a handful of seconds must’ve passed before the doorknob starts to wiggle, making me basically dive to one of the locks before she can open it. Once she realizes she can’t just walk in, she goes to a window with raised blinds, where our cats would safely watch the outside world, and peers into the home.
After a while she does leave, and eventually my husband gets home with the kids. I tell him what happened, he chuckles out of my expense but did call me an asshole for not being straight forward in telling Cassie to not touch me or my belongings, and to leave me alone.
So, AITA for panicking and speaking another language to get out of an interaction with a neighbor?

Hi everyone,
I started dating a dismissive avoidant in the fall, and then they ended it quickly out of fear with no explanation. It was very short, we only went on a few dates, but they said they wanted to stay friends. They were definitely very into things at the beginning, and then it was like a switch. I'm pretty sure I know what triggered them, but I can't say here. I agreed to stay friends, because I really like them, but it turns out I actually still want more with them. Well, recently, they have been contacting me a lot more. They asked me multiple times about an injury I sustained to see if I was okay, they asked if they could help me with work I was stressed out about, they asked for my help with multiple work projects they're doing, they're asking me how my week's going and sending me Instagram DMs, they complimented me on a work thing I did, and we work together and they were being flirty/teasing at work. They always text me back really quickly. Just for more background, I know they aren't a narcissist, just a DA. Are these subtle signs that the DA is coming back around, or am I reading too much into it and are they just reaching out like this to be friendly?

I had this random thought and made concepts for 3 new resuply pods (of course this would require an additional resuply pod option in the equipment customization menu)

1. "Quick refill" pod - It would be a crate costing 50 nitra that arrives sooner than any other resuply pod and need only 2 seconds to open so that the contents spill out. Inside it there would be 4 mini ammo packs that would refill 25% of your health and ammo. You would be able to pick up mini ammo packs instantly and they would disapear 30 seconds after opening the crate.-uses: The "Quick refill" could be usefull in dire situations like in the middle of a swarm or dreadnaught fight or even saving you at the last moment while using iron will but would strugle when it comes to sustain as you need to spend more nitra to get the same ammount of ammo as the regulare resuply pod
2. "Automated ammo dispenser" - It would be a machine costing 120 nitra that would automatically atach itself to your gun with a pipe and start pumping ammo directly into your gun holding a mighty 400% worth of ammo and health the only problem is how slow the machine is as in the time it takes the machine to get you from 0 to 100 you could have taken all 4 ammo slots on the regular resuply pod.-uses: The "Automatic ammo dispenser" excells at being cost efficient and at providing sustain at the cost of the time it takes for the dispenser to refill your ammo and health. It could be usefull during stationary objectives like fuel cell recharging
3. "Golden shower" - It would be a small box with a singular 50% resuply on top costing 40 nitra. When the resuply is collected the box starts spewing out gold chunks like a resuply crate equating to about 40 gold (with a little bit of rng sprinkeled into there)-uses: The "Golden shower" is for all those Dwarves that have 300 nitra and a gun full of ammo at the end of the mission. It could be usefull in solo missions or at the end of multiplayer missions using the leftover nitra for monetary gain.

The number one thing I love in the game is the customization and adaptation so I just wanted to give ideas how to add more of it. (Also sorry for the typos and mistakes I made in the post)

As a 25 year-old male, I’m currently still living with my parents by choice even though I’m financially capable of living on my own (I’ll explain why in a moment). I still pay most of my own bills with the exception of health insurance for now, and although I’ve been mostly independent taking care of my career and life in general otherwise, all of a sudden, I can’t help but feel like I’m not really an adult at all. Two months ago, I found out that my younger 22 year-old sister is getting engaged to someone she’s been dating for a year, and when my family speaks of her, it’s almost like she’s described as the older sibling who’s more of an established independent adult.
She moved into her friends’ apartment not far from us after graduating last year, but she’s still not settled with the career she wants as a full-time elementary school teacher. As for getting married so young and so quickly, well, it’s pretty common in Christian culture considering how she went to an all Christian college and grew up with a very devout family that followed the same trend. Nonetheless, I don’t actually envy marriage since I have no interest in it, but it’s still a traditional staple of “American adulthood.”
