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Lonely TTRPG EP 51 - Tears of Cassandra by John McKinstry
Episode 51 • 14th August 2023 • Lonely TTRPG • Black Dragon Dungeon Company
00:00:00 00:32:22

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Transcripts

SteelStash:

Hey, everyone, before we get started, a huge content warning

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on this episode as we talk about things like addiction, death, suicide

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whole bunch of, whole bunch of stuff.

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This is a little dark, a little heavy, so if you're not in a good

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place for that type of stuff, hey just just go ahead and skip it.

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All right?

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But without further ado, let's get on with the show.

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Greetings, weary wander and welcome back to Lonely, T T R P G, the Solo

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Actual Play and Review podcast.

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This week we are playing the Tears of Cassandra by John McKinstry,

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so this is gonna be a journaling game of a fantasy and horror.

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The basic premise is, y'all remember Cassandra from your Greek myth, right?

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The famous seer and prophet who was cursed with being able to accurately predict the

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future, but no one would ever believe her.

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One of the burdens, one of the curses, the people of Troy suffered by the Greek

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gods during the Trojan War and the Iliad,

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and of course the Iliad.

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Rumor to be written by multiple people, not just Homer, kind of carrying on

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a tradition of everybody building on top of the other one, or, as my

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favorite fan theory goes basically the T T R P G game of its day.

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But Cassandra cursed by Apollo never to be believed for her accurate prophecies.

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And in this game.

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Cassandra takes that curse and is actually able to bestow her prophetic

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visions upon others through her tears.

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And of course, this is a curse on those others as well, because

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as soon as Apollo finds out about them, Apollo begins his hunt.

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So this will be played in two parts.

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Part the first going about doing your seer stuff part.

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The second Apollo is aware and has sent his hellish hounds after you.

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Now, as always, in games like this, there is a content warning.

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Okay?

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We're gonna be talking about a lot of death in here.

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We're gonna be talking about horror and the inevitability of fate.

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So as always, do what you need to do when playing this game.

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If you need to take a break, take a break.

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If you need to put it away, put it away.

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All of this stuff is perfectly fine and encouraged by the author.

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Now if you notice, we kind of breezed past a lot of the

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background and everything on this.

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That is because

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this is a 56 page book and.

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You get halfway through before you get to your prompts.

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And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

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There is a lot of well done writing in here, but that's a lot to

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cover and I'm not, I'm not reading you all of this right up front.

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So for the basic gameplay, okay, we're gonna use a deck of cards.

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We're gonna respond to the prompts on the deck of cards.

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Very standard card prompt game in that regard.

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Now there are some slight differences.

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So that first card that we draw, we're gonna remember what that suit

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is because as soon as we draw nine more cards in that suit, that will

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transition us from act one to act two.

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And then as soon as we draw 10 cards from that suit in act

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two, that is the end of the game

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now.

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We will not be playing the full two acts here tonight.

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We're gonna be playing just a little bit, get a little bit of a taste for it,

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show you guys what some of the prompts are and what some of the things you can

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do are, but this is designed to like, You're gonna run through most of the deck.

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If you're playing this game as written, you're gonna run through most of

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the deck both times until you get 10 cards in that first suit twice, and

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that is how you're going to do this.

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So for character creation, basically you just need some basic, you

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know, Hey, what's your name and what's your general temperament?

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Now there are some great questions in here for helping you get a feeling for.

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What type of setting you want, what type of seer you had, that sort of thing.

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Lot of great stuff for that and some examples on gameplay, anointment,

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all of that great stuff in here.

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I highly recommend you go check this out.

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But again, a lot of reading that we're not gonna necessarily do tonight.

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So with that, we are actually just gonna go into our gameplay.

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In the mythology we have Cassandra being immortal, being unable to die.

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So we're gonna be kind of a we're gonna be kind of a modern seer.

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Kind of ragamuffin.

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Alright.

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We, we think more highly of ourselves than we actually are.

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We are, I mean, we're basically in skid row, so that's gonna be the

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kind of environment that we're in, that we're going to go from there.

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So first things first, we need to draw our first card, and we're gonna

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be using a physical deck for this.

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We are gonna be using our Mickey Mouse deck, which I believe is almost

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as old, if not older than I am.

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But it's one of the only decks I have lying around where I

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know where all the cards are.

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So, I kind of gotta use it for tonight.

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By the way, any deck makers out there, if anybody designs decks look,

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I'm a sucker for, I'm a sucker for anybody asking me to use their stuff.

