I am going to share another article here, because truly understanding this concept has been a huge life saver and help for me in everything that I do, and especially in helping my kids when their emotions arise:
Growing up in a narcissistic family environment can make it challenging for survivors to disconnect from a constant state of defense and reactivity. Learning to understand and control one’s emotions may feel like a whole new mountain to climb.
Your upbringing may have made it difficult for you to recognize and express your feelings, as well as to calm yourself down when you’re feeling upset. The inability to process your emotions can also leave you feeling confused, frustrated, and like you lack control over your actions.
It’s possible that you are still operating under survival mode.
However, there is a way to understand and make sense of your feelings. By learning about how your emotions are processed, how triggers work, and how feelings work, you can regain control over your reactions and regain a sense of balance.

Emotions

Emotions are a natural and normal part of being human. They provide valuable information about what is good, what is bad and what is dangerous. They are designed to alert us to immediate dangers or rewards and are a primitive instinct that exists within us for the purpose of our survival. Emotions manifest physically, and can be detected or measured. For example, when you experience an emotion, you may get a high heartbeat, you may sweat, your blood pressure will rise, and you may shake.
Feeling fear when encountering a pack of wolves while taking a walk alone in the forest is useful. In this example, fear alerts us to an immediate danger. Fear makes sense and is doing what it’s supposed to do.
Feeling disgust when being forced to interact with a person who is the source of your pain and trauma also makes sense. Disgust is essentially telling you: Toxic person alert. Do not go near. Your body is giving you a warning.

Dr. Paul Ekman’s Model of Universal Emotions

There are six basic emotions that are universally recognized across cultures: anger, fear, joy, contempt, disgust, and sadness.

The 6 Universal Emotions

Anger

This emotion is characterized by feelings of frustration, irritability, and aggression. It may be triggered by a perceived threat, injustice, or when you are blocked from doing something. The associated behavior may include assertiveness, confrontation, and the desire to take action.

Fear

This emotion is characterized by feelings of anxiety, nervousness, and apprehension. It may be triggered by a perceived danger or threat, and the associated behavior may include fleeing, hiding, or freezing.

Joy

This emotion is characterized by feelings of happiness, contentment, and pleasure. It may be triggered by positive experiences or events, and the associated behavior may include smiling, laughing, and expressing excitement.

Contempt

This emotion is characterized by disdain, superiority, and disgust. It may be triggered by behaviors or actions that are perceived as beneath one’s own standards, and the associated behavior may include eye-rolling, sneering, and a dismissive attitude.

Disgust

This emotion is characterized by feelings of revulsion, distaste, and abhorrence. It may be triggered by something that is perceived as dirty, vile, or dangerous, and the associated behavior may include wrinkling the nose, gagging, and avoiding contact.

Sadness

This emotion is characterized by feelings of sorrow, disappointment, and despair. It may be triggered by loss, rejection, or disappointment, and the associated behavior may include crying, withdrawing, and seeking comfort.

We Can’t Not Feel Emotions. That Is Not Possible. We Must Learn to Work with Them.

Emotions can be powerful and can drive us to act impulsively. Because of this, they can also hinder our ability to focus on long-term solutions that require careful processing and consideration of various sources of information. For example, you may feel angry at a boss for giving you extra work on a Friday afternoon, but if you act on that emotion and express your anger in the heat of the moment, it could lead to negative consequences such as getting fired for disrespecting an authority figure. In this case, it may be better to let the emotion pass and instead work on a long-term plan, such as finding a better job or organizing a meeting to address the issues.
Furthermore, it is possible that after gathering all the facts, you may have found out that the boss’s wife was in the hospital, and out of all the employees, the big boss trusted you the most to get the job done. While your anger zoomed in on your inability to leave work at a decent time on Friday night, it did not have all the information needed to see the situation as a whole. Acting on your anger would not only have cost you your job, but also would have damaged your professional reputation.
In the heat of the moment, our emotions may not allow us to see that there are other ways of solving problems or that there are other factors unknown to us at play. It is important for us to learn to control our impulses and ask questions first in order to gain full clarity of a situation. We are always responsible for our actions, and our actions always have consequences as they affect the world around us. Clear communication is crucial, and it is always our responsibility to try and understand what it is that we are dealing with before choosing how we will react to it.
Think of emotions as if they were like little storms inside our head that can make it hard to think straight.
You may find yourself in many situations where you must allow for these little storm to pass before taking an action, so that you may see the bigger picture under a clear blue sky.
Our emotions can also misinterpret a situation, such as feeling fear when watching a horror movie or being happy around someone who is not good for us. We can feel fear even though we are physically safe in a movie theater. We can feel joy when we receive a text from a person who has ghosted us for a week. (This article is long, continue reading here if you are interested: https://artflorentyna.com/how-do-i-control-my-emotions-after-surviving-a-narcissistic-family-system/