My career has been anything but traditional — even the trajectory of it was unorthodox from the start. For one, I work in the film and television industry as a freelancer. Despite not having the specific career I want in this industry yet as a music video director and eventual commercial director (way easier said than done for anyone who’s unfamiliar), just being able to break in as a camera assistant on set has been hard enough considering how I’m not in a busy area like NY or LA yet (freelancing almost entirely boils down to making the right connections).
Still, I’ve done fairly well so far trying to make my way throughout a pandemic, and without a film school education (I’m actually working on another Netflix show at the moment). I’m living at home because I’ve been developing a rather complicated short film/spec-video on-and-off for the past three years that will slowly-but-surely advance me to the career I want (it’s been a while partly because of COVID, depression, and trying to keep myself stable in the industry). So staying with them has allowed me the flexibility to work on this project, while I’m also getting established enough so I can have a strong network to fall back on when I move out next year. But now that I think about it, most of my teenage cousins will likely settle into the stable careers they want before making down-payments on a house and starting their own families by their late 20’s or early-to-mid 30’s. Unlike me.
It’s not a long-term priority of mine to make these specific tenets of the American Dream my own. All things rationally considered, I should be content with my own decisions in life so far along with my trajectory, regardless of whether or not it’s the status quo. My gut insecurity, on the other hand, tells me that I lack any real independence and maturity without the ingredients that typically signify them. After all, there’s a reason why people around my age and above are uneasy to admit if they still live with their parents, even if they have good reasons to. Here’s my younger sister on her way towards having her own family a year after graduating, while I’m still living in the same house we grew up in.

Several hours after I was left to browse the web I began to get hungry, but I have no idea how to get food since we’re supposedly in orbit and I didn’t see a cafeteria on my way to get my new arm. I look around the room for one of those buttons that will request a nurse to come to your room but I couldn’t find one, either they’re hidden, blending in or more likely there just isn’t one. I go back to the holo screen and look in the manual to see if it can call someone, but nothing, strange, do they expect all patients to be mobile? Or maybe their medical tech is so advanced that anyone who is immobile is unconscious, maybe I’ll ask a nurse on my way to get food. I walk up to the door and it slides open sensing me, looking around I don’t see an alien nurse, just those guards slithering around, going left I walk towards a guard with dull yellow skin and bright red eyes, she notices me right away and gives a wave and smile before waiting for me in place,
“Hey pretty human, what are you doing out of your room?” Do all of them act this weird?
“Um… I got hungry and was wondering where the food court was.”
“Oh I think I’m staring at a buffet.” her eyes look me up and down, seeming to ignore or not care that I have a robotic limb.
“I-I… um… can you please just tell me, I’m really not in the mood for… this.” Maybe if I’m blunt about this she’ll get the message, or maybe all female aliens are persistent creeps.
“Oh, I uh, I’m sorry, just keep walking that way and take the first left then keep going you’ll be in a big room, sorry I just thought, sorry.” well that worked better than expected, strange how easy these people seem to get embarrassed about confrontation, I’m no better though.
Giving her an awkward thanks I speed walk towards the court while I hear mumbling behind me. Following her directions I end up in a massive room filled with delicious smells and decorated with planters bursting with red trees and orange bushes, the food stalls are built into the walls just like an earth mall, the inhabitants are mostly Argochuria wearing uniforms but the occasional human breaks up the crowd here and there. One human lady arguing animatedly with an alien, gesturing wildly with both arms being cybernetic.
Ignoring them, all the food I see others holding is in some way exotic, green meats, yellow grains, pink fruit, purple bread among them, some prepared in unique ways, others look like earth foods re-colored and some are just in a blue foam like box. I decide on a stall with pink and lime flashing light that has a sign reading “Lukanog’s,” the cashier is a very bored looking Argochuria with red skin dotted by discolorations, she looks down and dead pans, “chit or bill?” I assume those are payment methods but I have neither.
“Uhm, I’m a patient from earth, do I get a free meal?” it’s worth a shot at least, worst case I go hungry for a day, maybe the job I’m being forced into will give free food.
With a sigh through the face scar she replies, “that would be a bill sir, get it now pay when you can,” ah, HOW THE FUCK WOULD I KNOW THAT DIBSHIT
“Oh ok, can I get…” shit, I have no idea if any of this is good, “can I get a Hadner with a side of Regon” on the menu it looks like a green and purple hot dog with a side of some sort of berries.
