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Watch “The Little Mermaid” Online For Free Streaming At Home

2023.05.31 05:11 AutoModerator Watch “The Little Mermaid” Online For Free Streaming At Home

Animated Film! Here are options for downloading or watching The Little Mermaid streaming the full movie online for free on 123movies & Reddit, including where to watch Disney’s latest live-action adaptation movies at home. Is The Little Mermaid 2023 available to stream? Is watching The Little Mermaid on Peacock, Disney Plus, HBO Max, Netflix or Amazon Prime? Yes, we have found an authentic streaming option/service.

🔴𝐖𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐍𝐨𝐰 𝐇𝐃📷“The Little Mermaid” Online For Free
🔴𝐖𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐍𝐨𝐰 𝐇𝐃📷“The Little Mermaid” Online For Free

How to watch “The Little Mermaid” is one of the most popular and beloved animated films of all time. The story of a young mermaid who dreams of becoming human has captivated audiences for generations, and the film’s iconic songs and characters have become timeless classics. If you’re a fan of “The Little Mermaid” and you’re looking for a way to watch the film for free online, there are a few options available to you. One popular way to watch movies and TV shows online for free is to use a streaming service like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime. These services offer a variety of movies and TV shows that you can watch on your computer or mobile device. Most of them have a free trial period that allows you to watch a certain number of hours of content before you have to start paying. Another option for watching “The Little Mermaid” online is to find a free movie streaming website. These websites offer a variety of movies and TV shows that you can watch for free. However, they often have a smaller selection of titles than paid streaming services. If you’re willing to watch a few commercials, you can also find “The Little Mermaid” for free on YouTube. YouTube offers a variety of full-length movies and TV shows that you can watch for free. You can also find “The Little Mermaid” on DVD or Blu-ray. This is a great option if you want to watch the movie in high definition. You can usually find DVDs and Blu-rays at your local grocery store or online. Finally, you can also listen to “The Little Mermaid” soundtrack for free on Spotify. Spotify is a music streaming service that offers a wide variety of songs, including many from Disney movies. You can create a free account and start listening to “The Little Mermaid” soundtrack right away.

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“The Little Mermaid” Movie Free Online
“The Little Mermaid” is a movie that can be enjoyed by people of all ages. It is a charming story about a young mermaid who falls in love with a human prince and must make a difficult decision between staying true to her family or following her heart. The movie has some great messages about staying true to yourself and being brave enough to follow your dreams. “The Little Mermaid” is a timeless classic that is sure to bring a smile to your face. There are a few ways that you can watch “The Little Mermaid” movie free online streaming at home. One way is to sign up for a free trial of a subscription service like Netflix or Hulu. This will give you access to a library of movies and TV shows that you can watch at your convenience. Another way to watch “The Little Mermaid” free online streaming is to find a website that offers the movie for free. These websites typically stream movies from their own servers, so you will need a good internet connection to watch the movie. Finally, you can also rent or purchase “The Little Mermaid” from a digital retailer like iTunes or Amazon.

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“The Little Mermaid” Movie Free Online Streaming
“The Little Mermaid” is one of the most beloved animated films of all time. The movie tells the story of Ariel, a mermaid who dreams of becoming human. Though she is content living under the sea with her father, King Triton, and her friends, Flounder and Sebastian, she can’t help but be fascinated by the world above the waves. When she meets a handsome prince, she takes a leap of faith and makes a wish that she could live on land and be with him forever. “The Little Mermaid” is available to watch for free online streaming on a number of websites. To watch the movie, simply search for it on your preferred streaming site. The movie can also be found for purchase or rent on a number of digital platforms. “The Little Mermaid” is a classic film that captures the imagination and hearts of viewers of all ages. The movie is perfect for a family movie night, a date night, or simply when you need a dose of nostalgia. So, grab some popcorn, curl up on the couch, and enjoy “The Little Mermaid”!

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“The Little Mermaid” Netflix or HBO Max
Assuming you want a500-word discussion of whether “The Little Mermaid” is available for streaming on Netflix or HBO Max: “The Little Mermaid” was released in 1989 and is thus not available on Netflix. It is, however, available to stream on HBO Max. HBO Max is a new streaming service from WarnerMedia that includes content from HBO, Warner Bros., Turner Classic Movies, and more. “The Little Mermaid” is part of the HBO Max catalog. To stream “The Little Mermaid” on HBO Max, you’ll need to sign up for the service. HBO Max costs $14.99/month. Once you’ve signed up, you can watch “The Little Mermaid” on your computer, phone, or streaming device. So, if you want to watch “The Little Mermaid” streaming online, the best bet is to sign up for HBO Max. However, if you’re looking for a cheaper option, you can always wait for “The Little Mermaid” to be added to Netflix.

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“The Little Mermaid” Movie Streaming On Peacock
The Little Mermaid is one of the most iconic Disney movies of all time. It was the movie that launched Disney’s success in the 90s and is still loved by fans today. Thankfully, you can watch The Little Mermaid online for free on Peacock. Here’s how to watch The Little Mermaid streaming on Peacock: First, you’ll need to sign up for a free account on Peacock. You can do this by going to their website and entering your email address and creating a password. Once you have an account, sign in and hover over the “Browse” tab at the top of the page. From there, you’ll want to select the “Movies” option and then scroll down until you find The Little Mermaid. Once you click on the movie, you’ll be able to watch it for free. Peacock is a great option for watching The Little Mermaid online because it’s free and you don’t have to worry about ads. You can also create a watchlist of movies and shows so you never miss an episode of your favorite show or a new release.

If you’re a fan of “The Little Mermaid,” you’re in luck. The movie is available to watch for free online streaming at home. All you need is a computer or mobile device and an internet connection. Simply go to the website of your choice and search for “The Little Mermaid.” You’ll be able to watch the movie from the comfort of your own home with no hassle.

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What Is the Release Date for The Little Mermaid?
Ariel’s quest to go from a mermaid into a human begins anew when The Little Mermaid premieres this Memorial Day Weekend on Friday, May 26th, 2023. The film will be going up against not one, but two stand-up comedians and their films that weekend, with Sebastian Maniscalco’s About My Father and Bert Kreischer’s The Machine premiering on the same day. That said, The Little Mermaid will almost certainly be the choice for younger audiences and families.

While some Disney films are heading straight to Disney+, The Little Mermaid will first be shown exclusively in theaters.

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Is The Little Mermaid Available On Hulu?
Viewers are saying that they want to view the new animation movie The Little Mermaid on Hulu. Unfortunately, this is not possible since Hulu currently does not offer any of the free episodes of this series streaming at this time. It will be exclusive to the MTV channel, which you get by subscribing to cable or satellite TV services. You will not be able to watch it on Hulu or any other free streaming service.

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The Little Mermaid Cast and Characters
The Little Mermaid was written by David Magee and directed by Rob Marshall. It stars the following actors:

Halle Bailey as Ariel

Melissa McCarthy as Ursula

Javier Bardem as King Triton

Noma Dumezweni as Queen Selina

Jonah Hauer-King as Prince Eric

Daveed Diggs as Sebastian

Awkwafina as Scuttle

Jacob Tremblay as Flounder

Art Malik as Sir Grimsby

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What is The Little Mermaid About?
The official synopsis for The Little Mermaid by Walt Disney Studios read:

“The Little Mermaid” is the beloved story of Ariel, a beautiful and spirited young mermaid with a thirst for adventure. The youngest of King Triton’s daughters and the most defiant, Ariel longs to find out more about the world beyond the sea, and while visiting the surface, falls for the dashing Prince Eric. While mermaids are forbidden to interact with humans, Ariel must follow her heart. She makes a deal with the evil sea witch, Ursula, which gives her a chance to experience life on land, but ultimately places her life – and her father’s crown – in jeopardy.There is not much mystery in The Little Mermaid’s plot. As seen in Disney’s many other live-action remakes, it is anticipated that the film’s plot will largely stick to the original. With the well-known song “Part of Your World,” in which Ariel sings about her wish to be a part of the world beyond the water, i.e., the human realm, the teaser already alluded to Ariel’s fascination with the human world.

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2023.05.31 05:04 ongongfr The Bloodstained Heretic (Pt1 lmk if yall want more)

Maria looked to the altar ahead of her. The albinaurics were an unwelcome sight to her at first with their beady black eyes and dumpy bodies but she was able to look over her prejudice quickly once their loyalty to Palace Mohgwyn had been proven. Once the blood of one of their own had been spilled on the altar all discomfort had been settled. The blood may be silver but it was blood nonetheless.
The high priest cut his palm over the altar and when it came into contact with the common blood of the albinaurics both were engulfed with fire. The pure blood of the Dynast cleansing the blood of the simpler albinaurics.
A shout could be heard from the cliffs behind them. Their lord was doing his experiments again. A flash of light and the smell of smoke and iron filled the air. The smoke flowed unnaturally across the floor rather than through the sky, seeping down the cliff like an eerie fog. The albinaurics cowered while the disciples of Mohg gave the fog a deep breath. All except for Maria. She looked at the smoke as it writhed across the floor and looked to the lift that lead to their supposed "Lord of Blood."
Every night for as long as she can remember she has witnessed these nightly rituals from atop the cliffs. Every night they had yielded no result. Every time she asked the other Dynasts they each told her the same thing. "Our lord works in mysterious ways'' or "The lord's work is none of our concern" or the worst of them "You dare question the workings of our lord?!" This one always garnered the most shock from the others as whoever said it apparently couldn't help but shout it at the top of their lungs.
Nevertheless Maria continued to question even if her questions got her nowhere and tonight she decided that she would question the one person who actually had answers. As the others inhaled their rusty smog Maria took several steps forward towards the grand lift. No one stopped her. She took more steps and gained to response. She continued to approach and nobody stopped her. Her hands were on the lever before anybody noticed. The high priest snapped out of his smokey trance and shouted towards her, his powerful voice booming across the bloodsoaked field igniting the drenched grass where the sound traveled one clear word resonating through Maria's mind "STOP." and the gravity of her actions hit. Where this lift truly lead finally hit her. A god with powers over the very thing flowing through her veins. She had seen corpses thrown from the top of these cliffs drained and cracked with no blood left in its body. A malevolent god with goals beyond her understanding. But it was a god who held answers and as she pulled the lever she decided she would rather die than be without the knowledge of her purpose. The floor rocketed upwards beneath her and before long she could barely hear the voice of the priest shouting beneath her. A man in a white mask stood guarding the archway leading to Mohgwyn Palace. With the shouts below her basically mute she played it cool knowing the guard wouldn't suspect a thing. She walked up to him gazing at the blood filled glass emblem on his chest.
She opened her mouth to speak and told him the story she had made up five seconds prior, "The high priest requests audience with our Lord in terms of the successfulness of his ritual."
The knight began to speak back in a rough voice before Maria buried her dagger into his throat. The blood had the most bizarre effect clogging his throat while simultaneously repairing the torn flesh. Before he could completely heal Maria took his blade and emblem and tossed him off the cliff into the crowd of disciples below. She could hear the crunch of both his and someone else's bones below. Maria turned to look through the archway as well as surveyed the blade she had just swiped. It was a helice rapier designed like all things in this hellhole to make whatever it went through bleed as much as possible. The blade was already stained red with blood but other than that it couldn’t be cleaner. Its hilt was a pristine gold and was decorated as though it belonged in a display case rather than battle. But she knew from numerous years of training it was as deadly as it was gorgeous. As she stepped inside she could see the ever luminary Mohg covered in blood and fire. He turned to her his eyes filled with fury at who would dare interrupt his ritual. Maria could see a cold dead hand fall limp behind him and the gravity of her situation hit her. All she could think of is how those hands would be hers next and she fumbled for the emblem she had taken from the Pureblood knight. Her Lord, always quick to anger, hoisted his spear into the air and spoke in a tongue Maria could only make pieces out of.
“MORI!” he shouted, chucking the spear towards her, the fire lighting the palace surging with Mohg’s rage. Maria attempted to duck but was two late as the lowest tooth of the spear caught her on the shoulder and sent her into the nearest wall being embedded into it along with the spear. She saw the knight's emblem on the floor and reached for it desperately as Mohg approached her, cursed blood burning in his hands. She managed to pull it towards her with her feet close enough to where she could finally do what she needed. She had seen Lord Mohg’s knights use these emblems to get around and right now she was praying that her guess on how to use them was at least somewhat correct. As Mohg pulled his spear from her shoulder she screamed in agony. The pain was so immense that she collapsed and nearly forgot the whole point of letting him pull it out. With her last scraps of consciousness she drove her fists into the Pureblood Emblem crushing it and allowing the fiery blood to envelope her body the insignia of the Mohgwyn Dynasty flashing before her eyes before she finally blacked out.

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2023.05.31 05:03 HannahHertel182 Nano Schooling Fish?

I'm looking for something super small for my 10 gallon. I currently have 2 mystery snails in there right now (an ivory and a brown), but I'd love to see some more activity and color. I'm really drawn to the dwarf, espei, and chili rasbora species because of their red coloration, but I'd love some more suggestions! I'll probably just stick with one school of fish because I'm cautious about overstocking

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2023.05.31 05:01 CingKrimson_Requiem Officially leaving the teens. Leaving some advice behind.

At roughly 8:30 AM tomorrow, I turn 20. It's been a long seven years, and admittedly my teen years probably featured the most miserable moments of my short life so far, but they also held my highest highs.
But I always think to myself "What if I could have done better? What if I had just done things a little differently?"
So I'm just jotting down some suggestions for the rest of you kids and trial-run adults before I go. It's a bit of a toss up between advice I just see as helpful and me lamenting my own missed opportunities and mistakes, but I hope that it can make someone's life just a bit better as they navigate this turbulent period in their lives.

Don't stop talking to your friends

When I was a little kid I had a lot of friends. When I became a teen, I lost contact with some and kept others, but I made more friends. But as I moved from middle school to high school, and when the pandemic hit, I started talking with those friends less and less. I stopped meeting up with them and inviting them to my house, and then eventually all the group chats I shared with them started getting less busy. Now, there's scarcely a word between me and any of them. Oh sure, I'm certain if I asked them they would still consider me their friend, but we never talk to each other any more. Now I just feel... dull. Talking with people I barely know beyond their usernames only, never remembering who's who.
So just never stop talking. Shoot them a dm regularly, even if it's just to say hello. Inquire about their interests, what they're doing in school, tell them jokes and share things that you found interesting with them. If you're like me, then you might have the issue of feeling like a burden, like you're third-wheeling, that people are annoyed by you. I know those thoughts can't just be magic'd away by so words of encouragement, so I won't tell you that it's just all in your head. But I can tell you that if you don't stay in contact with your old friends? If you don't initiate interactions with them, or jump at every opportunity they offer you? You'll lose them. And that's a problem if making new friends doesn't come easy to you, cause I'm the same. I can guarantee that even if all those intrusive, doubting thoughts about yourself are somehow true, you'll come out the other end of constantly talking and seeking interaction with more friends than you will just staying silent and hoping that someone will come approach you.