TW// suicide & death mention
Now I know how bad the title sounds, but please hear me out.
Me (18 f) and my three older siblings were raised by a single mother, who made sure we were always happy no matter how short the money was or what life threw at us. I’ve always been incredibly grateful for her and our relationship was really close, to the point where I considered her my best friend. Sad when your bff is your mom ik.
About 7-8 years ago she got diagnosed with a terminal lung disease, which was caused by smoking. The first few years her health didn’t really change much and she was still very active (she loved to go out and has always hated being confined to a house). Around the same time she met my now stepdad, which I felt really took a toll on my relationship with my mom as it was a big change for me.
The last few years her health began deteriorating drastically, due to her still smoking, and she had multiple hospital stays a year, then a month. Now she’s pretty much confined to her bed and uses an electric wheelchair to get around. I’ve taken over most of the housework as my stepdad and siblings all work or don’t live with us. I’m also her registered caretaker, help her shower, change her or help her to the toilet, just to name a few.
These things aren’t my issue though. The real problem is her attitude. My moms always had a bit of a temper but over the years it just got worse. I barely recognise the woman I loved so dearly. Now she’s just bitter and mean. I try to be sympathetic to her situation, imagining what it must be for her to have her literal nightmare come true and be dependent on everyone around you. However, I still don’t think it gives you an excuse to become this antagonistic.
Just some few examples:
-Everything has to go according to her time schedule, meaning I cook for the family when SHES hungry, then make myself something different afterwards because I don’t eat most of what she wants to eat.
-picking fights over the most trivial things with everyone. told my brother he was “good for nothing and that she must’ve failed as a mother” when he wasn’t able to repair the wifi when it was literally shut down by the company.
-I had a suicide attempt two years ago and have been struggling but my mom says my “bad mood” makes her stressed out and thus she gets short of breath.
-Really anything she doesn’t like she’ll say: “You need to stop (…), because it’s making me even more sick”
-Then she wanted a dog, which I was very against as there wouldn’t be a way to properly train or entertain a puppy. She got her wish anyways and dumped pretty much all the responsibilities on me.
-Then she wanted to renovate our house, which just means she’ll decide and we do the work when and how she wants it done.
-Refuses to wear her hearing aids and complaining i don’t talk loud enough.
-Making me responsible for reminding her to do exercise and when I failed to do so saying: “You must not want me to get better”
The last one really infuriates me because of course I wish her health was better, however, the only way to improve it would be trough a lung transplant which she won’t ever be approved of if she still smokes. Apparently she’s ready to literally die on this hill of cigarettes.
I recently dropped out of high school to support her more during the mornings as that’s where she’s alone mostly. I currently stay up late at night till around 3 or 4 am as she’ll often call me for help at night to let my stepdad sleep. I then wake up 5 hours later to take over again. Mind you i’m doing all this for free while she gets government support specifically meant to be the salary of the caretaker’s.
I know it’s awful but I sometimes think about her death and how much easier it would be on everyone. Don’t get me wrong I don’t want her to die, but I’ve accepted and grieved that it will eventually happen years ago. She’ll never see me marry, have kids or even a job and of course i’m sad about that but I’d rather it happen now than in a years time. I’ve mentioned how i stressed I feel but she refuses to get help from anyone that isn’t family, the only exception to this being a maid who comes once a week to clean the downstairs.
I’m really at my limit here and don’t know how long I can continue doing this without breaking down on myself. Especially since I already gave up so much of my teens for her. I don’t really have much contact outside the household and didn’t attend school even when I was still enrolled. I feel like everyday my resentment of her grows, alongside the deep disgust I feel for myself for even thinking these things.
I don’t honestly want her to die, just this ugly, evil version of herself. I really just want my mom back, so AITA?