“And your drink sir?”
“Do you guys have fruit juice?” A simple nod is all I get before she taps away at a holo screen. After a few seconds of standing in silence she looks back at me and hands me a small coin object made of some sort of plastic like material with a number on it ‘2348.’ I go to an open table and sit by my lonesome, assuming that she will call my number up. I watch the other people in the enormous room going about their business, talking, eating, just relaxing, or yelling in the case of some who seem to be getting ignored. A few minutes of alien watching later I hear a deadpan voice call my number, I walk up and grab my food giving quick thanks before I return to my spot. Just as I pick up the hot dog thing and open my mouth I hear a female alien voice ask me, “you Yagak Grolgem?”
“Yeah? Who are you?” I look up to see an 8 foot tall orange skin Argochuria with blazing pink eyes staring back at me
“Can I sit with you?” she seems to avoid the simple question
“Uh, sure?” I don’t think I should piss of the giant muscle girl for my own safety
“Thanks.'' She takes a seat, she wears a white tank top with a sort of jean skirt that has two belts pulled taught on both ends. Her face looks like she’s trying to remain neutral but with cracks of emotion peaking through, anxiety, frustration, and… regret? “I suppose you don’t know who I am.”
“Not a clue.” seeing that this was to be a conversation I put the hotdog down on the tray
“I am Lengu, a soldier who liberated earth, and I know you.” she huffs it out like she’s been working up the nerve for weeks, sucks for her because now I’m leaving
“Well it’s been great but I gotta go, I think someone’s in my room waiting for me.” total bullshit but my past experiences say these women get the message quick. Standing with my tray I only make it a few steps before her hand grabs me on my organic arm, no one seems to notice or if they do they don’t care
“Please, please stay and listen to me, I'm begging you.” she really does sound like she is begging me, while I don’t trust her I am in a hospital already so I sit back down, “thank you.”
“Yeah just don’t try and claim my other arm for yourself, the last military invader I ran into already took the left.” she gives a little snort and shakes her head
“I would like to say…” she clears her throat and waits a few second before breathing deeply, “I would like to say that I am truly and deeply sorry beyond what words can express, if you do not forgive me you would be in the right as I changed your life forever, but I am sorry.” She stares at the table, trying to remain stoic but with flakes of emotion showing. I think I know what this is about but it’d be real awkward if I was wrong, swallowing my hate and rage and ask
“Are you the one that took my arm?”
“... yes.” is all she has to say for herself. A solid minute of silence passes between us but it feels like hours, Argochurian hours.
“I… I don’t know what to say. You want me to say you're forgiven? All's Well that ends well? I don’t care, you invaded my world, took my arm, and had me shipped off to god know where!”
“No, I just needed to have my apologies spoken to the one I wronged, whether or not you forgive me is not my choice.” the audacity. I feel like screaming like a human voice on the other end of the cafeteria, or making her go through what I went through, maybe both, but I sit there in silence.
What do I even say, I mean I wish she were dead, but for me not that much time has even passed, I’ve only been conscious and without an arm for a few minutes at most. My rage hasn’t had the time to build into a true grudge, and seeing the guts in this bitch… seeing the bravery and regret… I’m at a loss and struggling to stay angry, it seeping away like my blood, three days ago. And with a great sigh,
“I forgive you.” rage is good, a part of existence really, but you can’t let it guide you, you’ll become lost and lose more than you ever thought you could. “On one condition,” she already had been staring back at me in utter shock, not even trying to hide it, but now she nods frantically.
“YES, yes anything you want!”
“Pay my hospital and food bills.” may as well get something out of this, don’t want to be forced into my new life and find out that aliens also have ridiculous medical bills too.
“But the hospital is free?” she has a quizzical look about her
“Well that's good to know, but what about my food?”
“Oh, that's like 12 credits… done,” she pulls out a pen that emits a Holographic display, “How about we go and buy you some new clothes too.” well shit she is right, I do need new clothes.