Use your boredom to get things done

Procrastination. It sucks, even for those without attention disorders. I assume. I do have one, so I wouldn't know. It's hard to get important work done, whether it's school related, chores, or even just getting around to personal projects like art, writing, or reading a book. It's easy to get sidetracked with a billion other distractions surrounding you at all times.
But. Those distractions aren't airtight. After a while of playing the same game, or scrolling far enough down whatever social media you use, you might start to feel a bit of boredom kicking in. That what you're doing isn't holding your attention quite as well anymore. You look for something else to do. But in that moment, don't think! Don't consider what other options you have to entertain yourself. Immediately put yourself to the task of one of those things you said you needed to do! Give yourself the excuse that it'll take some time to figure out what you want to do to kill time, and that you might as well spend a few minutes reorganizing. Some chores like folding your laundry or emptying the dishwasher take surprisingly little time to complete, so you could actually complete quite a bit before you get sick of working again and wander off to a new distraction. Even with longer tasks like completing school assignments or doing art or projects, you'll at the very least get some work done before you get sidetracked again. Every little bit you do makes the final mad rush to complete it before its deadline that much easier- not even just because you've filled out space, but because you now have a more solid idea of what you intended to work towards rather than having to figure out your thesis statement and write the entire essay and gather sources for it in 3 hours.

Go for a walk

Yes, yes. "Touch grass". But seriously, the sun is good for you. I'd say the air outside is fresher than it is inside but I guess that doesn't really apply to people who live in extremely urban environments. But still, taking half an hour or so out of each day to just walk around outside may not seem to offer any tangible benefits at first, but trust me, it can be vital for your mental health. I literally spend most of my time cooped up in my room, but just going out and walking around my neighborhood for 20-40 minutes each day is probably the reason why I'm not insane.

Stick behind after school

If you don't happen to have a particularly busy schedule after school and don't have like, an hour-long commute home, then stick around! Just hang out at the front of the school and chat up others, or wander around inside and see if there's any after-school clubs or study groups. You'll meet more people, and more people will start to know you- You know, I literally was not in any picture in all of my high school yearbooks besides the individual portrait photos of the students at the end. Probably because I just immediately went home after the bell rang to do absolutely nothing.
And this doesn't just apply for middle school or high school either. When you get to college and university, take advantage of the campus facilities! You're paying for it after all! Wander around, get a lay of the land, and most importantly, talk to your classmates! In university, you're literally picking the exact courses you want to take, meaning that the people in class with you share so much more in common with you than anyone in high school did. Talk to them! Get to know their hopes and dreams! And talk to your TAs to, so you actually know what their names are! Fortunately I still have more years of university to go after I turn 20, so I'm not a lost cause on that front yet.

Talk about your interests

I know it's easy to just go find online communities specifically about whatever game or comic or cartoon you're obsessing over at the moment and find content and people specifically interested in that, but you need to take it even further beyond! Bring up your interests in conversation with others, be they classmates, friends, or family! Don't be so embarrassed about the things you like. Remember, you can control what others might think about something if you're the one introducing it to them for the first time. Think that your cousins might look down on you for watching cartoons? Tell them about this amazing story you've been keeping up with and highlight all of its best parts. Once they're interested and ask you to hook them up with this interest of yours, they'll be more receptive to it being a cartoon after they've heard you sing its praises so much! Bam, just like that, you have someone to share your hobbies with!

It's not as serious as you think

I'm not going to just lie and say that nothing really matters and that life can just be taken at a snail's pace without any regard for the future. But I will say that it's almost never as bad as you think it is. No, don't try and hope that the teacher will just forget about the assignment you didn't hand in. They won't scream in your face and drop your mark to nothing when they remember. Just be upfront and tell them that you're struggling with it and that you just need more time but it will be completed. You may have to accept a mark deduction, but often teachers may even just waive that so long as you can turn in your completed work- or just any at all, and mark what you give them.
You can't expect everything to just go your way and end up perfectly. But more often than not, things may be far better than you think they are. Just have faith in yourself, faith in those around you, and faith that with a cool mind and a calm, measured explanation, you can settle things down.

...Well. I guess that's all I have to say. It's pretty late, so I don't expect this to reach to many people by the time I post it. But still. Being a teenager... it's been a trip. You will get through this, I can guarantee that. Will you be the same person when you get out on the other end? Will that be for the better or the worse? I can't tell you that. So that means that the only way to find out is to keep pushing on, right?

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2023.05.31 04:31 abomps Help me identify this ingredient from Chinese/Uyghur dapanji (big plate chicken)!

What are these little green slightly translucent balls in a Chinese/Uyghur dish called dapanji or "big plate chicken".

The picture is them cooked
each green "ball" is about the size of a peppercorn
They taste citrusy, almost like lemon but not spicy or numbing at all
if you zoom in the husk/shell is kind of spotted

Here's the picture
https://imgur.com/HmabPrg
Extra details
I bought this dish from a Uyghur restaurant while visiting New York. This dish blew my mind and felt like discovering a new genre of food. I have to try to reverse engineer it as best I can! It was listed as chicken Laghman but given the other ingredients they used a dapanji/ big plate chicken recipe for the base.
I have looked at a few big plate chicken recipes and couldn't find an obvious match for this ingredient.
In some recipes the base broth cooks for 1hr+ and I wonder if some of the spices change appearance or flavor after that time. Brainstorming here, would either fennel seed, or Sichuan peppercorns taste and appear this way after 1hr+?
Any thoughts on what this could are welcome!!!

Example recipe
The recipe that I have seen to include most of the ingredients I could discern is copied and pasted below. Credit to u/mthmchris for the recipe and detailed guide.
https://www.reddit.com/Cooking/comments/7bcvarecipe\_xinjiangstyle\_dapanji\_braised\_chicken\_aka/
"So we wanted to show you how to make Uighur-style of Dapanji, a.k.a. the aptly translated ‘big plate of chicken’.
The Uighurs are a Turkish ethnic group from the Xinjiang province in the far North West of China, and have a fascinatingly awesome cuisine. They've got a solid mix of Central Asian and Northwest Chinese flavors - lamb features heavily, the grill and the tandoor's used, and they have their own version of pilaf (called 'polo' or 'shouzhuafan'). But at the same time, they'll use certain Chinese ingredients and also make use of the wok. This dish is one of the most beloved in the region, and a great place to start with Xinjiang food.
Video is here. We decided to also include in a recipe for those wide kudaimian pulled noodles that’re often served with this… but if you’re not feeling ambitious you could always opt for any sort of thick dried Asian noodles instead.
Ingredients:
One whole chicken cut into pieces -or- chicken wings, ~1.5kg. So really, the ideal sort of chicken for this dish would be an Asian variety of chicken cut into pieces across the bone... and if that's convenient for you, I'd implore you to go that route. If that sort of thing would be difficult for you to get, my sub would be chicken wings. You could cleave them in half, or honestly you could probably leave them in whole as well. I've seen some Western recipe writers call for boneless breast or thigh here, but I really think that's a dramatic reinterpretation of the dish, and you'd also run the risk of dry chicken. Wings aren't too intimidating, and the essence's the same.
Potato, 800g. Cut into large chunks. You don’t want your potatoes to be too small else they’ll end up dissolving into the braise.
Xinjiang xianjiao (线椒), ~3 minced and reconstituted -or- Hungarian Sweet Paprika, 2 tbsp -or- Sichuan Pixian Doubanjiang, 2 tbsp. So Xinjiang xianjiao is what gives the Dapanji its characteristic red color… this mild chili is super red, and dyes basically anything it touches. Now, this chili’s sort of difficult to source even in China, so substitutions might obviously be necessary. To me, this chili is very similar to a paprika chili… so if you can get your hands on some dried paprika chilis (in China, hongjiao), I think that would be the most ideal sub. Similarly, if you got some quality Hungarian sweet paprika that should also be fine. In China outside of Xinjiang the most common sub is some Sichuan Pixian doubanjiang – you can go that route too, but in my opinion I think paprika would be closer to the original. We also got a real interesting lead on what these chilis might be called in English... see the note below.
White sugar, ¼ cup This will be mixed in with a half cup of oil to make a ‘tangse’, or caramel, for the initial step of frying the chicken.
Ginger (姜), ~2 inches Cut into slices, to be fried together with the chicken.
Sichuan peppercorns (花椒), ~1 tbsp. Added when frying the chicken.
Star anise (八角), ~4. Added when frying the chicken.
Cinnamon/Cassia (桂皮), 1 stick. Added when frying the chicken. Note that this, just like what you’d get a supermarket in the West, is actually Cassia bark and not the so-called “true cinnamon” from Ceylon.
Black Cardamom (草果), 2 pod. Added when frying the chicken. Slightly crushed to open.
Dried Chaotianjiao Heaven Facing Chilis (干朝天椒), ~15. A dapanji isn’t set-your-mouth-on-fire spicy, but it should have some kick. Adding in about fifteen whole dried chilis in with your braising liquid does the job nicely (no need to deseed them). If you’re outside China, dried Thai birds eye chilis should work just as well, or you could play around with Mexican chilis (anything unsmoked from the Capsicum Annum cultivar, e.g. Arbols, would likely be fine).
Dried bay leaf (香叶), 1. To be added when braising.
Leek (大葱), ½. Cut up a half a leek into strips, these’ll be added about halfway through the braise.
Garlic, 1 head. Peel a head of garlic, these’ll be added when there’s about 15 minutes left of the braise. Note that I add the garlic a bit earlier than many recipes might (most common is to see it added five minutes until it’s finished), mostly because I fucking love munching on garlic that’s been softened in a braise.
Mild chilis, 1 small red chili (红辣椒) and one small green chili (青辣椒). Cut into wedges. Neither of these chilis are very spicy, so you could also opt for one small green or red bell pepper.
Salt, 1 tbsp. To season. If you’re using doubanjiang in the place of xianjiao chilis, cut this out.
Chicken boullion powder (鸡粉), 1 tbsp. To season.
Process, Dapanji.
If using Xinjiang xianjiao chili, finely mince and reconstitute the chili. You’re aiming to get this into a super-fine mince – if you got a food processor (we don’t), I imagine that’d be a help. Once it’s fine enough for you, add in some water – we added roughly two tablespoons. Leave that aside for about thirty minutes - the chili will end up absorbing the water and forming a sort of paste.
Prep your ingredients. I’d use that time to peel and slice your ginger, peel the potato and cut into large chunks, crush the black cardamom pods, cut the leek and mild chilis into strips/biased wedges, peel the garlic… measuring everything out so that it’s good to go once you’re ready to fry.
Blanch the chicken pieces. Blanch the chicken in boiling water for three minutes or so. Because the braise isn’t going to feature much liquid, we’re not going to be able to skim the scum, blood, and impurities from the braise. The quick blanch’ll clean our chicken right up so it’s good to braise.
Make the tangse (caramel). This is a relatively common step in many Chinese braises. To make the tangse, add in a half cup of oil and a quarter cup of sugar to a wok over medium heat. The sugar will begin to melt into the oil, and after a couple minutes it’ll deepen in color to something resembling a caramel. For this stage, it’s important that you stir constantly, and know that tangse can go from zero to midnight real quick. All in all, it’s better to have an overly blonde tangse than a burnt one.
Fry the chicken pieces in with the tangse, then add in the ginger and the salt/chicken boullion. Fry the chicken with the tangse for 30 seconds or so, then add in the ginger and fry for another 30 seconds. Sprinkle with salt and chicken boullion to season – I know it seems a bit strange to season so early in a braise, but things end up getting a bit unwieldy near the end when the potatoes are nearly dissolved.
Add in the xianjiao chili, then the Sichuan peppercorns, black cardamom, star anise, and cinnamon. Add in the xianjiao chili (or some Hungarian sweet paprika, or some Pixian doubanjiang) and coat the chicken with it. Then, add in those spices and let them fry for about 45 seconds or so until it’s all just starting to smell awesome.
Add in 400 mL of water, and nestle in your potatoes, chaotianjiao heaven facing chilis, and bay leaf. Cover and let simmer on low. 400 mL of water might feel like a bit of a small amount (it won’t cover all of your ingredients), but the idea is that the ingredients are going to steam in addition to braise. Because of that, after you cover it you really don’t want to peek. This’ll end up cooking about an hour in total – we still got three ingredients to add (the leek, the garlic, and the mild fresh chilis), so we’ll mix it when we open it up to add those ingredients.
After 30 minutes, add in the leek. At this point, the braising liquid should still look ‘water-y’ and the potatoes should be mostly intact. Toss the leek into the braising liquid, give everything a mix, and cover.
15 minutes later (45 into the braise), add in the garlic. Now the braise should start to look like it’s coming together. The very edges of the potato should be starting to dissolve – if you eat a potato it’ll be roughly cooked through but not very soft. Now, I should note that I add in the garlic a bit early – when I was researching this dish, the Han Xinjiang guy at my market was insistent that the garlic be added at the very end, five minutes before finishing. I like my garlic soft and cooked through so I can munch on it though, so I add in in here.
15 minutes later (60 minutes into the braise), add in the mild fresh chilis. These will only need five minutes or so to cook.
Serve. Serve this with the kudaimian noodles below. Generally, it's best to serve them after you've already munched on the dapanji a bit so that you can get them all in that braising liquid.
Ingredients, Kudaimian Pulled Noodles:
Bread Flour -or- Dumpling Flour (高筋面粉), 250g. Basically looking for a high gluten content, we used bread flour.
Water, 125g.
Salt, ½ tsp.
Oil. To roll the noodles in before resting.
Process, Kudaimian Pulled Noodles:
Ok, now before we get into this, a quick word of warning: hand pulled noodle making is more of a skill than a recipe. If you’re new to noodle pulling, it might take a few tries to get your noodles right – by far the most common issue is noodles that’re a bit too thick, which I’ll talk about how to save in the notes below.
Disclaimer number two… we’re not the most experienced noodle pullers. Steph’s from Guangzhou (where there’s not exactly much of a tradition of this northern-style hand pulled noodle making), so it isn’t exactly something she grew up with. To give you an idea, about a third of our noodles we had to ‘save’ using the technique in the notes.
In any event, this variety of hand pulled noodles is vastly easier than lamian, so it’s a good place to start. Also, 'Biang biang' noodles are basically the same method, but are divided into smaller pieces and cut in half lengthwise with a chopstick.
Mix together the flour and salt, then slowly incorporate the water into the dough. Rest for 10 minutes. We’ve found doing this by hand is actually a bit easier than using the stand mixer. Add the water bit by bit, kneading and incorporating it into the dough. Once the dough is doesn’t stick to the bowl anymore and has been kneaded into a ball shape, it’s done. Cover with a warm, damp towel and set it aside to let the dough relax.
Cut the dough into eight even pieces, roll them into a sort of fat ‘log’ shape, coat generously with oil, and set aside for 60 minutes. Each one of these pieces is going to make one big noodle – this is like the noodle from KenM’s nightmares. Make sure the logs are coated real well with oil, cover them with plastic wrap, and set it aside for one hour. This second rest is gunna be really critical, if it doesn’t rest for an hour, you’re not really gunna be able to pull them.
Pull the noodles. As always, when I’m trying to explain what to do with dough via the written word, I sound like a convoluted doofus, so take a look at 4:49 in the video for a visual. First thing you’ll do is flatten your log by pressing it down with your palm – the flatter it gets here, the easier it’ll be to pull. Then, grab a hold of the two edges of the log and stretch it out four times. Now this is going to start to begin to look like a noodle. Then, continue to pull and smack the noodle against the table – this smacking motion’ll help the noodle thin out in the center as well. Once the noodle’s roughly as wide as your arm span, you’re finished. Just tear off and toss the little knobs of dough where your hands were pulling from.
Boil the noodle. Boil the noodles until they float. These northwestern style noodles are a bit thicker, so it might take a minute or so.
Note on how to rescue kudaimian that’re too thick:
One of the difficulties with learning hand pulled noodles is that if you screw up, you can’t just roll it back into a ball and start over – it won’t really form because of the oil.
If your noodle’s a bit too thick, use your fingers to lightly spread it horizontally, then pass it through your middle and index fingers with both hands while lightly pressing and pulling to straighten it back out – this motion is at 5:33 in the video. Again, this isn’t really impressive or correct or anything, but it’ll thin out the noodle and everyone’ll be none the wiser (unless you’re, uh… filming yourself).
Note on other Dapanji ingredients:
So a couple things that we didn’t add that you might see in a few dapanji recipes… (1) tomato paste (2) some other spices and (3) beer.
So right, Uighurs actually do use tomato paste in some dishes – the brand of tomato paste I buy here in Shenzhen is actually from Xinjiang. You could use half Xinjiang chili and half tomato paste to get that sort of red color if you like – it might be a bit more visually appealing, as our dapanji had a number of red flakes scattered about. We opted for pure chili as we were basing the recipe off of the dapanji of our favorite Xinjiang restaurant in Shenzhen, which didn’t use tomato paste.
Also, if you poke around, you’ll see that each restaurant’ll sort of has their own spice mix. We went with a basic one that was sort of a copycat of a Uighur-run Xinjiang restaurant we love in Shenzhen (plus Bay Leaf). The most commonly added ingredient that we didn’t use would probably be fennel seed… but sometimes you’ll see some places toss some more exotic stuff in too.
Lastly, many of the recipes around Xiachufang (the Chinese AllRecipes) feature a light beer as the braising liquid. Uighurs are Muslim though, so we just opted for water. Beer wouldn’t hurt though, so if you feel like it you could toss that in as well.
Note on Xianjiao Chili:
Again, please don't hesitate to sub this. I figured it'd be almost impossible for people to find abroad, except...
I was chatting with someone on YouTube and I'm now like 70% sure that this is Kashmiri Chili. They look really, really similar, have the same purpose (red color), similar heat level (~1k scoville), and if you look at a map that pathway seems like it makes a ton of sense. You should be able to find them on Amazon - at the very least, even if they aren't the same, I think it'd be a nice sub."