Hello guys I posted here a while ago about yelling at my toddlers cause my husband was in a coma and I do have an update the original post is: https://www.reddit.com/parentsofmultiples/comments/13fg4ya/i_screamed_and_shouted_at_my_3yo_twins_and_told/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1
In the days following the incident I didn’t do a lot to make up for it I feel I probably should have but I just didn’t have the time, I did sit them down and apologise and explained that I was under stress and that I will always love them the I gave them some hugs and kisses I also put some extra treats in their lunches for play school, I didn’t really step back from the 3 businesses even though I should have but one Redditor reached out to me in private u/Mom2surprises and as it turns out we live like 20 mins away and my husband’s agri garage is her husbands go too and that he also uses my husbands agri contracting business, she’s on maternity leave but she’s a corporate accountant and was able to call in a few favour to get me some help on the financial side of the company’s which was great, the internet is big but sometimes it’s small :)
I was still however exhausted and so I took a day off but then the twins play school closed due to an emergency so the day off wasn’t a day off I ended up passing out on the stairs and falling down them thus breaking my wrist, I’m writing this with 1 hand, the twins didn’t really do anything to help although what could they have done they’re 3, they got mad that they couldn’t use my phone for their hour of screen time because I was unconscious so I couldn’t unlock it, my mom arrived as a surprise and found them both throwing a tantrum jumping and stomping on my back
She called an ambulance and took the twins to hers to stay with my dad, I woke up confused and dazed in the hospital I had a cast on and was in a fair bit off pain, they asked me if I wanted to go for a ride in the wheelchair and said it was more of a request, I was taken to the coma ward where my husband was and he was awake he apparently woke up around 12 which was when I fell down the stairs it was now 6pm
Emotions where high, they still don’t know unfortunately why he was in a coma the leading theory is that his body was so broken after the cancer that it needed time to heal so it shut him down to focus all energy on healing, he’s majority ok he has a limp and needs a cane but the docs say that it will fade as it’s because he was off his feet for so long his muscle memory weakened
Another bombshell that was dropped on me in the hospital was that they did a blood test to find out if any other factors caused me to faint and the tests revealed some interesting things so they did an ultrasound, I’m not ready for this but I was 6wk pregnant with not one not 2 not 3 but 4 babies although the 4th is very small and likely wouldn’t make it as it’s not implanted properly and will likely just be absorbed. We went back a week later and the 4th had unfortunately died, i guess I was so busy I kinda forgot about my period they where conceived the day my husband got the all clear, we honestly thought he’d be sterile for a few weeks while he recovered from radiation I don’t know how we are gonna handle triplets but so long as my husband is ok I think we’ll be fine, not looking forward to being the size of an apartment complex though, so I could really use some triplets parents advice
As for the twins we are sleep training them we have fitted padding to the back of the door and put a lock on it so when they go to sleep we lock them in the room, we have a monitor so we can see and hear, the first night we woke up to see them screaming and yanking at the door and hitting it which is why we put the padding on we watched them for a few minutes then we rolled over and went back to sleep, in the morning we found them asleep on the floor it’s been a few days now and they have finally stopped trying to leave the room, I know it sounds wrong but it was satisfying to see them not leave the room and get annoyed about it kinda the same way I got annoyed with them for leaving the room, we never had this problem with our 5 year old singleton and I hope to god we don’t have it when the triplets arrive
Thank you everyone for your advice it meant a lot I think things are finally going to get better although I didn’t reply to all your comments I did read them all and I appreciate everyone of them except for the big feelings one I’m sorry but the term big feelings annoys me so much it’s a dumb term I find it easier to actually name the feelings wether it be me or the kids, but thank you really I don’t really cry a lot but the support made me cry