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How do you think I get all these wonderful games?

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Designers say, Hey, I made a thing.

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Do you want to check it out?

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And I'm like, of course.

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I wanna check it out.

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Send me your game.

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I will absolutely do the same thing For Decks Dice.

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Anything you wanna send, just reach out Black Dragon Dungeon company@gmail.com.

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But for our first card, we got ourselves the nine of Spades, and that

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means spades is our, is our suit the one that we have to watch out for?

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And if I was a superstitious man, I would say that ace of spades

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would always be the transition only because of old grandfather death.

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But who are we kidding?

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I am a superstitious man.

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But again, depends on if it comes up or not.

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All right, we're gonna, like I said, we're gonna play a

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little bit and see how it goes.

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So we're not a spades.

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We have a rabble-rouser runs a series of lurid stories about fake psychics.

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And in these stories, they focus on the people who claim

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to be able to see in the future.

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When these stories are running, you experience a vision of a person who

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is murdered in a fit of rage by their abusive partner When you meet that

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person, Though you discover that they're a fan of the rabble rouser tales and

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unwilling to believe a word you say, the rabble rouser will learn shortly

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after this person's violent death that you went to talk to them and became

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intrigued by you and your gifts.

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So right off the rip.

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That's a great one.

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That's a great one.

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I'm gonna say that, I'm gonna say that we were kind of skeptical about this type

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of stuff as well until we were anointed.

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And this is our first vision.

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This is our first vision.

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It is a violent death.

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We go to try to warn the person, and of course they are using all

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the same arguments and all the same.

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Rhetoric that we would have just two nights ago before our ointment.

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And I think this one's gonna hit us the hardest.

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Like this one's definitely gonna hit pretty hard because.

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We came from such a similar spot.

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We should have, we should have been able to reach out to them.

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We should have been able to figure it out.

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We couldn't.

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And then on top of all of that, we have this personality who is now harassing us.

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And the extent of that harassment, we're not sure, but like we.

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We have definitely gotten a couple voicemails a couple notes on like our

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apartment, and we are just trying to politely ignore it and see what happens.

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All right, for our next card, we got the king of hearts.

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For our next card, we got the king of hearts.

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Someone comes into your life, a new love interest or an old flame, and

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there is an immediate attraction.

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Do you already have a partner?

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Will a heart be broken?

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Will their love be unrequited or will this be the sort of a passionate relationship?

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Regardless of how it must eventually end, this person's very presence in your life,

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at least at first, bring a little joy to your pain filled world for a while.

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Add them as the person you love.

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Okay.

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All right, so one thing about this game

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is that part of Cassandra's Curse was to see everyone that she loved died,

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and that's part of the curse that was kind of bestowed on us as well.

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So,

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We'll say, we'll say it's been a couple weeks since that first vision like

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ever since the anno, like we broke up around the anointment and then like a

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couple days later we had the vision.

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We had our little, we had our little breakdown.

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We kind of sequestered ourself away.

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We basically ghosted this person and now they're back and we

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don't know how to explain it.

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I think

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part of me wants to keep them at, like, part of me wants to keep them

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kind of at arm's length, like we.

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We kind of take solace in each other that night that they show up, but I kind of

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want keep them at arms length right now.

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This is all, this is all still too new.

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It's not like we've gotten used to the fact that we're gonna be

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constantly seeing the fate of people.

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So yeah, we're definitely gonna be keeping them at arms length,

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but we are doing it out of some like misguided sense of nobility.

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All right, next up we got the eight of spades, so that's

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gonna be our second spade.

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And for the eight you encounter a person who listens.

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The person appears when you most need them, and they listen

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and do not judge what you say.

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You form a strong connection with them and may add them as a person

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you love if you wish to do so.

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All right, so I have a, I have a very weird vision for this

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and.

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I want you all to picture

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Groundhog Day and the older person living on the street.

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And that's, and that's what this person is, this is an older

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person this is an older gen.

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They're living on the streets.

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They have their issues with addiction and.

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We,

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we have our, we, we start our bond basically because I turn

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to self-medication and this has gotten really dark, really fast.

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I'm three cards in good night.

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But we've turned to self-medication and.

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One night while self-medicating we made the decision that misery loves company

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and this person had just listened without judgment, without anything.

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And yeah, I think, I think we start a regular conversation with them.

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Kind of hard to kind of hard to see how that's gonna go going

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forward, but we definitely start a regular conversation with them and,

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and that might be a point of friction with Our love Minnie, because again,

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we're keeping her at arms distance.