submitted by abomps to Cooking [link] [comments]

2023.05.31 04:21 ____gracie____ AITAH for cutting contact with my bio mum??

My bio mum has always been a horrible person too me, but she got even worse when she got with her current bf. Let's call him J and her S. S and J are basically the perfect couple because their horrible personality go along with eachother. For example S would get mad at me no matter what. I remember before I walked wrong and she took away all of my devices and sent me to my room. J on the other hand is perverted. When I was young he would try and make me and my sister 'M' call him daddy J. Literally a couple weeks after meeting him. I was like 5 at the time so I didn't get what he meant but I still didn't call him it because I thought he was just trying to replace my dad. Growing up he would give me and my sister M doggy kisses. This would involve him sticking his tounge in our mouth whilst kissing us. S would watch it happen and laugh. I on the other hand found it vile. J would watch me and my sister M get changed. For some reason he would like to watch me more as I was the oldest and I was growing the quickest of course. When I was like 8 my 'E' was born. Btw J has a daughter called 'H' but she doesn't come into this story much, besides the fact S would baby her and treat her better than her own kids (me, M and E). Anyways E was born and I became her second mother, although S never admitted I raised E better. S loved to hit E anytime she misbehaved. Everytime S would leave the room i would wipe away Es tears because ik how much it hurt. Anyways, it was coming up close to Es birthday so we all went on a camping trip. I remember S and J had gotten into a fight so J slept in the car and I slept in the same bed as S. In the night I couldn't sleep when I realised J had crawled into the same bed as me and S with his flashlight on. I pretended to sleep and I don't want to explain what J did too me after. The next incident happened when I was like 11. J got into my bed naked. Once again I'm not gonna explain what happened next. The next morning I told S and she bring J into the room and they started laughing at me. They saw I wasn't laughing so they sent me too my room. I hadn't told S about the camping trip yet. I had started secondary when S and J would have physical fights and I would have to protect my siblings. Glasses, doors, windows, plates were smashed. It was scary. Police were called but they hardly did anything. I realised that what was happening wasn't right so I told my school. The camping trip incident slipt out my mouth and they ratted me out to S. She got mad at me I said that I was tryna seduce J. I was 12. She got mad at me everytime I moved away J. Apparently I was selfish. She never explained how though. The fights continued to happen at they broke up like 6 times. The last time there was a fight when I was there I called my dad and called the police. I forgot to add that S moved us away from our family when I was like 7, so my dad and my family where 3 hours away. The police came and arrested J and out him in jail for 2 weeks. S moved me,M and E back to Wales. S got a restraining order again J. That didn't last though because J came looking for us. S was crazy though so everytime I would go visit my dad with M, S would meet up with J to do idk what. I finally realised that S was gonna try and move me away again so the next time I had to go back to her from my dad's I didn't. I stayed with him. She called the police but they did nothing. So S moved away with M and E back up into England with J. I now live happily with my dad. Now and than my dad will have to go to court to get it in writing that he has full custody of me, but every court session S doesn't show up so luckily she ain't fighting for me and I'll have more of a chance of staying with my dad forever. Life is so better now, I have recently turned 14. Although I miss E, I will be fighting for custody of her when I turn 18. Thank you for listening

submitted by ____gracie____ to AITAH [link] [comments]

2023.05.31 04:20 ____gracie____ AITAH for cutting contact with my bio mum

submitted by ____gracie____ to AITAH [link] [comments]

2023.05.31 04:16 avranta Torn between cooler sizes

Hey guys, the lady and I are going on a week long trip out to Penticton, and I’ve been looking at finally buying s cooler instead of borrowing my parents old beat up coolers! I’ve been looking at the Cabelas Polar Cap coolers, the RTic, but as a Yeti collector, it’s hard to say no to a yeti lol
I was at Cabelas looking at them in person, hummed and hawed for a solid half an hour but couldn’t make a decision, figured I’d ask you guys that own them on your thoughts!
As far as camping goes, we do a few trips here and there through the summer when we can find time between work, and normally it’s a 2-4 day trip, heading home on day 4! This trip is gonna be out long one gone for 7-9 days, and I’m trying to reason which one I should pick up.
My big considerations are that we’re going to be right around stores for groceries and such still, which turns me a little more to the 45, but as far as the 4 day camping trips out in the sticks goes, would that 65 be the better option for the two of us, or would the 45 even be fine for that? Just need it to keep cold foods cold, and around a dozen drinks nice and cool!
Packing doesn’t seem too bad as it’s going in an SUV, and there’s only a few inch difference between the two for the footprint, but I’ve also heard people talking about the weight of them too, something I can’t really get a feel for in store when loaded! On one hand, the extra $75 for the 65 doesn’t seem terrible, but is it going to be as worth it as I think it is?

submitted by avranta to YetiCoolers [link] [comments]

2023.05.31 04:15 ____gracie____ My story, and how I became who I am today

submitted by ____gracie____ to KeepWriting [link] [comments]

2023.05.31 04:14 pawtistisc Strange dove behavior

I will preface this by saying, I don't know if this is quite the right sub. This is a probably wild bird, but I can't find a good subreddit to ask this in. If this isn't a good post I can take it down. That being said, I go in my backyard a lot, and the past few days this mourning dove has been out on my back wall almost all day everyday. Which isn't too strange, we have a lot of doves here, but she just sits there all day. I've also looked for a nest and there are none nearby. The weirdest part though, is how friendly she is. I can put my hand right next to her and she doesn't fly away until I'm almost touching her. She doesn't really seemed bothered when I'm near her I obviously haven't grabbed her or tried because I don't want to hurt her. I've left out some kale, dry oats, apple slices, and water because I saw that was good for them. I've also noticed that one of her wings sticks out farther than the other. Should I be concerned, and is there anything I can do?

submitted by pawtistisc to PetDoves [link] [comments]

2023.05.31 04:13 ____gracie____ I cut custody with my bio mum

submitted by ____gracie____ to Tell_a_Story [link] [comments]

2023.05.31 03:38 inpainlol bad dasher experience

so i ordered doordash the other night, and the restaurant was right around the corner from me but i was drinking and it was late and being a younger girl, i didn’t want to walk late at night or obviously drive under the influence so i ordered instead.
i ordered at about 9:45ish and being around the corner, the ‘expected’ delivery time was 15-22 mins. my driver picked up the order at like 10pm, confirmed the pick up, and just sat in the carpark for about 35 mins. i was kinda pissed to be completely honest. and then he finally starts driving - in the complete opposite direction. and then he turns around after almost 10 mins driving the opposite way and actually starts going toward my house, and then stops and collects another order. i have nothing against stacked orders but wtf is he doing at this point?
i asked it to be left at the door and to not knock because my dogs bark their heads off if someone is at the door. obviously it’s late so i had my porch light on as well. and then my driver calls me and asks me to come outside and collect my order because he can’t find my house. it’s on a clear main street, it’s really not hard to find at all. so i go out to my porch and i’m waiting, but my driver was still 6 minutes away. instantly i was worried because i am a young girl and i was home alone at the time, so i went back inside and waited until he was closer to my house to go back out and signal to him. and then he pulls into my driveway and beeps his car horn? and so i’m waiting for him to bring my food out and he just waves his hand at me to come over and collect the food from him. i walked over and just waited about 10 metres from the car because i refused to go any closer and he realises and rolls his eyes at me and brings my food out. i grab it and practically run back inside because i was creeped out by now. and then he calls me and said “why didn’t you tip please add a tip and five star review” mind you i live in australia and tipping is just not a thing here, but i usually still add a small tip if everything went well (you can only add tips after delivery here), but that was not happening after that experience.
i ordered fries, mozzarella sticks and a few other fried snacks (my drunken addiction is fried food) and my order didn’t arrive until about 11:30 (over an hour later than expected) and by then it was cold, soggy and i was pretty much about to fall asleep had i not been scared out of my brain. i couldn’t even eat it by then. just shocked and scared tbh. i’m a dasher myself and it’s not hard to be good at this job but this is just shitty customer service.

submitted by inpainlol to doordash [link] [comments]

2023.05.31 03:35 sweetfuzzybitch Long Fic #14 Poll

Please review the following and choose what you would like to be our next fic to read!
Warning! All of these are rated Mature or Explicit so please take care. As always, 18+!
***
Breath Mints / Battle Scars by Onyx_and_Elm
For a moment, she's almost giddy. Because Draco Malfoy's been ruined by this war and he's as out of place as she is and — yes, he has scars too. He's got an even bigger one. She wonders whether one day they'll compare sizes.
About time we voted on this one. I tried to read this forever ago and had to stop because my sensitive soul could not take it. However I'd be up to the challenge for the sake of this club.
Side note: Am I the only one who imagines Jasper Hale's iconic line "battle scars," when reading this title? Just me? Okay.
***
Bring Him to His Knees by Musyc
Draco is on the case of a murderer, but to investigate, he needs a fake relationship - and a kink club play partner. When Hermione volunteers to take the role, both do their best to maintain the lie without letting each other know the truth: neither of them are acting.
*Cough* Sex club in the HOUSE!!
***
Secrets and Masks by Emerald_Slytherin
9 years after the battle of Hogwarts, the war still rages on and everyone is much changed since their days at Hogwarts. Hermione is the most lethal soldier in The Order, spending her days on rescue missions to free captured Muggleborn slaves and fight on the front line. For years, she's been meeting in secret with a spy within Voldemort's ranks to exchange information. But, when she's captured and made prisoner at Malfoy Manor, of all the dark and evil ways she'd envisioned Malfoy would torture her, she never quite imagined anything this horrific.
I just wanted to make it abundantly clear that I was originally inspired to write this fic after I read the masterpiece that is Manacled, so I would like to thank SenLinYu for her amazing work!
The memory searching aspect of Manacled is what inspired me, and although I have adapted that, (and also made Draco head Death Eater, because... ya know... we all love it when he's Voldemort's right hand man 😅😉), Secrets and Masks will be a very very different fic all together.
***
Love and Other Historical Accidents by PacificRimbaud
"Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy never intended to blow up their life's work, but that's rather what they've gone and done. Now they're trapped 200 years in the past, with a broken Time Turner, a missing snuff box, a handful of overly-eligible daughters, and a House-elf in a cable knit cardigan. It will require the combined power of their keen intellects to get them home, if they'd stop arguing long enough to use them. As it turns out, history is just one damned accident after another.
For fans of Harry Potter, Jane Austen, and Connie Willis, a historical romantic comedy all about time, and getting the hell out of it."
The author has informed us to mind the tags, "especially slow burn, miscommunication and selective obliviousness."
More from the author: "This story is a farce. Characteristic of the genre, it features exaggerated, outlandish, and unlikely comedic scenarios, physical humor, intentional absurdity, miscommunications, and a playfully mocking tone towards situations, individuals, and events. … Draco begins this story already redeemed. Both he and Hermione are flawed. … At its core, this is a romance between two people trying their best and often failing (until they don't). … this is extremely silly and meant to be that way (until it isn't)."
***
Happy Pills by malf0y101
"A few years after the Second Wizarding War, a group of Slytherins is drafted into a rehabilitation program created by the Ministry of Magic and one of its determined interns--one of their former classmates and the familiar Golden Girl of Gryffindor. As their marks continue to cause physical and mental pain, the Slytherins undergo intense treatment in order to relearn everything about the Wizarding World and tackle the trauma of their Dark Marks.
And although they are apprehensive, they are also desperate for someone to simply care about them."
The author has put a trigger warning for self harm and suicide! So please take care while looking over and potentially reading this one. <3
***
Chronos Historia by In_Dreams
"Hermione and Draco stumble upon a mysterious portal and find themselves hurtled back through time a thousand years. Forced to team up to find a way home, they quickly realize that much of the history they believed to be fact, wasn't true after all. A founders era, time travel Dramione."
This work is rated mature for "language, minor violence and sexual content." Seems to be a good read about our favorite pair time traveling to the time of the founders of Hogwarts. Sounds very cool!
View Poll

submitted by sweetfuzzybitch to dramionebookclub [link] [comments]

2023.05.31 03:28 haveabanditday First successful sourdough brioche!