So, here is my story, it will be really long. Sorry about grammatic mistakes, im not native speaker. If you want to skip to drdp related text, it will be marked below.
From childhood I was really, really anxious about everything. My peak was, when I went to Sunday School, and fixed on a thought, that my parents will go to heaven, and I will go to hell, because of my sins. And i really loved (and still) my parents, so every night was a horror. Funny enough, after around two years of this torture (i really mean it, it was so bad, especially for young mind), i completly lost ability to have nightmares. I had like 2 after 9 years old, and even than, those were nothing in comparison with those, i had before. So, at 18 y.o im getting my diagnose (somewhat of a mix: GAD-based MDD :) )
I having treatment with mirtazapine with pick in 15mg (those who knows, that s not that much)
And I responded really well, my anxiety (the "ill" one) flew away, and depression sinked after lost of anxiety. Parallely, there were a lot of stress in my life. School, uni, than work, personal life, regular stuff. And I occasionally smoked weed. Not much, not often, never two days in a row, and the smallest gap was 3 weeks (it was only once, usually 1.5 months minimally, 6 months casually between smoking). And I am also responded really well. I was happy, no anxiety or panic at all, but i was also really responsible. At 19 years old I stopped vaping (I was vaping 3 years, 2 years on nic, from 17 to 19 on really high dosage, 20 - 50 mg/ml on 100 watt).
Here starts DRDP question
But, in February of this year, my dog died. I was always afraid of it, all my life, I prayed to god for his health all my life. He had heart cancer, really rare case. And on first days of his illness, i was alone with him, i had noone who could help me. So I had a couple of really intense episodes, not sure if those were panic attacks, but i felt really bad, nausea, dizzines, vertigo, heartrate is 120 (my normal is 100). He died after 2 weeks. It was so painfull to see how he is changing, how his behavour is "unnormal". We decided to put him down, until he got pains (he was inoperable). All of this started, after 3 days of me slipped off of mirtazapine (really bad timing). But, it seemed as a surprise to me, I really lacked in emotions in comparison of what i expected from my self. My bet is that, my brain tried to pull me out of situation, because i faced my biggest existential fear, the fear of death. Anytime I think of death (from childhood and now on), I am getting temporary severe anxiety, that I once had. It flews away when I stop thinking of it, but this fear is on a place.
So, after this I developed serious headaches. I tried to go to neurologist, and had all my analysis passed, everything was fine. On march 25, it was a soccer match, so I decided to have a little weed (by little, I really mean it, I was not even high, just slightly apettite boosted). Everything was fine, I ate a lot, and went to sleep. Afterwards, I woke up at 3 a.m, with strange feeling. It was like nausea with mild anxiety (I think, organism wanted me to go to toilet, because, I really had a lot of food), but, I tried to fell asllep once again. And I fell of in some kind of limb, as it was dream in ultrasound, i was not asleep, but I saw how i am slowly flying in dark entity with white artifacts appearing around me. It was like 3 seconds long, but I really freaked out. On a next day I felt still "high", so I thought that it was just me being too tired and not had enough sleep. But as time went, I still got this feeling of "something isnt right". It seemed to me, like my vestibular system was really hecked up, full time vertigo, and like general feeling, like my sensory systems were inadequately perceive the signals (colors were not right, blurry vision, a lot of dark dots and so on). First week, every night I had anxiety attacks. I thought that I am physically damaged, that something is not right. But, I didnt have any feeling of not being me, or not living my life. I was living in constant fear, that I will be forever stuck in this condition (that was along with me had a little break up with my pshychiatrist, because, I asked her about my condition in link with weed, and in our country weed is not yet decriminalised). I was really tired of vertigo and nausea.
And here I am, 2.5 months past, and I came back to mirtazapine (now 7.5 mg, more like a sleep aid). I am feeling really better, but still, I am catching these visual distortions, and overall, I am really afraid of having anything even mildly psychoactive (primarily caffeine and alcohol). So, what is your thoughts, what is wrong with me? Was it DPDR, or just severe anxiety after dogs death? I am really afraid of getting back to that cycle. Thank you for reading all of that, I really appreciate it.
edit 1 - I want to add, after dogs death , developed not exactly headaches, but paresthesias in my head, like something really heavy pushed my forehead (from inside to outside), that sometimes were becoming into headaches. So I was really freaking out, if that was a schizophrenia or something...

I have spent the last three years teaching EL in a school in MA but heard that I would be nonrenewed. I applied to a few jobs, got an immediate interview with school A, accepted the offer that came right after and resigned my current job (effective the last day of school). To be exact I signed an offer letter but am not onboarding until Monday. Since then I have continued to interview and have received some better offers. As of this moment I am waiting to hear from HR at School B, a community that I like more and that aligns with my style better. I was verbally offered the position last night. School C offered an interview for this Thursday and is closer to home. I don't have an attachment to that community but it would save substantial road time and pay a bit more than School B. The EL director there is also highly touted by a trusted EL director I worked for previously. Last wrinkle, I was also offered a matching salary to be a lead teacher at a charter school that just dumped its management company. They have been fairly aggressive in recruiting me and it would give me a chance to dip my toes into admin duties. The idea of rebuilding and potentially working towards a coordinatodirector position is appealing but I am apprehensive about switching to a charter. I know that is a lot of information but I am feeling a bit of analysis paralysis and could use some advice. Thanks!