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We're keeping Minnie at arm's distance and like here we are

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sitting almost in the gutter drinking with Bob on a regular basis.

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And yeah, that's not, that's not great for the relationship.

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But it does accomplish the goal of keeping keeping Minnie at arm's distance.

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So wins.

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All right, next up we got the two of clubs.

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The two of clubs.

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All right, so two clubs.

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You're falsely accused of a serious crime.

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Your credibility is questioned by law enforcement, but you do eventually manage

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to convince them of your innocence.

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While held captive, you experience a slew of dreams of those whose

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fates you are sure you could have saved, but have been left unable

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to do so, your close to despair.

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And although you continue your life once released, it is with a heavy heart.

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So it seems like the rabble-rouser, Pete.

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In his frustration at not being able to really get a talk with

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us, and maybe in their attempt at proving that psychics are not real,

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they phone Pete phoned in some anonymous tip or anonymous tip.

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That we were connected with, you know, just one of the recent

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one of the recent murders.

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And like, of course, it's

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of course it's easy enough to

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get dismissed.

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Because after all, we, it wasn't, it wasn't in our area.

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It wasn't anything connected to us.

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It had nothing to do with us.

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It had nothing to do with any of the work we've been doing.

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We had an alibi for that night.

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Between Minnie and Bob, we, we definitely have.

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The alibis and you know, our landlord definitely attesting to the fact that,

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you know, while yes things have been getting strange, we have not been, we

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have not been going out at strange hours.

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But the problem is, as it so often is we live on skid row,

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which means we have no money.

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Which means we spend weeks in jail because this is a serious crime.

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This is murder, and we're being held without bail.

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Not that we could afford bail even if there was one set.

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And we're relying on a public defender, which means that, you know, the

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system is going as slow as possible.

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Like the only time the system would actually go slower is if it was a

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rich man trying to avoid at something.

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But no, it is just going at slow jurisprudence.

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It's going at a slow pace as everything else is being done,

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and we are just being held while that's happening because on paper.

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We do not look like we would be

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responsible enough to be out on our own.

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However, the court defines that, and I

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think being surrounded like.

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Being in jail, being surrounded by so many different people, it, it really

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starts to amplify and intrude on us.

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Because you know, yeah, we run into people's on a daily basis in our

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regular life, but like here we are surrounded by people who have been

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in the vicinity of violence and pain and suffering, and whether or not

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they actually did anything to cause that they have been surrounded by it.

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They are undergoing it.

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Just by the mere of fact that they are in prison instead of

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with their family, especially when they're innocent, especially the

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innocent ones that are being held.

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And we are seeing,

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we're seeing the pain of missed family events leading to.

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Leading to suicides, we're seeing the pain of a system that doesn't care leading

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to poor decisions and stands or, and future stands off with the police that

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don't end well because they never do.

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We're seeing, we're seeing all these things just from all these

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people that we're surrounded by and.

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Yeah, this is it.

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It weighs on us.

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It weighs very heavy on us.

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And when we are finally, when we're finally released I don't, I

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don't even think we, I don't even think we self-medicate with Bob.

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I think we, I think we just lock ourselves in our apartment with a bottle and.

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Yeah, try to try to try to drown out those visions.

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But.

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What we are gonna say.

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All right.

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What we're gonna say is we are gonna say that the power of the

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intensity of what we experienced alerted Apollo to our presence.

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So we are moving on from act one to act two.

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Apollo knows we exist, which means that Apollo is now hunting us.

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So now the real horror can begin.

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Anything is better than this depression.

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All right, so for our first card for act two, we got the king of diamonds.

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Now, remember, spades is the hunt card,

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but king of diamonds.

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You save someone, and that person then goes on to believe that having cheated

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death once, that they're now blessed or invincible, you observe as they start to

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do things to prove themselves and others.

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I.

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That they're invulnerable.

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They announce that they're going to tackle an extremely dangerous task

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or stunt of some kind and beg you to be there so that if a vision comes

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to you, they know not to proceed.

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You refuse, and they double down on their claims telling the world

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that they're about to do something extremely risky the night before.

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You have a dream of them standing beside a grave, but this grave is not their

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own, but of someone very close to them.

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All right.

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So yeah.

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Yeah, we've been we've been kind of doing this for a little while now.

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We've started to develop a little bit of a reputation and yeah, it would

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seem that, It would seem that Jimmy

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has taken this as a money making opportunity, which, you know,

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not a surprise, this is Skid Row.