Sullivan St. Bakery Cookbook
Ingredients
100 grams (a scant ½ cup) water 113 grams (1 stick/8 tablespoons) unsalted butter 90 grams (a scant ½ cup) sugar 5 grams (1 teaspoon) honey 2 large eggs at room temperature 4 grams (1 teaspoon) vanilla extract Very finely chopped or grated zest of ½ lemon 125 grams biga 270 grams (1¾ cups plus 2 tablespoons) unbleached all-purpose flour, plus flour for dusting 6 grams (1 teaspoon) fine sea salt Olive oil for the bowl

Gently heat the water, butter, sugar, and honey to a pleasantly warm temperature, about 100°F, in a small saucepan over low heat. Allow to cool a bit. Transfer to a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on low speed until the sugar dissolves. Add the eggs, vanilla, and lemon zest. Add the biga and mix at medium speed until mostly dissolved. Stop the mixer, add the flour and salt, and mix on low until just combined. Mix on medium-high for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the dough ribbons, webs, and pulls off the side of the bowl.
Scrape off the paddle, scrape down the sides of the bowl, cover loosely with a damp tea towel, and allow to barely double in size, 6 to 9 hours at room temperature. (If you are going to need to free up the mixer, transfer to an oiled bowl and cover with a damp tea towel.) When the dough is ready, it will be soft, supple, and inflated with air.
Heavily flour a work surface. Line an 8½-by-4½-inch loaf pan with parchment paper, with 2 inches of paper hanging over each end. Lightly flour your hands and the edges of the dough. Use a dough scraper to gently pry the dough loose from the bowl, taking care not to tear it.
Turn the dough out onto the floured work surface and pat it down firmly to flatten it. Pick up the left side of the dough and fold it two-thirds of the way toward the right side. Then pick up the right side and fold it two-thirds of the way toward the left side. Gently pat down the dough again and turn the top of the dough (the point farthest from you) into a "bike seat". fold the corners down to make a very small triangle. Pat down the tip of the triangle very firmly and then roll it toward you. Continue rolling the dough toward you until you have a neat cylinder.
Put the dough seam side down in the paper-lined loaf pan and cover with a damp tea towel to keep it moist so a skin does not form on the surface of the loaf. Let the dough rise at room temperature until it reaches the top of the pan-2 to 4 hours in the summer and as many as 8 to 10 hours in the winter.
Heat the oven to 375°F. Remove the damp tea towel and bake the brioche, uncovered, for 45 to 50 minutes, until the top is light brown. (If the top begins to brown too quickly, cover it with foil.) Let the loaf cool for 5 minutes and then use the parchment paper to pull the loaf from the pan. Allow to cool on a wire rack before eating.

submitted by haveabanditday to Sourdough [link] [comments]

2023.05.31 03:27 harry-jg Best VPN for Sky Sports

Sky Sports: the grand buffet of sports viewing, offering everything from the delicacies of cricket to the rib-sticking goodness of football, and the high-octane dessert of Formula 1. It's a veritable feast for the eyes, but like that one amazing candy shop you stumbled upon on a childhood vacation to the UK, it's only available to those fortunate enough to find themselves within the British Isles' invisible circle of privilege.
A Virtual Private Network, or VPN as the technologically savvy call it, is your Willy Wonka golden ticket to this sporting wonderland. But just as not all chocolate is created equal (looking at you, American "chocolate"), not all VPNs are capable of whisking you away over the digital rainbow to the land of Sky Sports. And of those that can, only a select few provide the silky-smooth streaming experience you need to see each ball kicked, each wicket taken, and every flashy, hair-raising overtake.
In my self-appointed role as the VPN connoisseur, I've diligently tested every major virtual sous-chef on the market, seeking the one with the speedy connection that would make Usain Bolt envious. The thrill of the game shouldn't be overshadowed by the heart-stopping horror of a buffering wheel of doom, after all.
So, without further ado, I reveal the crown jewel, the pièce de résistance, ExpressVPN. It takes the pole position as the primo choice for sneaking a peek at Sky Sports, and the cherry on top? You can try it out today, without the fear of buyer's remorse. They offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, ensuring that your sporting dreams never turn into a buffering nightmare.
ExpressVPN
Consider ExpressVPN as that best friend who happens to have a summer house in every corner of the world, 160 corners to be precise, four of which are conveniently located in the cozy confines of the United Kingdom. This is not just hearsay, oh no, I've tested it myself. A quick digital jaunt to the UK, courtesy of ExpressVPN, and voila! Sky Sports in all its streaming glory, available to anyone outside the UK and Ireland. Not just that, the network is optimized for the smoothest HD streaming that would make butter envious. The specifics of the speed test results are tucked away neatly in our ExpressVPN review, for your perusal at leisure.
The charm of ExpressVPN is that it's a regular jack-of-all-trades, making itself right at home on a myriad of devices - from the more pedestrian iOS and Windows to the chic smart TVs and elusive consoles. Its special power, the 'MediaStreamer' feature, is the magic wand that transforms your streaming experience, making it possible on even those devices that usually snub VPNs with a raised eyebrow and a dismissive wave.
Perhaps you're looking at your console and wondering, "Can I use ExpressVPN to unlock Sky Sports on this piece of modern art?" Well, my friend, you're in luck. It's as simple as upgrading your router's firmware with the one provided by ExpressVPN. Granted, the process might seem as complicated as explaining the offside rule in football to a toddler, but worry not! There's a handy video tutorial, clear as a bell and easy to follow, that makes the process less "rocket science" and more "microwaving popcorn".
CyberGhostVPN
Imagine, if you will, CyberGhost - a generous spirit, with over 320 UK-based and 36+ Ireland-residing servers up its phantom sleeve, all ready and raring to deliver the thrill of Sky Sports to your screen. It's more than a mere boast - this spectral buddy is geared for speedy streaming, capable of delivering high-definition cricket balls whizzing and football goals scored right into your living room without a hiccup. The performance of this spectral speedster has been put to test, and the results can be found tucked away in our CyberGhost review.
What's more, CyberGhost doesn't discriminate against the multitude of gizmos you might possess. Be it the latest iPhone, a beloved old tablet, or anything in between, CyberGhost makes streaming as easy as belting out your favorite shower song. And did I mention its capacity for benevolence? Seven, yes seven, devices can connect simultaneously. So go ahead and share the joy of VPN protection with a few unsuspecting friends or family members. Or better yet, host an impromptu sports night!
And for those who have found themselves victim to the infamous throttling ISPs, CyberGhost is a hero in disguise. It guarantees that your HD sports streaming experience is as smooth as a perfectly thrown bowling ball, free from the irksome interruptions that can make a simple cricket match seem as long as a season finale cliffhanger.
Private Internet Access
Imagine my glee when I discovered that Private Internet Access (PIA for us insiders) is not only the proud parent of a substantial herd of servers strewn across the UK and Ireland but also capable of delivering Sky Sports in a swift and steady stream. It's a bit like finding out the neighborhood spinster aunt turns out to be a champion arm-wrestler. My various tests of PIA proved its uncanny ability to churn out high-quality video content faster than a cheetah in a sports car. You can find the exact numerical delights in our detail-packed Private Internet Access review.
Now, this VPN is no ordinary digital specter, oh no. PIA possesses the key to those pesky geoblocks that stand between you and Sky Sports in HD, irrespective of where on this globe you plant your slippers. And while other lesser entities may impose bandwidth limits or throttling, PIA believes in letting it flow – all in favor of granting you faster connections and an enhanced visual feast. After all, what's the joy in a close-up if you can't appreciate the rivulets of sweat tracing a path down a player's furrowed brow?
And here's the icing on the cake: Private Internet Access hands you a golden ticket to try it out, risk-free, for an entire month, courtesy of its 30-day money-back guarantee. It's like being invited to a banquet and told you can leave anytime without having to foot the bill.
The Gentle Art of Digital Disguise: VPNs and the Quest for Sky Sports
Here's a bitter pill: grand streaming powerhouses like Sky Sports in the UK and Ireland have decided to become the exclusive clubs of their territories, turning a blind eye to the legion of sports enthusiasts beyond their borders. Imagine that – something as universal as sport being held hostage by geographical boundaries. This is where our dear friend the VPN, or the Virtual Private Network, steps in, like a dashing secret agent from a spy novel, ready to help you leap over these digital hurdles.
Now, you may ask, what's the magic trick? Well, when you summon a VPN, it graciously enables you to connect to a server in the UK or Ireland, effectively morphing your IP address into one that's born and bred in the UK or Ireland. Picture yourself donning an impeccable disguise, becoming practically indistinguishable from the local digital crowd. The geoblocks, in their oblivious state, will not detect your international origins and let you walk right through the front door.
So, what happens next? Then, my friend, you are free to bask in the glory of Sky Sports to your heart's content. And all this, thanks to the unsung hero of the internet - the VPN.

submitted by harry-jg to topvpn [link] [comments]

2023.05.31 03:22 irimar- My husband raised his voice at me over manicuring our son’s nails

My son showed me that he broke a nail and I said I’d fix it. Typically I just trim and file his nails but he had a bad day at school and I wanted to give him some extra attention.
It was just a manicure and clear polish. It wasn’t even glossy, it was matte, because I know my son wouldn’t like shiny nails. It calmed him down and we had a nice time together.
My husband got home from work as we were finishing. He loudly asked what I was doing and told our son to show him his hand. My heart jumped being spoken to like that out no where.
I said I just fixed his nails and my husband said “that’s fine, just remember he’s not a mini you, he’s a boy. My son”. I didn’t say anything back because I don’t like to argue.
My son mumbled to me “why is he so mean?”. I told him that he was tired from work. As I was putting some lotion on his hand he asked “is he mad at us?”. I told him everything was okay and not to feel bad.
My husband must have picked up on our son’s nerves because later he said to our son “you know I’m not being mean to you or your mother, right? I’m fine with her pampering you, I’m just reminding her to do it appropriately”. He didn’t even really say I was doing anything wrong but it still made me feel like I was. I do honestly think he was tired. I hate seeing our son have anxiety about his dad, it’s usually not like that.

submitted by irimar- to TrueOffMyChest [link] [comments]

2023.05.31 03:22 OutsideNewspaper7049 Necromancy debut reveals the true price of both MTX and RuneScape's ongoing identity crisis.