So, here is my story, it will be really long. Sorry about grammatic mistakes, im not native speaker. If you want to skip to drdp related text, it will be marked below.
From childhood I was really, really anxious about everything. My peak was, when I went to Sunday School, and fixed on a thought, that my parents will go to heaven, and I will go to hell, because of my sins. And i really loved (and still) my parents, so every night was a horror. Funny enough, after around two years of this torture (i really mean it, it was so bad, especially for young mind), i completly lost ability to have nightmares. I had like 2 after 9 years old, and even than, those were nothing in comparison with those, i had before. So, at 18 y.o im getting my diagnose (somewhat of a mix: GAD-based MDD :) )I having treatment with mirtazapine with pick in 15mg (those who knows, that s not that much)And I responded really well, my anxiety (the "ill" one) flew away, and depression sinked after lost of anxiety. Parallely, there were a lot of stress in my life. School, uni, than work, personal life, regular stuff. And I occasionally smoked weed. Not much, not often, never two days in a row, and the smallest gap was 3 weeks (it was only once, usually 1.5 months minimally, 6 months casually between smoking). And I am also responded really well. I was happy, no anxiety or panic at all, but i was also really responsible. At 19 years old I stopped vaping (I was vaping 3 years, 2 years on nic, from 17 to 19 on really high dosage, 20 - 50 mg/ml on 100 watt).
Here starts DRDP question
But, in February of this year, my dog died. I was always afraid of it, all my life, I prayed to god for his health all my life. He had heart cancer, really rare case. And on first days of his illness, i was alone with him, i had noone who could help me. So I had a couple of really intense episodes, not sure if those were panic attacks, but i felt really bad, nausea, dizzines, vertigo, heartrate is 120 (my normal is 100). He died after 2 weeks. It was so painfull to see how he is changing, how his behavour is "unnormal". We decided to put him down, until he got pains (he was inoperable). All of this started, after 3 days of me slipped off of mirtazapine (really bad timing). But, it seemed as a surprise to me, I really lacked in emotions in comparison of what i expected from my self. My bet is that, my brain tried to pull me out of situation, because i faced my biggest existential fear, the fear of death. Anytime I think of death (from childhood and now on), I am getting temporary severe anxiety, that I once had. It flews away when I stop thinking of it, but this fear is on a place.
So, after this I developed serious headaches. I tried to go to neurologist, and had all my analysis passed, everything was fine. On march 25, it was a soccer match, so I decided to have a little weed (by little, I really mean it, I was not even high, just slightly apettite boosted). Everything was fine, I ate a lot, and went to sleep. Afterwards, I woke up at 3 a.m, with strange feeling. It was like nausea with mild anxiety (I think, organism wanted me to go to toilet, because, I really had a lot of food), but, I tried to fell asllep once again. And I fell of in some kind of limb, as it was dream in ultrasound, i was not asleep, but I saw how i am slowly flying in dark entity with white artifacts appearing around me. It was like 3 seconds long, but I really freaked out. On a next day I felt still "high", so I thought that it was just me being too tired and not had enough sleep. But as time went, I still got this feeling of "something isnt right". It seemed to me, like my vestibular system was really hecked up, full time vertigo, and like general feeling, like my sensory systems were inadequately perceive the signals (colors were not right, blurry vision, a lot of dark dots and so on). First week, every night I had anxiety attacks. I thought that I am physically damaged, that something is not right. But, I didnt have any feeling of not being me, or not living my life. I was living in constant fear, that I will be forever stuck in this condition (that was along with me had a little break up with my pshychiatrist, because, I asked her about my condition in link with weed, and in our country weed is not yet decriminalised). I was really tired of vertigo and nausea.
And here I am, 2.5 months past, and I came back to mirtazapine (now 7.5 mg, more like a sleep aid). I am feeling really better, but still, I am catching these visual distortions, and overall, I am really afraid of having anything even mildly psychoactive (primarily caffeine and alcohol). So, what is your thoughts, what is wrong with me? Was it DPDR, or just severe anxiety after dogs death? I am really afraid of getting back to that cycle. Thank you for reading all of that, I really appreciate it.
edit 1 - I want to add, after dogs death , developed not exactly headaches, but paresthesias in my head, like something really heavy pushed my forehead (from inside to outside), that sometimes were becoming into headaches. So I was really freaking out, if that was a schizophrenia or something...

