u/Beneficial-Flower-82

I have described my mother as abusive for many years. I am 34 years old, study to be a psychologist, have worked in a therapy-adjacent field since 2017, have a daughter of four months, I'm in a loving relationship and have a lot of friends and engaging hobbies. In many ways, my life couldn't be better. After many years of therapy, self-discovery and hard work I have grown a lot happier than the dark years of my childhood.

But still I discover ever new things about the upbringing I thought of as "mostly normal".

I was talking with a few friends and my wife and I casually mentioned "sneaking back from the parents bed at night". No-one knew what I was talking about. I said:

"You know, when you dream a nightmare as a kid and feel like every shadow is full of monsters, go to your parents room to ask if you may sleep there and after standing next to their bed for a while without waking your mom you prefer to go back to your own bed. Because you don't dare wake up mom."

They glanced at each other and my wife said:

"Dear, that's not normal."

We talked about it, I got support and then conversation resumed.

The next day I talked to one of my brothers over the phone. My three older brothers were also not treated well by my mother, but a lot better than I was. I mentioned the above incident and he said that he had never felt like that. I then asked if he ever kept notes about what she had promised, like I had done.

My mother has always been very fickle and arbitrary, changing rules and promises on a whim to better suit her needs. When I tried reminding her, she usually demanded to know when, exactly, she had promised or said stuff. Being a logical child I just interpreted that as "I need to remind mom with the date of the promise", so I got into the habit of taking detailed notes of her promises, rules and the like. When I used this to point out that she had, in fact, promised ice cream as a reward for helping with the garden she called me "evil, creepy and manipulative". I still took notes to keep sane.

My brother then said:

"*My name*, our mother is many things but not actively deceitful. She never forgets a promise. To me..." and then it dawned on us that she only did that (and still do) to me and only me.

With a sick feeling to my stomach I asked if he ever felt like he was forced to be baptised. My mother is a devout Lutheran Christian, but also believes that infants shouldn't be baptised since the Faith should be joined voluntarily. She said to me that it was voluntary to be baptised and my ten-year-old self said "I don't think I believe in God, so I don't want to be baptised now".

She spent two weeks yelling at me and "discussing" the nature of good and evil, claiming that I chose evil. Eventually I relented, got baptised and eventually forced myself through confirmation. I got no presents except a Bible since "Faith is its own reward".

My brother said:

"No, I never felt forced. I said no and she just dropped it and praised me speaking my mind. She never dropped it wholly and later on she bribed me with a gaming computer. Then I accepted."

I checked with my other brothers. They also never had to doubt their memories or got yelled at for not wanting to be Christian. None of us are believers now, but I have an "irrational" hatred of Christianity. I still have a strong emotional reaction towards people who are Christian, but have learned to not act on it. I'm Swedish, so the local Christianity is very benign

I hate discovering more like this. Every year I discover something new. Every time I think I have figured myself out more shit like this surfaces. My mother treated me worse, made me deeply afraid of her and have imparted hatred towards people from how she treated me. I just want to be done with her.

Thanks for reading this far. I don't want my past to drag me down, but I also need to vent that I hate realizing how abusive my childhood was.

TL;DR:

I recently found out that other people weren't too scared to wake their parents after a nightmare when they were kids. My mom treated me much worse than my brothers and gaslighted me, but not them. She also forced me to be baptised, but she only forced me and instead chose to bribe my brothers instead of yelling at them. I still hate Christianity because of it.

Hi folks.

This is probably a simple question, but do the points actually do anything except reward you for exploring or indicate the way forward (you get points by doing what the plot intended). Do they unlock a "good ending" or the like?

Thanks!

The armour in question. He is very ill, don't mention his skin colour.

Hi folks. My nephew and I want to know if this kit is historically accurate to the battle of Wisby 1361. I know that the beard probably isn't.

More seriously: If the armour isn't totallt accurate, which actual, historical chest armour is the closest to this one?

Thanks!

Hi folks.

So, I made a mistake. I planned a colony on this planet, but deleted the shipyard that was building the colony ship. Now, the planet is tagged as "having a planned colony" but no colony ship is being built, no ship is already built and no other ship may colonize there. I at least think this is the problem.

What can I do? The obvious thing (rollback to an earlier save) is impossible, I run Ironman.

I run modded (obviously), but only UI mods and an advisor voice mod.

Thanks!

I cannot colonize the planet due to planned colony, but the colony ship is never being built.

Hi folks.

I so love this game, pouring hundreds of hours into it. The thing I miss the most, though, is the delicate balance of powers in this period. Especially the conferences and negotiations between the Great Powers that carved up Africa, made monarchies from republics and ended wars before they chewed up a million men.

Conferences

A conference is, in my opinion, a way for Great Powers to carve up the world between them, to let Belgium have a claim on the Congo. I want an option to "call a conference" where my rivals and I can discuss how the world should look. If I refuse to attend, I lose prestige. If I do not claim enough, my maximalist nationalists will be radicalized (representing the jingoists who propelled Germany into a disastrous colonial empire, bringing it into collision course with the British Empire). If I claim too much, my pacifists will be radicalized saying that I spend the resources on futile wars in distant lands instead on the people.

If I break my commitment to the conference, I should get infamy - but they are free claims to Africa and the like. This could also steer the AI towards actually colonizing and claiming Africa as they did historically.

The idea is still very rough, but I want to have an involved system where the powerful nations of the world divvy up the globe between them, with consequences if they do so. Maybe new negotiations every ten years at most.

Negotiated peace

All wars essentially follow the same pattern for me. Someone makes a play, and the AI rarely backs down. The lines stall or crawl forward for years on end, sometimes literally killing millions. The war only ends in one side winning all by occuping all goals (or the capital) or in a white peace. There is almost only maximalist victory or status quo peace, in my experience.

Now, I want HOI4 style peace conferences/negotiations or something along that line, but that can be done mid-war. Both sides makes demands that aligns with their goals, and their will to surrender corresponds to war losses, battles lost, cost of war, occupation, radicals, brewing revolutions and so on.

Now, the player might of course refuse but should then be "punished" by their population by them flocking to anti-war movements. The Bolsheviks once rose to power on an anti-war platform (if I understand it correctly) and the Menshevik and republicandesire to continue the war pushed popular support towards the Bolshevik cause.

This is also a rough idea, to be discussed and improved upon.

These two might have been discussed to death already, in that case I apologize, but what do you think? Yes, warfare in general needs some kind of overhaul but these two systems/ideas I think would improve the diplomacy side of warfare a lot.