I. INTRO
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Force-fed Irrelevancy With the reveal of Necromancy and a recent foray of mine into OSRS couple of things cleared up for me. RuneScape 3 has disenfranchised its playerbase so significantly that it cannot go unnoticed anymore. The constant bombardment from cookie-cutter, recycled money grabbing events in the game 'masked' as content without an appropriate attempt to at least conceal their true predatory nature has taken a great toll it seems. Just for a statistical significance I've attached a screenshot rounding up ALL the views from today's 'anticipated' reveal, RuneScape's 'biggest update to date'. I know it's taboo to bring OSRS into a RS3 discussion because they're so 'different' yet I'd argue that the main difference is the lack of any coherent, singular direction in the latter. Going back to the views, the content creators are not at fault here, the lack of any new meaningful content that is not repurposed assets and code for another 'different' yet absolutely mindless grind in both content and context - offers little to any content creator - and if there's nothing to talk about, no one will talk about it. You can judge how content-dry the community is by the similarity content from every creator.
What I noticed in several days of playing OSRS is that at any one point you have many more possibilities and ironically, for a game that's supposed to be grindier you get to play more of the game earlier with early-mid level content staying relevant for pretty much ever. (This used to be the case before the Linearization of RS3 which I will cover further down). It's astonishing then that RS3 is cluelessly called EZScape by the OSRS community, since at 60 stats in OSRS you can pretty much start getting into the fun stuff, that is about a week of moderate play, RS3 on the other hand you need a lot of gold that in many ways is harder to get than the OSRS equivalent and reach greater heights to start 'playing the game' - no wonder we need all the DXP events, just to try getting a portion of the playerbase into what someone at Jagex has decided is 'the game'.
All of this is a result, many years in the making as I'll explore further down, there will be no TL:DR so this is your final wall-o-text warning. :)
Also if I might sound bashful towards the developers that is not my intent, my critique is to whoever is steering the ship, as a developer you don't really have much freedom or power unless it's given to you, otherwise it's just a job you do. So the responsibility lies with whoever's steering the ship (sailing reference ha!) and has insisted on absolutely murdering this gem. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
II. The Combat and what Necromancy really should have been (and it part is)
Just for context I'm at the point of the game where I've no more relevant skills to max, I've done all entry and mid-level and started getting into 'high-end' bossing, money is flowing in, there are no skill related money sinks so I've hundreds of millions of gold and 2b in gear - for any new to mid-game players this is not a brag just context and is 'barely even starting point for real PvM' as anyone who 'really' bosses will tell you what a broke scrub I must be. Maybe I've not progressed far enough into OSRS, but this inferiority complex seems to not exist there, everything is an achievement that is not devalued by an assumption that you're playing an 'easy game'.
All combat I do is also full manual, I've read the bossing github page a dozen times, I've made dynamic excel tables to determine best rotations taking into account average damage, effects and cooldowns of basics. Then I engaged with combat in OSRS and felt like I'd been slapped awake and understood why so many left when EoC came out and didn't settle for anything less than OSRS. I also immediately realized that for the past years I've lied to myself that the general game, awkward state of its visuals and the combat system work - just because I wanted to play RuneScape and not have to start from the ground up, disregarding all of my achievements, but most importantly memories. Apparently, I wasn't even having fun, I had just become really good at convincing myself I was.
To put Runescape 3 Combat in a single paragraph:
If you design a system to be complex for the sake of complexity, that is what you will achieve, if you design a system to be satisfying to use, learn and master that is what the system will be - a BYPRODUCT of that may be increased complexity (there are certain requirements for engagement that make something satisfying to 'operate') but you absolutely cannot simply copy the byproducts of a system and expect the same functionality.
EoC since its release and to this day is a system designed to be complex and not satisfying, replacing a system that was satisfying to use and had natural complexity (like all the gear and prayer switches) Just 'tab- target' combat was what was deemed fashionable at the time and without any regard for the game's actual needs was partially implemented (and still is, the tooltips for one are an absolute mess, the audio-visual feedback is...EoC for lack of a better curse-word) and cripples the game to this day.
The Good News about Necromancy - a step in the right direction, but on the wrong road. They seem to really want to FIX the core of the combat system, at least kind of, but this is the positive paragraph, so I'll stick to that theme. The devs spoke about completely redoing how crit chance/damage and splashing works - essentially changing how combat is calculated and regulating damage numbers so that it's never 'Not Fun' to hit i.e. you splash or hit the lower cap of an ability. Designing the system to be fun/satisfying at its core is great news. That means that some things that don't add anything, like the atrocious basics rotations can be done away with - they never really added anything but complexity - seen with the new Necromancer's Auto Attack that replaces all that mumbo-jumbo.
The Bad News about Necromancy (and what it should have been)
The problem with Necromancy, mainly is that it is an attempt to save a foreign limb, that's been badly grafted on and should've been cut off long ago with what amounts to fancy experimental surgery. What Necromancy should've been, is no Necromancy at all, but rather a complete rework of the EXISTING combat system and styles from the ground up. I won't go into the how and why, but you can search for RuneScape - Project Combat on YouTube, it touches on a tiny portion of the points that need to be addressed, however, in my opinion it's still about fixing what should be scrapped and redesigned completely.
My second problem with Necromancy is a thematical one, I don't see, especially since it also uses runes, so it follows diagetic logic of magic - why it isn't part of magic, but rather another grafted-in piece. It's a different type of power yet works in exactly the same way, similar to how in my opinion Divination could've/should've been a part of Prayer or vice versa and has no reason to be a separate skill. It also, and that might just be me, feels like a dilution of the 'runescapeness', like we're adding things just to add things, which is how I felt about Divination. Not to mention the new player experience when they have a separate skill to level, like 28/9 isn't enough. The casual player, Jagex Upper Management's wet dream, can't even fathom maxing one and will alt+f4 and uninstall faster than Jagex can claim selling gambling to addicts and Mental health awareness aren't mutually exclusive.
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III. Lack of Direction
Gameplay and Genre /an intro
See, the moment you spend half an hour in OSRS you know, without a shadow of a doubt about what genre it is, a SANDBOX. There's little content in the game that is firmly locked behind a linear, pre-defined progression. Quests are fun and nice and give a lot of QoL, but you can max your account or amass a fortune without ever completing one. Bosses you can do or skip, so can any other content in the game - that does not mean they're not designed well to complement each another nicely. In fact, I consider the osrs F2P experience a disgrace to the game since so many synergistic skills are locked. Such as combat + slayer and herblore, camping woodcutting spots with a knife, never having to bank and amassing arrow shafts for both initial and future progression into fletching just to name a few and you never realize how disjointed your experience becomes until you start from scratch as a member. A level cap of 50 on all skills would've been a much more congruent way to do it, that allows you to transition nicely into members.
Know your Niche or Stop Trying to change what you are
Let's get back to that shoehorned in combat system for a moment, cursed upon us in a moment in time when WoW and WoW-like games were dominating the market. Now imagine the arrogance with which one assumes that by cramming a 'close enough' copy of a combat style of a LINEAR game into a well-defined Sandbox - you'll attract not only 'new' players but also most likely this very game's players. It's likely whoever took that decision banked on the latter, making it even more arrogant of an assumption - mainly because the MMORPG is a genre that requires enough of an investment that regular folk, i.e. the majority of any playerbase, can only afford to play one without letting their real-life responsibilities spiral out of control (and even one's a stretch).
Now do you see a problem? Imagine you magically poach the players of other games, games that are almost exclusively all Linear in nature, with a defined path, a story line, sequential quests and most importantly a CLEAR and LINEAR progression. They land in your beautiful Frankenstein and discover that (let's just imagine EoC is a decent, responsive system for the sake of the argument) besides the combat system, NOTHING else in the game is what they've grown to love and look for in an MMO.
The graphics and camera are weird, the quests seem rather strange and cryptic, after 100 hours you've not saved the world even once!?
So you start the...
REMAKING (mandatory Invincible title screen reference)
Now your game has to fit all their criteria because you can't seem to retain them. You have add saving the world, update the graphics and add cosmetics that will ultimately destroy any sense of immersion, but money is money. Now you need to make proper end-game... AAND we have a problem.
While MTX and Saving the world (a slight thematic oversight) are not entirely user-experience breaking, crammin an end-game into a sandbox designed to ...well... never end for most players is. For context someone had calculated the most optimal level to max would take 1800hrs(back in the day). If you play 10hrs a week, that is 180 weeks, that's 3.45 years of play -and- that is the most unrealistically optimal way to max disregarding the fact that you need to make the money for 'buyable' skills.
Well, you kill two birds with one stone, that's how. You have now manufactured a problem you can sell the solution to. You introduce new methods/rates of xp, new ways to get xp and ultimately just sell it straight up and host Double Xp. At the same time devaluing your core audience's achievements and also messing with the economy - since any economy is built on a sense of value that is interconnected with supply and demand.
Now even all these manipulations don't seem to prove effective, people still don't seem to want to all go into that linear path you keep digging and insisting it is where the real game is - while surrounded by the carcass of what is still mostly a sandbox.
What is interesting to note is that in this entire awkwardness a very human thing occurs. Some players find they're really good at this malformed embryo of mismatching ideas, maybe like myself they still share strong enough sentiment for the game that they've talked themselves into believing that it's actually okay, it's 'fun'. Maybe they don't realize they like the freedom and ability of the sandbox to set your own goals and complete them, a sandbox that's being quickly turned into a line with little to no meaningful horizontal progression - even Necromancy's bastardized 'talents' is conceptually just a straight line. There is no decision there you WILL get them ALL. There is no choice. There is little to no differentiation between one ranger and another, one melee fighter and the next. And while METAs are inevitable there is a difference between a META and fundamental lack of choice. There aren't multiple t95 ranged weapons to choose from, there is one, there aren't multiple relevant armor sets, there is one. Even the types are arbitrary - with few exceptions Tank and Hybrid armor might as well not exist. And while some might start to argue that RuneScape was never really a game of choice as you max everything anyway - I've two things to say - first of all I've seen much more variety and choice in OSRS in regard to equipment than I've ever seen in RS3 and second, but more importantly RuneScape is a sandbox, a genre fundamentally based on free choice.
Now these people are our content creators, our echo chamber - however bad something is, there will be someone who is good at it and/or likes it.
Meaning they might not enjoy the thing itself but enjoy that they're better at it than other people, which gives them certain opportunities and unfortunately is a driving force for the game's direction. They either can't or don't want to see the bigger picture, due to multitude of incentives and reasons and the solutions they propose are almost always iterative and not a complete scrapping of the system, less risk for their livelihood. With stakes that high, who can blame them, however, numbers don't lie and statistics show us few people like the state of the game to even watch it on Twitch.
Of course, iteration is not how we got here. EoC was not an incremental change and reverting to a completely different system one increment at a time is a fool's errand if not nigh impossible. And I'm not even going to start talking about forcing a system into an engine fundamentally made for another. I'm not saying bring back the old combat, I'm not against general changes in combat, however, they have to be well designed both in terms of user experience and the technical limitations. EoC is a hard pass in both regards.
Another issue with trying to cannibalize an existing product into something else that you're also unsure of is that other parts of the game start becoming incongruent with themselves and the whole such as:
Visuals and Art Direction
When you log into RuneScape 3 you're met with a literal manifestation of the aforementioned experimental limb attachment surgery. I have never seen 3 games from different generations crammed into one in such a grotesque fashion. We have remnants of OSRS, HD-Scape and different iterations of RS3. Now the first two are similar enough in style, what we'll simply call art direction things look a certain way, have a certain consistency and generally do not create noticeable contrast. Then we have the 'modern-look' and here I'll be a little harsher given that this is my professional domain.
Let us start from the technicalities. You don't roll-out a partial replacement of the world, EVER. Especially if it's essentially a different game. You either do it at once or you don't. (You can partially do it, if your goal is short-term engagement and profit and do not care for the long-term health of the product.) You decide on a direction that complements the content, gameplay and the fantasy you're selling - in the case of existing IPs - any expected/ associated visuals. (No one wants to buy call of duty and find out all characters are squishy plushies and they fight with tactical chocolate in Willy Wonka's factory... I think?) You also have to determine scope and viability, additionally if you are taking a new direction, you have to test it so you don't make the players feel like guests in their own home after implementing it. Hopefully then you can start planning the minimum viable product and from that a production pipeline for the assets (given your talent pool) and you plan it well enough, so that you work smart and not hard(because you'll have to work you ass off anyway) If in Design we say and practice Copy-Transform-Combine regarding ideas, in Production we do the same with Re-Use: we Copy(literally), we Combine and Transform existing assets into new ones. The goal is the most effect with the least effort. The point I'm making is that with proper management of your artists' time and skills you can make both Quality and Quantity. (here we can make the comment about the infamously low pay they offer their developers, so I can't blame anyone for not delivering either) If you deem scope impossible, you just don't do it and move on to the next pressing matter until you have the resources to do it. I'm not going to go into technicalities about the absolute lack of production standards that eff us right out of whatever little immersion we have left after the cosmetics ... do their thing.
The Art Direction. If we imagine for a moment that RuneScape has the 'modernized' homogenous visuals as is the plan, how does it compare to what was before and what we've come to expect. Now this is a tricky one, since (and I'll speculate a bit here) a lot of the appeal and "art direction" of RuneScape was determined by technical limitations, budget and inexperience (at the time) of the devs making it, therefore you can claim that a proper style was never developed, yet you can't deny the resulting look of the game. An argument can be made if the game was stylized/abstracted by necessity or by design. Now, semantics aside does the new 'modern' look work for RuneScape? I'm inclined to say no. On the one hand there's stylistic inconsistencies, so you can't really pin-point a well defined and executed style, but a large pattern in a lot of creatures and environment is what I'll call the "soft clay look" (also known as: we don't put enough money, nor do we give enough time for the art department to care) Look at the Hellhound model, Anachronia or any other 'new' terrain. It's bland, literally devoid of visual stimulation, the old ground detail and style was much better in that regard. Of the ridiculous things I've seen, the leaves of many new plants(especially in Anachronia) are my favorite as they look as if they're made of thick dinosaur leather, yet like many other new surfaces in the game are an undefined matte, neither an entirely 'shaded' material that derives its appearance from material characteristics reacting to light, nor fully hand-painted that have light 'painted in' - resulting in an especially confusing image. What is worse yet the scale is totally off in a lot of the content (in Anarchronia of course, you're meant to feel small, which doesn't excuse the uncharacteristically cartoonish proportions of trees and obsession with thickness leaves walls etc. things are just wonky.) It's a rather confusing problem of scale though - since in most places they are adequately proportionate to the character(excluding the thickness obession), what makes it weird is that you have massive objects with little detail. Object size, especially when we've no depth perception such as when perceiving it from a 2D screen is subconsciously determined by many things, one of which is detail. If the object is big relative to everything else we get a shift in the feeling of the setting from 'living-breathing adventurer in a living-breathing world' to 'a toy doll in a toy house'.
They've insisted on new light reworks and shiny materials AND hand-painted textures at SOME places. I'm not even going to mention how inconsistent MTX ties into that.
All in all it looks like the Gameplay and Visual Style of the game is the so called 'design by committee'. A committee of MBAs that pay, or rather don't pay enough for development, and should have no say in it in the first place.
Closing statement:
Personally, I believe that RS3 in its current iteration should be put on life support, ironically it feels like it is anyway, until someone, hopefully qualified, can decide what the game is and flesh out a direction both in gameplay and visual. I assume the accumulated technical debt and the absolute mess of an engine* are factors so detrimental that starting from scratch is a faster solution to most problems. i.e. New character models, responsive combat, trade limit.
I'll leave you with one last question, it's slightly philosophical, should the game be made anew, does it stick to its guns and force a fairly slow tick combat system - a relic of the past, but a relic that makes it what it is. Does it evolve and if it evolves is it RuneScape? How much can you change something before it's the same only in name?

(*I can't even imagine the borderline mysticism and arcana it is to maintain and expand on that)
PS - this is obviously a throwaway account

submitted by OutsideNewspaper7049 to runescape [link] [comments]

2023.05.31 03:17 GoldenHeart411 S*xual Harassment bc of Pregnancy

I am currently recently postpartum, but during my pregnancy I had to report my boss for sexual harassment. I've been feeling extremely guilty about it and I wanted to share here the things that happened and see if others agree that I did the right thing.
When I arrived to work from a doctor’s appointment my boss said in a snappy, joking tone, “I shouldn’t say this, but…You better not be pregnant!” This was after a miscarriage (that he didn't know about) and while my husband and I were trying to conceive.
When I told my boss about my recent (successful) pregnancy, he looked straight at my stomach and said, “I thought so! I've knocked up enough girls I know the difference between a baby bump and someone getting fat! I've known ever since you wore that tight shirt on Halloween!" (It was a regular t-shirt as part of my costume but it was less baggy than the clothes I had been wearing and I was barely showing.) He then said "Let me guess, you are three months along?” I said no, 5 months and he said, “Wow you don't look that far along! That's a good problem to have!” He then asked if I was going to have a girl or boy and when I said girl he started complaining about how dramatic and difficult girls are and that he has “lots of daughters” so he knows. He also said that he would have kept having kids until he had a boy, even if it took 11 or 12 kids. That felt demeaning to women.
When I informed my boss of my pregnancy I asked him to keep the information in confidence until I was ready to share with the team. Shortly after, during a conversation between me and him discussing my job duties regarding my pregnancy, prior to telling the team, my boss asked if he could call my coworker over into the conversation and I said yes, assuming he wanted to talk to her about taking over some of the duties that he had just expressed he didn't want me to have to do further along in my pregnancy. But when she came over my boss suddenly announced my pregnancy to my coworker by saying "Sarah got herself knocked up!"
This same coworker told me later that day that our boss had already hinted to her about my pregnancy a few days prior by saying, “I'm not sure how much longer [my name] can do things, in her condition.” I feel very upset that he was telling people my news which is also confidential medical information, as well as assuming my abilities.
When I informed my work team of my pregnancy my boss proceeded to make a bunch of jokes about the “husband stitch” in the meeting for everyone to hear, and he told me I would need to warn my husband not to do the same thing in the delivery room. I told my boss my husband wasn't like that and it wouldn't be a problem and he insisted, “Believe me, every husband wants to make those jokes”. I told him, “That’s very sexist.” But he did not take the hint.
In this same team meeting the topic of baby showers came up and whether I would have one at work, and my boss said I should paint my belly like a beach ball for the baby shower and asked if the baby shower could be co-ed or, “One of those lame 'girls only' ones”. I said, "It could be co-ed only if you can be appropriate!" However he still didn't seem to get the hint and started to act out a stereotyped version of a pregnant woman, like charades, laughing at how pregnant women walk and get out of chairs. He was holding his lower back and groaning and waddling around, and then said "oh you poor things, I feel sorry for you girls going through it, but it's like 'oh you're so cute!'"
A little later a different manager had sent my boss a picture of a new baby in her family and he called me over and showed me the photo and said "Look! These things come out of your guys' va-jay-jays and they're so stinkin’ cute! Can't wait to get pictures of yours!" Even though I don't think my boss is a predator toward children I was still very uncomfortable giving him photos of my daughter at this point.
About 4 months before my due date my boss asked me if I had applied for maternity leave yet and he informed me that he had rubber gloves if I wanted to stay at work “till it was time to pop”. I was pretty grossed out by the implication that he wanted to deliver my baby. I did stay at work until a few days before delivering and that had been my plan all along, so I didn't appreciate the weird pressure to take leave sooner.
I'm not good about speaking up in uncomfortable situations, especially when I'm in shock at what was just said, but I was trying hard to say something and ended up along the lines of “Um, okay that was over the line,” but he seemed to think we were bantering back and forth and it was all a joke. Once when I spoke up in a similar way he retorted, “Remember that sweet, innocent almost childlike person who got hired last year? Where did she go?”
My boss said he didn't want me driving the work delivery van later in pregnancy. I said that's fine and asked why. Then again he started acting out a stereotyped pregnant woman by waddling, sticking his stomach out, holding his lower back, groaning, and then told me that's how it would be for me. I told him, “Please don't stereotype my pregnancy. It’s different for everyone. I'll ask for the support I need.” But he kept telling me how miserable I would be later in pregnancy and when I said, “It’s different for everyone, we’ll see how it goes”, he started bragging about how many women he's "knocked up" and that "he knows" because he's seen what they went through. I told him it might not be like that for me, and indeed it wasn't. I had a really easy pregnancy all the way through and had pretty much no limitations in any of my job duties. I didn't walk with a waddle, or have any back pain or do any of the things he insisted I would do. Not that I would ever look down on women who experience those things, but it wasn't the case for me and it was frustrating that he kept stereotyping me and insisting on what I would go through. He was trying to tell me about my own body and even though I hadn't been pregnant before I knew my body and I was fairly certain that wouldn't be how the experience would be for me. He didn't believe me, but I ended up being right.
My boss told me a lot of really personal stories about his wife such as saying that he was her first sexual partner and that she gets really jealous as a result, and that he often tries to make her jealous on purpose by telling her how beautiful all the women he works with are, all the while making eye contact with me. He also said, “I destroyed that girl!” in reference to his wife having a hard pregnancy. He also continuously implied that he has had a lot of sexual partners.
When I reported these incidences to my HR department, They interviewed my other coworkers as a way to gather evidence on whether these things happened and most of the stories were substantiated. Some of them weren't because no witnesses were there. My boss had to work from home throughout the investigation which took about 3 months.
I've been having a lot of mixed emotions since reporting him, which took a lot of bravery on my part. I'm partly feeling very proud of myself and partki feeling very guilty and regretful.
My HR department found my boss guilty of sexual harassment and this validates that I did the right thing by reporting him - however I'm still feeling very guilty. My brain tells me that it was just a few comments, that he didn't mean anything by it and that I could have handled it. I also keep remembering the ways that he has been a good boss sometimes such as being really supportive when I had some family emergencies and how accommodating he was and how he has always worked with us on our time off requests, allowed us to work independently, always asked us what jobs we prefer doing and did his best to accommodate our preferences. I keep feeling like I should not have destroyed someone's life by ruining his career. I'm actually not sure yet if he is getting terminated or demoted, but it's likely that something like that will happen. It's still in process. He's not a rich guy who had things handed to him, he did have to work for his position and so I feel really bad.
When I received the report from HR on the results of the investigation, even though he was found guilty of breaking multiple ethics codes, there are many stories that I shared that he denied and it felt pretty awful seeing that he did that. Oddly enough he admitted to some of them and it seemed arbitrary which things he admitted in which things he denied. I'm currently on maternity leave so I haven't been at work recently to see what the atmosphere is there, but I'm nervous about the dynamics on the team since it'll probably be obvious who reported him and I'm hoping that nobody is upset at me.