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[NL] I am a career starter and I am losing hope to find an awesome job given the amount of aptitude tests around. Despite having a good CV and high grades, I have been rejected by several those which is making me fear thar it will become a bottleneck for my career. ❓I would like to know what is your opinion about them (specifically if you are an HR specialist)? ❓Was it a bottleneck for anyone in their careers? If you want more context: I am doing good at school - top 15%10% (equivalent to 4.0 gpa in the US or Higher Honours in the UK). Also, during my studies I did so many different things on top of my studies. And even I speak 4,5 languages (2,5 which i taught myself) But I simply dont get approved based on these tests. I am most likely an average IQ person - did an online test late at night and got 100. Overall I refrain to accept that my level of intelligence disqualify all my achievements at the same time means that I would not do a good job in most companies. But I would like to know your take on that.

Trying to add some more abstract mechanics for wealth and currency to my game, I stumbled upon an idea when looking around for magic systems: currency as a d6 pool that you can roll and add to the roll where money might help, like a bribe or an acquisition.
Basic resolution-mechanic The basis of my resolution is that you have Approaches (Careful, Clever,Flashy, Forceful, Quick, Sneaky) and Competences (Athletics, Combative, Mindful, Skilled, Social) where most start at 0, some at 1, and the combination of what makes most sense in the situation and describe action is the number of dice you roll. In addition you can add an extra dice by taking stress or by teamwork by the supporter taking less stress (Blades in the Dark). Giving a range of 0-3 dice to roll.
Next the players have Tags (descriptive words, aka City of Mist / Fate aspects) divided into multiple categories: Traits, Tallents, Tools, Transport, Turfs, etc; that says something about what it is, how to acquire and how and how often they might be changed or removed.
Tags can be used when performing an action to either:

• Give permission for doing the actions and/or setting the position/effect.
• Increase the value of a dice by one. Can be used max three times* per action.

GM sets position and effect as in Blades in the Dark, but the position determines a number of Dangers (consequences) that are presented to the player. The GM might also add Opportunities (bonuses). Both are represented by cards.
The player then rolls their dice pool. Any value of 5+ can be put on a card to either not suffer the consequence or to gain the bonuses. So most time a player always succeed**, but it is a matter of how much it costs in harm, expense, game time and narrative impact.
\To stop a player to look through every tag at their disposition, and any roll of 1 cannot become a success.*
\* Sometimes the danger(s) might be “Failure”, that must be ‘blocked’/’overcomed’ else the action fails If rolling poorly you might need to choose between succeeding and taking the damage.*
Currency as a d6-pool Back to the “currency as a d6-pool”, I am thinking that the characters start the game with some currency dice, and gain more when doing jobs/missions/quests as payment.
Each time you roll and money might help like making a bribe or an acquisition, you also roll all your currency dices. You need a 5+ for a success as normal, but here are the difference from the resolution from before:

• You may combine/sum currency dice to create 5+ values.
• Currency dice cannot be modified by tags (maybe some can, but must be more specific than normal?).
• Any dice spent is removed from your pool, you do not need to spend dice if you do not want to.