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Everybody's looking for a way to get off of Skid Row,

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and at least Jimmy is at least Jimmy is using it as Himself and not trying to

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use me as his money-making opportunity, but I keep trying to tell him.

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I keep trying to tell him, Jimmy, look, this was a one-time thing.

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I don't know what to tell you.

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I am not going to be there and watch, try and kill yourself.

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And I can't.

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I can't be there every time that you want to do this thing.

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This I.

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I am not a fan of this life and I can't do it.

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And then we have the dream

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and

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yeah, then we have the dream and it is Jimmy's girlfriend.

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It's his girlfriend's grave that he's standing at.

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Apparently whatever stunt he pulled was gonna go wrong and it

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was going to cost her and not him.

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And so,

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Yeah, so we, yeah, we call Jimmy up right away.

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We, we, we call him up and we tell him, we let, and we say, Hey, look.

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I, I don't know what it is, but I.

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Whatever happens.

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I saw you standing next to your girlfriend's grave and,

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and Jimmy believes us.

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That's, that's not the problem.

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Jimmy believes us.

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Jimmy knows because, you know, we did, we, we saved Jimmy's life, so he

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convinces his girlfriend to stay home.

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Which is fine because she didn't want to go out and watch him

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do this asinine stunt anyway.

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And

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you know, while she's

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while she's sitting in the apartment waiting for him to come home, there

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is a screech of tires outside.

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Followed by a couple shots and a stray round goes through the window and hits her

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as skid row claims.

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Another one.

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Alright, next card, 10 of diamonds.

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A large fierce dog adopts you.

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It seems to be astray, but when you ask around, it seems to be

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the dog was previously owned by a woman who claimed to be able to see

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the future, but who died recently.

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In strange circumstances, the dog is completely loyal to you, but can

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become ferocious around other people.

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It has what looks like burn marks on its body as if it's been

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burned by a fire in recent past.

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All right.

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That's not at all.

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That's not at all suspicious.

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You know, that is not at all suspicious considering our current circumstances, but

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yeah.

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Yeah, we're definitely gonna adopt this dog and.

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What shall we call him?

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All right, let's call him Halogi

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little bit of a little bit of a play right there.

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Halogi looks like he's been burned and.

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Halogi is the Norse joten of fire

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or one of the joten of fire.

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But yeah, no, we're definitely gonna keep this companion and

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yeah, it's nice to have 'em, right?

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It's, it's a comfort.

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Luckily he seems to get along with Bob and Minnie, even though Minnie doesn't come

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around so much anymore, which is good.

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I mean, it's not good.

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We're, we're now at the point where we have learned to enjoy what we can enjoy.

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But

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we have already done irreparable damage to this relationship.

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So it is,

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it's never gonna be fulfilling or.

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Healthy.

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It can only ever be two people at the end of their rope commiserating

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with each other just in a different way than commiserate with Bob.

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So thank God for Halogi.

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For a little bit of healthy love in an otherwise unhealthy, bleak life.

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All right, and then up next we got the Ace of diamonds pulling a lot

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of diamonds tonight in this act.

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All right.

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You experience violence when the friend or partner of someone you fail to say,

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finds you and assault you in public.

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They're arrested before they can wound you fatally.

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They tell the true but unbelievable story of who you really are and

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what you can do to law enforcement.

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And one person in law enforcement then starts to take a keen

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interest in your recent activities.

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So,

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yeah.

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Yeah.

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We are,

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we're at the hospital.

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I.

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In the emergency room, after all, like, I mean, we can't even afford the

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emergency room, but at least the state has programs for people in the er.

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There's not a whole lot we can do.

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After all, we, we just got beat pretty badly and.

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And you know, Pete is there.

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Pete has been, Pete has been trying to get at us.

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Because this is a perfect opportunity for Pete because, I mean, after all,

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it's not like we can go anywhere and.

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Between the, between the suspect's statements and everything that

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Pete keeps feeding the cops to try to get to me, it seems Officer

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Paulson has also taken an interest.

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Which

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is lovely.

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I'm really happy for that.

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Not that

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I.

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Not that I ever did anything wrong, but

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you know, between the previous arrest and the claims from Pete

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and the claims from the person who beat me and all of this other stuff

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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It's, they, they're taking a, they're taking a different, in, definite interest

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in who I am, the various claims that I've had against me, the various things that

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have happened to some of the people around me.

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You know, here, and here it was.

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Everybody thought that, you know, skid Row was just lucky in the past couple years.

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But now you know, may, maybe it was me, who knows?