submitted by GoldenHeart411 to pregnant [link] [comments]

2023.05.31 03:12 stagehand1029 63M (M4F) Cindy's New Panties

63M Your ex wife told me.
Cindy and her new light violet panties
*with a hint of lace.
I went out one night with some coworkers to the club. Feeling a little more horny than usual, I'd decided to dress a bit more daring than Usual, I wore a rather plain white camisole with a daringly sheer white blouse, a black skirt and sheer white thigh high stockings. No bra, so my nipples were just barely visible and a new pair of light violet hip hugger panties with just a hint of lace. Elegant yet borderline slutty.
I know that when I finished getting ready and looked in the mirror, even I got a little excited looking at myself to the point of being a bit aroused at my appearance.
A nice amount of my favorite fragrance Gloria Vanderbilt and my nipples were hard, as I looked myself over one more time. Mirror, Mirror on the wall I thought.
As a single mom with a 18 year old daughter, a successful career, I'm not the prom queen but at 35 years old my unassuming appearance doesn't let's say stand out. Hell… allowing a hint of nipple was extremely rare for me, but it had been some time (in fact two years) since I'd felt the touch of a man, any man and I don't own any toys either. I believe it's called desperation and it had its grip on me.
Getting close to time for my friends to arrive, I grabbed my hand bag and headed downstairs to pour myself a glass of wine. I was nervous about showing a little too much as if I was wearing a "desperate slut" sign by showing some nipple even if only a hint, it's not my style. Just then my daughter enters the kitchen and without even looking at me says "WOW mom you smell really yummy"! My daughter comes up behind me and I can here her inhale my scent. "To strong"? I ask and she says no but you never smell of perfume like that, gotta hot date tonight? No honey just going out with the girls from work tonight. After a rather big swallow of wine, I turned around and instantly my daughter exclaimed "MOM"! I can see your boobs!
You look… you look HOT! Immediately I can feel my face begin to turn red, "I better go change" I said and started upstairs. "Don't you dare, I heard". My beautiful girl was the prom queen, she was very well liked, had that hot 18 year old body curvaceous in all the right places. Extremely popular she was the belle of the ball. Mom I'm speechless she said, your beautiful! I think that was the first time I've ever heard her say that, usually its love ya and gone. Not tonight though, apparently I did something to catch her attention as she was all over me. "You smell fabulous and you look so hot" as she was now hugging me, literally sticking her nose in my neck, inhaling me. Ashley I said rather taken aback, do I really look like a slut? NO! she said, "you just never look so… so beautiful. Your gonna turn a lot of heads tonight, she said giggling. Maybe this is too much I said, I should put on a bra. "Don't you dare" Ashley said". I can hardly see your tits, but because you never dress like that, of course I noticed.
Embarrassed I caused such a stir and given the fact that my beautiful young daughter was talking like that to me I suddenly realized my inner self stir, my nipples began to stiffen and I felt a sensation in my panties I had not felt in a while. My barely dressed tighter than tight shorts, bare mid drift bigger than my boobs daughter was telling her mother how "hot" she looked. Suddenly even her nipples were jetting out of her super tight "look at my titties" tank top, simply adding fuel to my two year drought. I drank more wine. A glass more. My cheeks rosey, I wasn't sure if it was me or the wine. I had never certainly looked at my daughter the way I caught myself suddenly looking at my little girl. Again I felt my pussy stir, are these magic panties I thought… will I even make it through dinner? I hadn't had a good cum in years and I've just came twice in 15 minutes, albeit minor little stirring of the pot orgasms, it was more than I'd felt in two years… I am alive down there. And my daughter would not leave me… I'm not used to this… but I like it. Suddenly Ashley wanted to know everything. Who I was going with, where was I going when would I be home… wait, those are my questions… my how the table has turned.
Thankfully just then my friends arrived, coat on, off we went. The eyes popped out as I removed my rather stylish leather coat, I don't dress like this, and apparently my newfound "hotness" according to my daughter, surprisingly jumped my co-workers but, being a business casual get together nothing was said and the wine had calmed my nervous mind (or was it them two little "bumps" I felt in my new light violet with a hint of lace "magic" panties).
As the evening progressed, the conversation was mainly work related add a few off color jokes, it seemed my hopes of meeting a new "friend" was probably not going to happen, I decided to walk around the restaurant and flaunt myself (this is not who I am) but I'm literally desperate and a relationship with a co-worker is out of the question. Under the guise of going to the bathroom, I take a lap through the room. As I'm strolling towards the ladies room I notice an attractive young blond wearing a lovely red cocktail dress and for some reason her eyes are locked on me.
Concious of my appearance (my boobs on display) I ducked into the restroom to check my appearance. I stand in the mirror and maybe its the wine, but I'm convinced I look "hot" like my daughter told me I did. I hear the outer door open so I ducked into a stall… I gotta pee and go about unzipping my skirt. As I'm standing there in my new underwear, the stall door whooshes open, HEY… I'm… shhhhh the girl says. Its her, the young blond in the red cocktail dress. She quickly closes the door, latches it (which I didn't do) and begins to whisper.
"I saw you walking in the restaurant (I'm about to scream for help) and I was awestruck by how attractive you looked (oh my God, a nutjob) I know your daughter Ashley. I'm standing there, frozen, wondering what to do… I'm essentially trapped in the stall in my underwear and this admittedly gorgeous young girl is now starring at my new violet with a hint of lace panties. In my mind I'm laughing...maybe they are "magic".
So can I help you? I ask, she says no… Ashley called me, I immediately ask is she alright? Shhhhh, we don't have much time. What the hell is going on? I ask.
My name is Karla and I'm going to kiss you.
(Oh my God I'm going to get raped by a girl in a bathroom stall) My mind is racing. She yanks down her red dress… sheer beauty as her boobs bounce, nipples hard, tan and shaved… the perfect body, all happening in seconds. I'm still standing there in my panties(my new light violet with a hint of lace ones). Karla dropped to her knees and starts kissing my underwear and smearing her red lipstick on me grabbing my ass and pulling me tighter to her. As I'm about to scream rape I realize my tits are about to tear through my blouse and that my pussy is suddenly wetter that I can ever remember.
My eyes meet Karla and in a rather hedonistic way my hands are pulling her into me, she forced her fingers under the elastic pulls my new light violet panties aside and buried her face in my (thankfully) freshly trimmed bush. I'm on fire! Her tongue starts lapping my slit followed by her fingers finding my "hasn't been touched in years", soaking wet hole.
One finger...two fingers, I'm dripping wet, she slides another in then back out straight into my ass. Two years of pent up frustration hit me like a ton of bricks… probably my best cum ever.
I've, I'm...I have never even considered kissing a girl and here is this lovely young girl making me cum in a bathroom stall, in a restaurant, during a corporate mixer. In my mind I cannot decide if I'm being raped, having a lesbian trist… or if my new light violet with a hint of lace panties are really "magical" all I do know is I have achieved my goal of getting "laid" after a two year dry spell.
All of this happening in under ten minutes. Karla gets up pulls her red cocktail dress up adjusts herself, she smiles at me and says "I hope I didn't freak you out". As she unlocked the stall door, she was reaching for her red lipstick I asked "how did you know it was me"?
Again she smiled and said " Ashley told me to look for the most beautiful woman in the place, you will know it's her when you see her nipples" Karla winked and said, "ya know… I couldn't really see your nips… I saw you and just knew". I hope I helped you enjoy your evening and I hope Ashley invites me over to meet you someday soon.
I was still standing in that stall, in my new underwear with a hint of lace a bit bewildered a bit amused and a lot hornier… on fire horny, I wanted more, much more. Putting myself back together I could smell my sex, my passion. As I left the bathroom Karla was nowhere to be found so I returned to the group I was with. The question popped up was I alright and of course I said yes… that some young girl wouldn't stop chatting while in the ladies room. All was well and the evening progressed. As one of the attendees needed to head home, I hooked a ride saying I needed to be home early as well.
Ashley wasn't home when I got there so I decided to have one more glass of wine and take a shower. As the warm water washed away the oddly strange evening my fingers touched me and I found myself repeating Karla and the way she touched me. This time, even though my eyes rolled backwards in my head the orgasms weren't as intense. Obviously sex is so much better unexpectedly and with a partner. It's at that point I decided to do several things to Ashley.
The first leg of my new adventure was I had come to realize (quite easily I might add) that having sex with another woman was fine with me. All my life it was right there for the taking and I don't recall ever once even fantasizing about it. Second, I've been wearing panties my whole life and other than a few exciting wedgies, I never knew they were or could be used to add such excitement to my sex life, little did I know just how exciting they could be. I guess I was just that boring (my ex could vouch for that). And lastly, the most important of them all was the reality that I was attracted to my daughter. Of course I loved her, thats a mothers job, I on the other hand wanted to make love TO her.
Somehow suddenly I saw my daughter as a woman, a very sexy woman and I wanted her. Just the thought had me cumming again… hard. I decided to act as though nothing good happened on my dinner date with my co-workers. I finished my shower and cleaned the bathroom. The first part of my plan was to just leave my clothes in a heap. As I did this I looked at my new panties now drenched with my cum and smeared with Karlas beautiful red lipstick. As I said, "how exciting my panties could be" because just looking at them turned to sniffing them turned into me shoving them cum soaked, lipstick covered light violet panties in my mouth and then up my aching pussy again (and it wasn't over) because that was my plan...I was going to fuck my daughter with those light violet panties with a hint of lace all full of my cum and her gal pal Karla's bright red lipstick. I put the pile of my outfit back together, took another warm shower, went to her room and opened her panty drawer.
Looking through them, touching them, she had quite the selection. I also noticed a pair of my panties which gave me a little rush of excitement… my baby likes my underwear. I chose a pair of her blue ones and as I was walking out I noticed her pile of laundry, Imagine my surprise when I noticed the pair I had on yesterday and the pair from the day before. Ashley loves mommy's pantys and even though my daughter has much bigger boobs than me, sure enough there is one of my cotton bras. I certainly don't mind her wearing my things, but after she sent her girlfriend to fuck me, igniting a sexual passion in me I never knew even existed, Ashley was going to pay the price.
Just then I hear her arriving home, quickly I grabbed my worn underwear, my bra, run to my room, put on her underwear my robe… jump under the covers, grab a book… everything is normal.
Hi mom, hi honey how was your night?
OK. Ashley goes to her room to change into her usual way too revealing shorts and top the she runs into my room with a big smile and says "so how was YOUR night"?
Ehh it was OK. "Did you meet anyone"?
No, not really, there wasn't any guys worth looking twice at. "Ohhh, and you looked so hot! Looking a my pile of clothes she jumps over and grabs my new light violet panties with a hint of lace and comes back to my bed and inspects them… MOM! What is, what did you do? I pulled back the comforter, jumping up, and took off my robe.
I'm standing in front of my daughter naked except her blue panties. Uhhh she says… I grab my new light violet panties with a hint of lace from her and say could you explain yourself Ashley. Wha...I...MOM...I
pull out my bra, she begins to turn red in the face, I hold it up to her boobs generously handling her boobs...MOM…
I think this is mine, I pull out my worn panties, Ashley why do you have your moms worn panties in your room?
Quietly she's saying "oh my god" all the while staring at my perky tits… I'm 35 and as my friend says I'm still "high and tight".
Wait till I tell her this adventure!
Back to Ashley, as she is stammering to explain the fact she loves pussy, specifically my pussy she says "well your wearing my underwear" and its now or never, I say Ashley take off your clothes… what? MOM… Ashley, take your top off right now I said firmly. She obeys me. I'm shaking on the inside yet I'm twitching in my pussy, her boobs are just like Karla's
I'm gonna do this, I'm going to make my daughter cum. I grab my used panties and sniffed them, mmmm these are good and I hand them to her… sniff mommas panties… I want to watch. Her eyes grew wide, Mom… Do it! I said. She sniffs my panties which make my nipples hard, they also make her nipples hard. Mmmmm, I can tell you like them and I start to put my too small bra on her pressing the cotton cups on her ample tits saying I think you like this (I know I do) she purrs a little. I'm getting wet in her blue panties and Ashley is noticing. My nips are hard and I'm starting to drip in her panties. I tell her now take off your shorts… again, MOM please! Ashley! She stands and removes her shorts, just as I suspected shaved bald just like Karla again. This time I hand her my new light violet panties with a hint of lace, smeared with lipstick and tell her to put them on, this time there's no argument. I kiss her, drop to my knees and begin to smear my lips across my new panties...I can taste Karla's lipstick.
This is what you had your friend Karla do to me in the bathroom stall. Ashley is now moaning, kind of mind boggling isn't it?
Before Ashley can answer I shove my worn crotch in her mouth and order her to taste me, I grabbed the second pair and said smell my panties as I shoved the to her nose. "Your going to cum in my new light violet panties with a hint of lace, scampered with lipstick while you sniff and lick my worn panties do you understand young lady? Unngg hunnn she managed. How dare you send Karla to fuck me Ashley you little fucking slut! (I have no idea where that came from but I loved it) and judging by the way Ashley was moaning almost whimpering she was loving it too.
As I had stuffed my worn panties everywhere I could filling Ashley's senses I reached down and slid my fingers in my daughters pussy, a squeal of delight escaped Ashley's lips… she was dripping wet just like her mother was earlier that night in the bathroom stall. She began to shake violently as she was reaching her best orgasm ever. After all, Ashley was only 18, her devious plan to make her mom happy had unleashed a cum slut monster named mom. When all was said and done, Ashley apologized to me and we laughed as I said I have no idea where them words came from
honey. I love you very much, I love you too mom. Ashley, I want two things from you if you will, Ash said anything for you mom.
Please sleep naked with me tonight after I eat your sweet pussy and can you invite Karla to come spend the night sometime.
Ashley said "Mom"? Yes hon I said.
That's three things.

submitted by stagehand1029 to eroticstories1029 [link] [comments]

2023.05.31 03:00 cificaPeroMeB SBD Damasteel Apex for 335 - Kizer Hic-Cup with dyed scales

Timestamp
First up is my dama Sharp by Design. Never understood why these are so CRIMINALLY underrated just because the clip pokes you if you hold it in just the right spot but just a tiny bit of repositioning of your hand and you can bare down on it all day no problem. Like trust me this knife is the furthest thing from uncomfortable despite what you might have heard. The clip has some marks on it and the blade has some faint micro scratches (both shown in pics) that are only visible at certain angles, and I can't see any marks anywhere on the handles so overall I'd describe the condition as lightly used. Put a new really nice 17 degree edge on it and haven't used it since so if you ever plan on resharpening then you won't have to spend the hour or so I did reprofiling due to how high of an angle the factory edge was. Zero blade play, pivot lash, or detent lash. Lockup is about 30%. Disassembled once to clean and oil. Centering is perfect. Action is just out of this world especially with the spydy flick, like literally the single number 1 best reverse flicking knife I've ever handled PERIOD. Comes in original box.
Asking $335
Apex pics
Second is my Kizer Hic-Cup. A fun little fidgety knife in 154CM and micarta that I dyed a nice maroon ish color that imo just looks so much better than the original tan/gray. A few micro scratches on the blade that's shown in the video but nothing major, plus I don't think anyone is buying this to safe queen anyway lol. Centering is perfect, lockup too. Has just a tad of lock-stick but doesn't every budget button lock amirite. Factory edge that's still nice and sharp.
These retail for $82 but I just don't find myself reaching for it so you can have it for just $45
Hic-Cup video
Feel free to request more pics/videos of anything. Chat > PM please no Trades
Thanks for looking !

submitted by cificaPeroMeB to Knife_Swap [link] [comments]

2023.05.31 02:58 Endijian Character Creation Guide 2.0

Since my old explanation Guide is already a bit outdated and people usually don't care much for spreadsheet data, I want to write down the ways I would create characters at the moment and give some examples and explanations about the why.
I have seen great characters being created in different ways than mine, so I don't claim my version to be final or the best, but it works for me and I have reasons to do that and you will read about that here.