“I think I’ll take you up on that, just let me eat.” she awkwardly stares at me as I finish my food. The hotdog tastes of beef while the berries are bitter sweet, the drink tastes like fruit punch. Once I finally finish, I stand up whipping my hands with a napkin and I ask, “alright, so where do hospitals sell clothes?”
“There’s an essentials store for patients about to be reassigned, follow me.” as we walk, slither, the sound and smells of the food court slowly fade away. A couple of guards give us the side eye as we pass by. I know they are not against species mixing, if what Ullgo said is true about all of them, maybe they’re just jealous? Or maybe it’s actually not allowed but they do it anyway? A couple turns later and we come to a hallway lined with glass windows peaking into shops of several sorts,
“Alright, being part of the military means I get paid well, I’ll buy you two outfits and some sort of personal device.” she smiles down with a proud look about her, like she finally can move on with life after this. Giving a nod I choose the store that appears to feature males of several species, one of which is human, and walk in. How they got a guy to agree to a photo shoot and mass produce enough clothes to fill god knows how many shops in three days is beyond me. and these aren't just clothes stolen from earth, most feature some some sort of alien sense to them, whether the material, add-ons, or the patterns, few are either from or inspired by earth fashion. As we enter a small yellow Argochuria male behind the register greets us.
I walk towards a section clearly labeled “human” and look around at my options. Browsing the strange alien wares I settle on; a tank top made of some sort of water wicking material, a pair of shorts made of the same stuff as the tank top and has zipper pockets, a sort of t-shirt that has sleeves that go to my elbows, and a pair of deep pocket jean like pants, oh and underwear and socks. “Can I get shoes too?” I ask her to which she says yes. I pick some boots, can’t go wrong with boots.
“Hello, chit or bill.” the man isn’t as tired sounding as the food court clerk but he’s not enthusiastic, who would be
“Chit.” Lengu says
As he begins to scan the items, which don’t have tags weirdly, he smirks and asks, “I knew soldiers were desperate for a husband, but to immediately start dating a human only three days after liberation?”
Lengu begins to turn a deeper shade of orange before firmly stating, “we are not dating, I just wanted to make it up to him.”
“Oh, what’d she do to you.” he says with only slight concern
“... She took my arm…” the room falls deadly silent, I can hear the hidden AC unit working away somewhere, I can hear my own heart beat as he clears his throat
“62 creds” he seems timid, like at any second I’ll snap
“Thank you…” she says as she pulls out the pen sized device and scans it on the computer
“Have a good day.” I say trying to ease him up, which thankfully works, the poor fella was so stiff you could mistake him for a board
“You too sir.” walking over to the tech store Lengu gives me a couple of glances and I sigh
“I already said I forgive you, let's just get this last thing and you don’t have to see me ever again.” she opens her mouth to say something but closes it
The tech shop is much more boring, different pens lined up based on size and that's it. The cashier here is just a very bored looking red skinned male. I pick out one that sticks just barely out of my hand and walk up to the counter, “chit or bill” he says in the neutral voice of boredom, clearly not much traffic in here.
“Chit.” Lengu says, the same scan as before and we’re back out and walking back to the food court in silence, then back to my room in utter silence aside from passers by. I see a few humans pass us by, all with escorts, and seeing what was done to them… maybe I got lucky.
When we arrive outside my room we stop and stand in silence for a few seconds “Listen I’m sorry again, that was supposed to be fun or interesting but I made it awkward… again.” she seems frustrated and embarrassed, with a hand on her neck and all her eyes staring at the floor
“Well you helped me alot in a short amount of time, so thanks, and hey I got a cool robot arm out of the deal.” At that she bursts out laughing as I start to chuckle,
What an absurd situation I’ve been forced into. Maybe this ain’t all so bad after all, maybe there’s good Argochurians as there are bad Humans, maybe I’ll enjoy my new forced life just a little. Hey, the arm is pretty cool and hard to remember it’s metal with how real it feels
“I hope we meet again Yagak, you're a kind soul” she wipes tears from her lower eyes.
“Yeah me too.” I drop my stuff and give her a bear hug. She grunts in surprise but picks me up in return, “see you again sometime, Lengu.” I say picking up my stuff and walking into my room
“See you.” she waves while smiling, and to think I wanted to kill her for taking my arm, guess it was just one really fucking bad accident after all.
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