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I certainly don't I, but.

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What I do know is that the emergency room is cold and bright

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and lonely at night, even like,

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like I almost would like Pete or Officer Parsons here.

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Unfortunately, Halogi is not here.

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Obviously can't have a large dog in here.

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Bob is not here.

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Minnie is not here.

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I am alone in a strange room,

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in this cold, sterile building.

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When I notice a bead of sweat on my forehead and.

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That's weird because again, it is so cold in here that I'm under two blankets

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just to try and find some comfort.

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I mean, say what you will about my apartment in Skid Row.

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You know, at least asbestos keeps it warm.

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Might not be the best for my health, but, but I'm starting to sweat.

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And I hear a growl, and as I turn my head to the side, I feel the flames

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as they consume me.

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And that is Tears of Cassandra by John McKinstry.

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Yeah, like I said, we played an abbreviated version.

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We weren't playing the entire thing tonight.

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Just wanna give you a taste.

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That got really dark.

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I was not expecting that to go as dark as it did.

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Remember TT RPGs are not therapy.

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They may be therapeutic, but they're not therapy.

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So I'm sorry, y'all had to deal with a therapeutic session with me.

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But that's okay because at the end of the day, we are all okay here.

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Everything is good, everything is fine.

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It's all fine now.

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I'm fine.

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How are you?

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I, no that is, this is a lot more emotional of a game than I was expecting.

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So it's very different from other prompt games that I've played.

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I've played a lot of card prompt games.

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I've played a lot of wretched and the alone style games, and

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where most of those ga, like most prompt games.

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I give you a short description and like an open-ended sentence,

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like feelings are open-ended.

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There's a question there.

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There's something there, like there's something there.

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Everything is very open-ended.

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This is a lot more definitive in its prompts and I don't

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know how I feel about that.

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I don't, because on the one hand

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it closes off a lot of opportunity for role play.

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Like it closes off a lot of opportunity because it is flat

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out telling you this happened.

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This is what you're feeling.

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But on the other hand, I do like putting pieces together.

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I do like the, I do like putting pieces together, that verbal puzzle of.

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Well, I got this and I got this.

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So how do these all kind of fit in together and how does

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this story kind of come about?

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This definitely feels stronger as some sort of writing prompt,

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and I get the feeling that

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this wanted to be a story.

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I.

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This wanted to be a story.

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This is craving to be a story.

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That's why the intro is as well written and it fleshed out as it is.

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That's why everything is as well written and fleshed out as it is,

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and that's not a bad thing,

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but it also makes it difficult.

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Because.

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Because it feels like it wants to be a story so bad.

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It's kind of hard to just play if you're in the mood, to just sit

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down and play even if you like, even if you're playing for catharsis.

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It's kind of hard to do that here.

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You have to be intentional in your play here.

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And again, not a bad thing.

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I don't mind it.

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Of course, it's also part of the reason why this episode is late.

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The other part is work sucks, but but yeah, this.

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Even with some of the other dark heavy games that I've played, there's

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always been a bit of a lightness about them that helped you feel

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like, oh, this is just a game.

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Even, even with the open-ended trying, like forcing you to pull from yourself.

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And I don't know, maybe this is actually easier to play.

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Like I said, there's a lot more definitive stuff.

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It's like, it feels a lot more like putting plot points down in order.

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And you're just kind of connecting the plot dots and like, like I said,

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I just ended up I ended up going for catharsis and a little bit of

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therapeutic feelings, and I might've just gone a little too far into this.

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But overall, all in all, I do enjoy it.

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Like I did enjoy it.

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I it's really weird to say I enjoyed the feelings as I di didn't, but.

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I enjoyed the fact that I didn't enjoy what I felt.

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Yeah, it's,

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this is a good game.

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This is a good game.

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This is something you should definitely check out if you like horror, if you like.

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Psychological.

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This is definitely something to, this is definitely something you should check out.

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This is something you should look at.

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This is very great for all of that.

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If you wanna pick up your own copy of tiers of Cassandra, you can

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find it on drive through R p G.

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Just search the tiers of Cassandra Fate Awaits.

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Or you can click on the link down below.

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Please click the link if you wanna do it.

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I am an affiliate , so no extra charge to you, and I get a couple cents

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to help support my gaming habits.

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So that would be much appreciated.

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I would highly love that.

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But like I said, you can find it on drive through R P G for 4 99.

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If you go pick it up, remember to leave a review and let 'em

SteelStash:

know that SteelStash sent you.