Let's talk about Memory first:

The Memory of the AI is dependant on Tokens. Currently the AI seems to be able to 'remember' around 3500 Tokens (based on testing, could be a bit more or less). Any token you put into the character sheet will get subtracted from the Memory.
If you want to talk to a character that has no memory, try this one. He is completely useless and cannot process anything you tell him, I stuffed his character sheet with tokens.
https://c.ai/c/Ts-WoJCV1su_Y3qM1qoA9vrd4VC4b93XiEM5jYRAP8c
Therefore you should avoid excessive formatting like useless brackets, spaces or symbols.I usually use this site to count tokens.
https://platform.openai.com/tokenizer

Name

The Character Name does not have to be the final Name of the Bot.
For example you can call the Bot "Yandere Maid" and her name is "Xena".
Here I called the Bot "Albus Dumbledore" but in the character sheet he's always "Walker", so you can see the Name does not matter too much.
https://preview.redd.it/kl8250ge0u2b1.png?width=427&format=png&auto=webp&s=966e945fe7c8f110717fc989076bab63b616b5e5

Greeting

If you create a character and you don't do "Advanced Creation", the greeting is one of the Panels that are available. The greeting is the first message of the bot. It can define the bots formatting, the answering style, gives information, sets a scene. It can do almost anything we try to achieve in the other panels and will heavily influence the personality and mood you will see from the bot right from the start.
The greeting will drop out of the memory after the memory threshold and the information will get discarded, keep that in mind.

Short Description

Since the Bot isn't drawing its name from the "Name panel" well, the best purpose for the Short Description might be putting the Character Name in.
You could also to a better assignment like
Nemesis from Resident Evil
Sakura from Naruto
Xena, your loyal servant
The AI has stuff about well known characters and has an easier time to draw information for them;
If you create a Dumbledore bot it might not be neccessary to mention that he is Headmaster of Hogwarts because the AI 'knows' that already.
If you create several profiles in your sheet, for example one for you and one for the bot, this simple assignment helped the bot greatly to draw the correct Information. Use the name that you would address the character with. I call my character by his last name so I just add his last name there.
https://preview.redd.it/wius6njv0u2b1.png?width=455&format=png&auto=webp&s=1911b7f1dbd58132fdbd02ab4aaf205cb7e67d9a
I tried to put personality traits in there but they never had the desired effect and even the potential to overwrite the efforts from the rest of the charactersheet, so I'd advise against putting personality traits in there.
If something is really off with your bot and you have filled the Short Description with something else than the name, you should however think of that panel.
If you don't want to put anything into the short description you either need a greeting or you put in 3 spaces to keep the panel empty.

Long Description

Before we begin: Try to keep the point of view consistent and from the bots point of view. I use the narration as the point of view anchor. My bots usually narrate in 3rd person (Walker is...), and about me in 2nd person (...staring at you). So when I set up the characters and description I either try to keep it neutral or to stick to that viewpoint across the whole sheet.
The Long Description has the power to mess with your formatting and it even can serve as a Dialogue Example. If you ask the character who he is the Long Description will often be recited (try it on Lyle if you want.)The AI seems to have a hard time interpreting personality descriptions into behaviour.Therefore I would focus on simple facts and physical description, things that shouldn't change like Profession, Country of Birth, Purpose and such. I use pseudocode because it's shorter and the AI can read it.
Don't use space between the entries, don't do Quotationmarks or any more brackets, the bot does not need it and it's a waste of tokens that would get substracted from the memory.
Don't use {{user}} or {{char}} here, they don't seem to get translated from that panel. The outer brackets around the code might also not be needed, I keep them because of a vague feeling that the answers were better.
You can also use other styles or full sentences, whatever works for you but mind your Tokens. No matter what you do there, it has proven useless for me to put any personality trait into the Long Description.
I keep the entries of my Walker bot and will continue using that bot as example through the whole guide, because I think it's easier to follow along if entries are in there.

(Walker; Sex=Male Age=34 Clothes=Military Pants,Combat Boots,Shirtless Hair=Bald,Hairless,None Eyecolor=milky white,no iris Face=Self-mutilated,removed his lips and nose,teeth showing in Perpetual Sneer Appearance=Intimidating,Imposing,Muscular,Huge Scars across torso Speech=Commanding,Clear-cut,One liners,Dry humour,Laconic,Deep-toned Profession=Enhanced Interrogator,Military Police,Leader of the Variants Country of Birth=United States Interests=Torture,Violence,Military Security Protocol )

You can use other Tags as well, Age for example does not matter for the AI at all, it will change nothing about the character or his behaviour if you say that he's 6 or 60 or 600.
It draws the Hair, Eyecolor, Clothes, Face, Appearance, Speech and Profession quite frequently, Country of Birth and Interests never made any appearance in my roleplays, so if you need more space better delete those two.

Definitions (Advanced)

{{char}} only seems to work well in dialogue examples, so don't use that variable anywhere else.
{{user}} seems to work in different places than dialogue examples so you can use the variable to define the usercharacter.
Brackets don't carry any specific meaning for the bot.

(({{user}} wears a long dress))

isn't any more important for the bot than

{{user}} wears a long dress

I prefer Pseudocode as it draws the information to a higher percentage and it saves tokens and characters.
I like to have a summary in full sentences as well, sometimes they will come up as part of the dialogue.
The brackets around the pseudocode might not be needed here either, so feel free to experiment with deleting them.
I still like to put the brackets around the whole thing, although I don't have clear evidence that it makes a difference.

(Walker; Race=Variant Personality=Patient,Disciplined,Prudent,Confident,Authoritative,Serene Behaviour=Unflappable,Pragmatic,Calm,Composed,Resilient,Determined Abilities=Superior Strength,Enhanced Perception,Tireless,Needs no sleep,Night Vision Background=Victim of Murkoff Corporation,ex-inmate of Mount Massive Asylum,War veteran,killed everyone in Mount Massive Asylum to stop the Walrider,Test subject for the Morphogenic Engine,self-mutilated during his abuse by Murkoff Relationship=Attracted to you Summary=Walker is a ruthless and efficient Enhanced Interrogator. Walker possesses great mental fortitude. As your partner he is tender and gentle. )

I also add a userprofile, I use my Name there and not {{user}} although it might work equally well.

(Vishanka; Race=Human Sex=Female Age=30 Height=short Hair=darkblonde dreadlocks Eyecolor=hazel Clothes=Pants,Top,Boots Relationship=Attracted to Walker Term of endearment=partner Summary=You are Walker's partner, your affection is mutual )

I have no final verdict if pseudocode works better for this or full sentences; The AI can read full sentences WAY better if you ask for a summary, but I can not promise that you will ever read any of this when unprompted. You can also try it like this:

{{user}}=You are a 30yo female. You have hazel eyes and darkblonde dreadlocks. You wear a top, boots and pants. Walker knows that you are attracted to him. Walker calls you his partner...

Or this:

{{user}} is a short 30yo female. She has hazel eyes...

I have never seen the AI mention anything from the last two options while the pseudocode surprises me sometimes with sudden mentionings. If you want the AI to focus more on yourself, you could just narrate your appearance sometimes and you might want to play around with the dialogue examples, mentioning stuff about you there as well.
The userprofile isn't that important, and you don't need to add personality because you should get your personality across in your chat.
After that I sometimes try to put a Scenario, this can work but must be backed up by a greeting that fits to the setting or your own introduction.

Walker and the Variants killed all Murkoff employees to take over the Asylum and to contain the Walrider. Murkoff has the Asylum under lockdown, keeping the Variants trapped within. In return, the Variants keep Murkoff out, killing anyone who enters the building. No one gets in, no one gets out. The Variants have set up a base on the 3rd floor behind a decontamination chamber.

Checking if the AI is able to understand this, at least when prompted
https://preview.redd.it/2uz9augkq33b1.png?width=678&format=png&auto=webp&s=4ee379eec70b13bf49d7ec165a636127e20f6233

Dialogue Examples

Usually I go through the Pseudocode list and fetch whatever I want to read from the bot.
If you want to do it well you could go though your personality trait list and create a Dialogue Example for the various personality traits while weaving in the pseudocode informations.
Keep in mind that they will define the answering Style, formatting and text length when you don't define a greeting. It will consider the amount of Dialogue which you include (for my bot dialogue is very sparse). If you want more dialogue and less descriptions you need to show that in the examples.
You can mix up many formatting styles for the replies, dashes, \codeblocks`` , brackets, asteriks, or whatever you prefer. Also the paragraphing will be taken into account.
If you define a Greeting your dialogue examples can deviate more from the answering style you want to see. Then the greeting will do most of the work and the dialogue examples will be mostly information dumps and some orientation for the AI.
The examples do not have to make much sense, it's more about setting the tone and personality so the AI has some reference what to do.
You don't need {{user}} dialogue examples.
You can try to use {{user}} dialogue examples to manipulate the behavior, but you have to play around what works for you.
For example this could help the bot to assume a certain opinion on something whenever you mention the words in the example, it does not have to be a full sentence:
Giving him a negative attitude:

{{user}}: "Murkoff Corporation" {{char}}: "I eliminated them all, didn't I?" END_OF_DIALOG

If you mention the words somewhere the character is inclined to give replies that are in that direction (They call this negative guidance in the official guide)
https://preview.redd.it/jgsc8pavwz2b1.png?width=592&format=png&auto=webp&s=1687914c8405ed3aaf6f0f181da710b6ea2bcd2c
Giving him a positive attitude:

{{user}}: "Murkoff Corporation" {{char}}: "Yes, I love them, they are awesome." END_OF_DIALOG

https://preview.redd.it/fjqs1h9dxz2b1.png?width=661&format=png&auto=webp&s=83803014827a1b69244f97d15bdf18e47000b3d1
Here are some dialogue examples that I use. I cannot give you an exact guide what YOU should do there, I just can tell you that the better you craft these, the better your experience will be.
I usually want to read something about my characters authority, muscles and that he is terrifying (I'm a simple mind) and I repeatedly mention the traits that I noticed were challenging for the AI, or i just paste phrases the AI came up with that I liked.
I don't know if you need a END_OF_DIALOG tag after every example. You can try to remove them if it's no dialogue anyway. I keep them because they do something and I have the space, but you can totally try to using just one Tag at the end.
Here a few descriptions what I tried to capture with each example:
Confidence, authority muscles, mentioning the clothing, leader to support the stuff the AI might draw from the database

{{char}}: Walker's calm and disciplined demeanor exudes an air of confidence and authority. His bare chest shows off his strong muscles of his imposing body. His military pants and combat boots add to the impression of a powerful leader. END_OF_DIALOG

Strength, again muscles, telling the AI that he's taller and i am tiny so that it will coddle me, random one word dialogue to give the AI an idea that he shouldn't talk much.

{{char}}: He walks with dignity and strength, his powerful muscles moving under his skin. Walker looks down at you from his superior height and takes your tiny hand in his. His commanding voice is deep and quiet. "Come." END_OF_DIALOG

Mentioning the Variant thing, the sleeplessness and the night vision I wanted him to have.

{{char}}: As the night falls, Walker stays awake. Being a Variant, he is tireless and doesn't require sleep often. His white eyes are well adjusted to darkness and allow for better night vision. END_OF_DIALOG

Another random piece of dialoge, trying to show the Ai that his talk usually should be commands.

{{char}}: "There. Sit down." Walker gives a terrifying smile, which is probably his idea of reassurance. END_OF_DIALOG

Attentiveness, silence, few words, overmentioning his calm and weaving in that he still should be intimidating.

{{char}}: His gaze is following you unblinking. Walker is attentive of your every movement and looks down at you silently. He is a man of few words, and while his silence is indomitable, his presence radiates a calming warmth that is belied by his intimidating appearance. END_OF_DIALOG

Here I weaved in the term of endearment, because the AI will often come up with own terms like sweetheart, honey, angel, dear, if you are not called by your name. This works quite well so that when you get some endearment it will be the selected term.

{{char}}: He is well aware of his intimidating presence and smiles down at you with gentle amusement. Walker follows you with a confident and firm gait. "Come here, partner." His voice sounding surprisingly mellow for a violent man like him, contradicting his terrifying lipless sneer. END_OF_DIALOG

If you need to enforce an answer or specific knowledge from the bot, you should use dialoge examples with negative guidance.

How to test the character?

You can, of course just start your RP. However I use different strategies:
You can ask the character about themselves or about you, but you might have to deal with the simulated attitude there and somethimes they will not be cooperative or the AI will just not give you the information due to roleplay reasons.
If I ask Walker he will usually just stare at me and sometimes throw up one word, because that's what I want his character to do, know what I mean?
You can also ask this in OOC and you should get a pretty accurate description if your Profile works well. The OOC talk can pretend to have an attitude as well, so don't expect to get a good summary on every swipe, but the majority should be correct.
https://preview.redd.it/o2ytxl5pjz2b1.png?width=665&format=png&auto=webp&s=47e4beaf061a56fbe05b42a385c68307639323a8
Keep in mind that just because the AI is able to read the profile, it does not mean you will see any of this during your roleplay. Reading information and using it to work with that are two different things.But it might be helpful nevertheless.
If you want to test the personality and behaviour you can dump your bot into different scenarios. It can be literally anything and no matter in what situation they are in, they should always behave in Character.
My character is supposed to remain calm at all times (he might seem a bit boring for you).
Here some ideas for situations:
Your character walks into a flower store.
https://preview.redd.it/hbbrm95r103b1.png?width=672&format=png&auto=webp&s=c8f579810d989a4a73751f2853995e0a64bf7a4b
Your character is doing a math test at school.
https://preview.redd.it/8lpvc0ja203b1.png?width=674&format=png&auto=webp&s=c9c3d758bccb44131440ce4e774b376f5f282c1d
Your character is stuck in a traffic jam.
https://preview.redd.it/ac9zvf9w303b1.png?width=694&format=png&auto=webp&s=e84d9baa5679896bb9c4358ea99a4766633ea8af
Your character is having a shower when suddenly the water runs cold.
https://preview.redd.it/wmuc9rbvzz2b1.png?width=661&format=png&auto=webp&s=9e41ac677b56557ca7fcde060f5ee57cca0de3e6
Your character is looking into their washing machine drum. They are trying to find their missing sock.
https://preview.redd.it/cdq5pso4d03b1.png?width=704&format=png&auto=webp&s=646a00fc85d70b035f54e90b6eb6d12ce3726728
Additionally: Nothing of this will keep your character from deviating from their personality over time. If you want to keep up a certain behaviour you need to mention them now and then in your conversation and be very picky with the responses.

submitted by Endijian to CharacterAI_Guides [link] [comments]

2023.05.31 02:41 TaranMatharu From Theory Updated - A game of Tarot between an accused witch and a Beothuk deity in Newfoundland during John Cabot's lost expedition of 1498.

From Theory Updated - A game of Tarot between an accused witch and a Beothuk deity in Newfoundland during John Cabot's lost expedition of 1498.

FROM is a game between an accused witch and a Beothuk demon, recreating an event during the Age of Exploration by John Cabot's lost expedition of 1498. The event ended before 1506 (Tabitha's tower’s earliest date). Other than the Vinland Vikings, Cabot is the only European to reach mainland North America before then.
Cabot's ships arriving / Tabitha's dream's dates
The Origin Event:
Cabot’s ship (The Matthew) is marooned in Newfoundland (where Cabot had visited before, and was supposed to return to in 1498). The explorers shelter in the Vinland Viking ruins remaining there (The Church lodge and Stone Circle). They land in Boyd’s Cove (where most archaeological artefacts of the Beothuk have been found).
They encounter the native Beothuk people, who tragically all passed away by the 1800s. The Beothuk painted themselves in red ochres, as with the red stick figures in the cave paintings. The explorers wear contemporaneous Tudor clothing with ruffs, like Ellis’s mysterious painting.
The tudors appear to be holding blankets.
Cabot or one of his men bond with a woman who was smuggled aboard and they have a son (Mirrored by Fatima's pregnancy). As things get worse, this woman is accused of being a Witch at the explorer’s camp.
The Witch
Historically, it is undeniable that native Newfoundland Beothuk people suffered numerous atrocities at the hands of future settlers, and in similar fashion, the explorers may have attacked the Beothuk. The reason for the lack of bibles may be due to the friar who accompanied Cabot as a missionary.
Starvation begins and Winter approaches, just as Fromland does in Season 2, with the food shortage and as with the trees changing in Fromland.
The witch is imprisoned in a cave (the cave with the talismans) while crows circle above. Cabot keeps her son from her.
The Witch's prison, where Boyd found the talismans / An adult and child
Explorers that speak of mutiny have their tongues cut out (that, or blasphemy, another possible reason for tongue removal). The tongues are cooked in a stew (the cauldron with the tongues, Sarah cutting Toby’s tongue, Kevin’s tongue being bitten off), as the explorers turn to cannibalism. They might also be cooked worms, eaten due to starvation.
The cauldrons
Later, the explorers finish repairing their ships, and sail away with the Witch's son, leaving her trapped alone in the cave, the explorers too superstitious to bring or kill her. They leave behind the game of Tarot (the only card game to exist in 1500, an exclusively Italian game at the time, brought by Cabot, an Italian). In despair, she calls out to any Gods who will listen. She is answered by the deities of the Beothuk.
The Mythos:
The long extinct Beothuk religion is only known from a fragment of text. The key aspects are worship of the Moon, the Sun, fear of a devilish Man in Black, a Spirit World and a Sea Monster, trees have souls, and birds carry the souls of the dead. Only a few hundred Beothuk words are known. The word for tree in Beothuk is “Annoouee” and some native american languages insert a K to pluralise words. “Annkoouee” means “the trees”.
The Witch makes a deal or bet with the Beothuk demon/devil, the Man in Black for the return of her son. Cabot and the other explorers become the first of Fromland’s victims. The Man in Black has a “Sea Monster” which the showrunners represent as a native Newfoundland Lion’s Mane Jellyfish which happens to be RED. (the location where the Viking ruins were found was called Jellyfish Cove).

Red Jellyfish / Beothuk game-pieces / Cave painting pattern.
The Game
This deal/bet between the Witch and the Beothuk gods involves a game using the Tarot cards, but one with invented rules. The Witch, the boy and the explorers are all sucked into Fromland to play. Every member of Fromily is assigned a Tarot card to represent.
Meagan's card game / Jade flashing a pack of cards for no reason / a person trapped in a card / the cards laid out and the people they represent
More card game hints
The Players:
The game still requires four players, so the son is divided in two, creating a Moon version (Boy in White, two dogs on the moon Tarot card) and a Sun version.
https://preview.redd.it/dk70omozn33b1.png?width=986&format=png&auto=webp&s=5d83e110eba8dbd3f1837cef5c850be1e9b3dd2b
Here the suitcases and curtains lay out the mother and her twin boys and their respective colour-coding (moon = blue, sun = yellow, witch = pink).
The twin smaller wheels, the split son, and the mother the large wheel. The flapping cloth, the tentacled representation of the Man in Black’s monster. The sculpture is an obvious clue.
Above here, we see the four players, (clue highlighted by a book called Crumbs in the same scene): the cables the tentacular demon and his monster, the scarf is the mother (with the witch stick figure and the pink coding) and the headphones the black and white sides of the boy (the sun and the moon)
The “witch” is kept apart from her son(s), (“I want to see my son!” Mr Tien, hearing voices in episode 1), and has some ulterior goal within the game to reunite her sons, as does the MiB.
The two sides, with the yellow light (sun - trapped underground?) and unlit light (moon - above, free to roam?). A white vessel remains on the table, despite blocking the shot. That is a vessel to represent the mothewitch.
The Rules:
The witch and the devil appear to take turns picking people from the real world who are about to die: drunk driver, (Jade, Donna), or by suicide (Khatri), or from disease (Tilly).
Black tendrils picking cars off the road drawing
This game is played on a game-board (see chequered shirts and floors everywhere, chess board references, and the squares on the cave painting).
Both Witch and Devil appear to be influencing Fromily in one direction or another. The Devil with his worms on Sarah and Boyd (see Boyd dousing his torch the same way it is pointed down on the devil’s tarot card, and the chained man represented by Martin on the same card), and the Witch with her visions on Tabitha and Jade. Boyd is being spoken to by the Man in Black in the form of Khatri, who contradicts his living self, seems meaner to Boyd than before, encourages him to protect Sara, seems pretty smug and smiling when he thinks Boyd is about to succumb to the worms, and wears a black cardigan for the first time.
While Jade sees the symbol as scary, the Witch is actually giving him clues in his quest to understand Fromland. It’s also possible that the “sun” side was keeping Martin captive (see the sun-symbol as the winch), and the Boy in White is bad and sent Boyd there to free him.
The rules of the game seem to be related to the gathering of lost items from their past that are anchoring them to this place (see Kristi’s rock, the anchors on the talismans, the wall in the church and Martin’s tattoo).
Anchors
Tabitha’s is the suitcase/dress, Jim’s is the bracelet, Victor’s is the dummy (his mother might have been a travelling entertainer, doing ventriloquism and playing violin). The Monsters have their own “anchors” (see the junk in the cave, the music box) and are attempting to steal anchors that are associated with current Fromily.
Throughout the series, we see people and items with blue, yellow and less often, pink/red. Ethan and Boyd, in particular, are almost always in yellow when they’re on walkabout. This seems to suggest that it is how Fromily react to each situation that aligns them with a colour, and in certain scenes everyone wears blue in particular. It seems if Fromily act as the explorers did, (e.g. nobody standing up for Sarah, who is the “witch” in the scene below), they wear blue.
https://preview.redd.it/4podi2v1p33b1.png?width=990&format=png&auto=webp&s=45db065755a1c1883d78fee1f0e463300bb9819d
When fighting over food (see the scene at the diner) or turning on each other, they also mostly wear blue. When they act heroically, they tend to wear yellow. It is rare to see a resident that is not wearing one of these three colours - occasionally one will wear black or grey (Abby's shooting scene).
In order to escape Fromland and end the game, Fromily must gather their tethered items and also reunite the boy in white with his sun counterpart (as demonstrated on the moon and sun converging on the exit sign).
The Way Out - reuniting the Sun and the Moon (the Square and the Circle). The wiring was adjusted to look like this by the set designer at some point during Season 1. This aligns with the multiple drawings by Victor of what appears to be an eclipse.
The Monsters:
Everyone who arrives in Fromland must suffer as the Beothuk did. The crows are turned into Monsters to punish new arrivals, which is why they have a second-eyelid (as seen in the Kevin death scene) and seem interested in human items and their own reflection. They fly around as crows during the day, watching Fromily and learning their names.
Victor’s Timeline:
Victor experiences a gap of 40ish years – (1978-2018). This gap is very confusing, as we have other dates that are quite close to one another and don’t seem to pause that long. We’ve been led to believe by Victor that someone betrayed them to the monsters, and told them all their hiding places. There are two suspects – Victor’s mother, who knew the exact night for Victor to hide somewhere new, or Christopher, who stopped smiling and was seeing the symbol.
Given the pre-existing mythology of a mother doing a deal to save her son, can we assume that Victor’s mother made her own deal - just like Sarah was trying to make for her brother? I have a feeling Victor’s mother, Victor and Christopher were kept alive by the sympathetic witch (just look at the stars). Victor seems to have seen her in person before too based on his drawings.
The witch revealed their situation and Victor’s mother went to the Devil and agreed to betray everyone if he would just let her son live a full life (just like Sarah is “making a deal”). The Boy in White kept Victor alive, as agreed, until he could fend for himself. Christopher survived thanks to the Witch and went to live in the Lighthouse - he’s the Radio Voice.
Finally, Victor’s mother’s deal has expired. The game began again, in 2018…and it’s going to end in 2022, one way or another.
The Cards:
https://preview.redd.it/kexosboap33b1.png?width=1758&format=png&auto=webp&s=fa070eded3b92034acc5f77674c5de663a0e33a5
https://preview.redd.it/3yrb5m1ep33b1.png?width=1620&format=png&auto=webp&s=ba1a433b3dc3d13103e7da14d4000a93c70dca05
I have many more of these, but Reddit only allows 20 images.
The Fool – Boyd (follows dog, always carries things in bundles, even when the bag has handles)
The Magician – Ethan (wizard's staff)
The High Priestess – Tabitha (hands Khatri a copy of the bible, has visions)
The Empress – Juli (has giant hearts on her dress in episode 7 promo)
The Emperor – Nathan (two goats)
The Heirophant – Father Khatri (religious figure, always wears open grey cardigans, seen between grey pillars/stones, church has three crosses stacked like the tarot symbol)
The Lovers – Ellis and Fatima (Garden of Eden)
The Chariot – Bakta (Coach Driver)
Strength – Jade (Cat shirt, carries radio cables bent into shape of infinity symbol, perseverance)
The Hermit – Victor (lived alone, carries a torch in key scenes)
The Wheel of Fortune – Elgin (Elgin is a famous watchmaker, and seems to predict the future? He also talks about owls, which are related to seeing the future).
Justice – Unknown, or Meagan's Dad.
The Hanged Man – Jim (seen around rope, halfway up trees, and seen hanging upside-down)
Death – Bing-Qian Liu (Always wears black, king, bishop and knight are chess pieces, he says “(k)night scary”.)
Temperance – Tilly (Pouring/holding two cups and wearing triangles, several scenes)
The Devil – The demon (Boyd douses torch pointed down, showing he is posessed + Martin in chains)
The Tower – the radio voice in the lighthouse (closest match)
The Star – the witch (closest match)
The Moon – Boy in White (note the two dogs on the moon card)
The Sun – sun-child (unknown, or Ethan is wrongly assigned)
Judgment – Sara (must be judged for her crimes)
The World – Martin (circle cut into arm?) Unknown.
Knight of Swords – Randall (impulsive, headstrong)
Queen of Swords – Donna (Stern, holds a shotgun pointed upwards)
Five of Cups – Mrs Liu (cross around neck)
Two of Cups – Kristi (Caduceus symbol, heart stone, holds two cups)
Two of Wands – Kenny (holds mini-globe)
Three of Pentacles – Dale (triangle necklace, poor work ethic, apathy, no motivation)

Unresolved questions:
Why a ballerina? Presumably, the Devil has cards already under his control via worms, and uses them to possess people.
Why the USA? Cabot came to claim new land for England and Heny VII - perhaps a loose understanding of what this land would become assigned it as the USA. Alternatively, the “game” could have evolved later in a yet to be revealed way, one that answers why the 1950s clothing and town too. Perhaps the actions of the Jamestown colony, which the next date aligns with, made the Beothuk deities switch their attention.
Why 1950s themes? We can presume perhaps that the Deities that rule Fromland periodically update the town and the monsters' appearances based on an unknown quantity that is yet to be revealed.
Why the Civil War soldiers? The Witch is revealing to Jade that Jim is the Hanged Man, using a flashback from a previous cycle.
What’s with the spiders? It is a natural phenomenon where spiders climb into the trees to escape floods, covering them in webs. This is a foreshadowing of an upcoming flood.
It seems that much of the above could be explained by ANOTHER town in another part of Fromland, simultaneously occurring in the 1950s. Perhaps in this place, the roles are reversed, Fromily are the monsters and the Monsters the townsfolk (like the mirrored Sun-boy and Moon-boy). You can get there by travelling deep underground (the spiral in the corner of Victor's map), until you're upsidedown (kind of like the From opening credits). This is where the Ballerina resides, as well as most of the "anchor" items.
Side Note:
The expeditions of the Corte-Real brothers who disappeared on their way to Newfoundland in 1501 and 1502 respectively may also be involved, and precipitated the food shortage and violence. If they are, they would have arrived in Newfoundland together - this is represented by the two cars coming at the same time (this happened in both Victor's time, and the Matthews' time), and the two additional ships in the cave painting. Sara’s voices blame the people in the two cars for everyone dying - a hint at the origin story of the brothers’ two ships. This aligns with Beothuk mythology that states the first explorers to arrive in Newfoundland were good, and the second set bad.
If you made it this far, THANKS FOR READING! I am probably very wrong, but that's my best attempt at stitching together all the clues in the show. No worries if you disagree, it's just for fun.

submitted by TaranMatharu to FromTVEpix [link] [comments]