And that's the basics of the rule. The roll represents the valuables and cash at hand that might be traded for other things, without going into details.
Currency tiers/scale To add some more to it I am thinking of adding tiers of Currency dice using the tried and trough division of CoppeBronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum. I think this also works okay as tiers in a more sci-fi setting I am planning. “Welcome to Athena Premium. Please have your Silver-membership card ready for your purchases”.
This can help me keep the numbers low and give some teeth to some payments of a request/job.
Can also be used to set “difficulty” (not the word I am looking for… but the one I am coming up with right now). A hobo might be swayed by a little coppebronze, but a rich salesman needs some gold.
Buying stuff Buying stuff is a resource to use to acquire tools/transports/turfs-tags or to improve/upgrade them.
When buying stuff it is a matter of determining the tier it belongs to and the number of successes needed to buy it. CoppeBronze is used for tools and daily life stuff. Silver for buying things in scale of a transport, Gold can buy you a building (can use the Area-table form here as a base https://bladesinthedark.com/magnitude), and Platinum is the sums used in regional control (company to nation).
Roll your currency dice and spend enough to buy the thing.
One idea I am starting toying, taking inspiration from the Fate Space Toolkit, is that larger stuff like a space-ship and buildings consist of multiple modules/rooms containing different equipment.So more modules/rooms equal larger ships/buildings, more equal higher cost, and in addition can be used to create a floorplan.
Don't sweat the small stuff All small stuff, clothing, etc. are considered part of your other tags, ex. if you are “Rich” you have fine clothes, and a “Skillful Thief” you might use their tag as a permission to lockpick a door or chest, as you can assume you have some lockpicks in your pocket or uses a hairpin or something.
Small stuff might be “bundled together”, for example, you do not buy a single “bullet”, you buy a “box of ammunition”. You do not buy a “lockpick”, you buy a “lockpick kit”, etc.
Bundles, larger tools / signature geaitems both have a cost and often take up inventory slots (to limit the number of such tags you can carry with you, that is an intensive for a transport or hireling so you can lug around more stuff).
Overspending and exchange currency This is the territory I am unsure of. My initial idea is that each difference in tier between your dice and the expectation adds +-1 to the roll of each dice. So if the tiers are similar, no modifier. If you spend Platinum when expecting Silver you add +2 to the value of the roll (success on 3-6). Or if you spend Silver for Gold you add -1 to the value of the roll (success on 6, or must combine).
To add more to the value of higher tiers, you degrade the dice a tier if spending on a lower tier instead of losing it. I think it seemed a bit sour to use a high-value platinum to pay for lower tier stuff, but did not want you to not spend anything.
Also not entirely happy with the exchange rate or that you could use CoppeBronze for Platinum tier. So I was thinking of setting a limit that you can only spend a currency at one step lower than the expectation, or increasing the +- to 2 per tier (effectively making the lowest tier to auto fail against the highest and the highest an auto success against the lowest, not that I am against that).
Tested around a bit. Concluded that the sliding expectation of tier makes the numbers/table move, and “math is hard”. So the next idea was adding a fixed number, the first being -5 up/+5 down a tier. Quickly realizing that this equals to needing one / gaining one extra success. Making a CoppeBronze needing 1/2/3/4 successes per tier (lowest to highest) for doing one ‘resolution’ and Platinum producing a number of successes of 4/3/2/1 (lowest to highest). Again considering doubling the numbers.
If doubling the numbers the logical exchange rate then is 2:1. Seems still somewhat small. So maybe 4:1 or 5:1…
For exchanging, most of the time it does not matter so much, but exchanging low tier to higher may be interesting as a narrative scene sometimes.
Questions/seeking feedback Is the system sound? Are the currency tires okay? Needed at all? What to call the lowest tier? How to exchange, if at all?
Need to work on the terminology, so any tips/ideas here are also appreciated.

Okay, so I'm almost a little mad because the label I've given myself for the past couple of months was apparently shaped by my own ignorance and the prejudices people have against ace people. I thought I had figured it all out but now today I listened to a science podcast about asexuality and it completely confused me.
[TW rather explicit sex talk in this paragraph, TLDR inconsistent libido] My libido changes a lot. It's usually on the low to very low to non-existent side and that has been problematic in past relationships. However I also experience periods where it is very high, for example when I'm in love and it's very fresh or idk when I'm bored or... I can't even tell you what triggers it, there's no logic behind it. Recently I also found out that I take much more pleasure out of pleasuring other people rather than people touching me. Or at least in theory. I haven't really wanted sex for a while. Or had the opportunity. Those two things kinda go hand-in-hand. When, if , I masturbate, I feel shame.
So because of this, after some research into asexuality, I labeled myself as aceflux, because I felt that I somewhat identified with the graysexual, fraysexual, demisexual and lithosexual labels but it was all kinda fluid and hard to pinpoint.
However, I must have misunderstood something. After hearing the podcast today I found out that being ace is much more about how I feel towards other people, not how I feel about sex. And if that's true then I feel so stupid for not seeing that because I did the research - I just didn't read properly.
Not that that doesn't make sense either, because I never really felt any sexual attraction towards the people in my life - actual, possible "bedmates" or even boyfriends, girlfriends, one-night-stands (which I always regretted). I never looked at their bodies and it made me horny. My ex often got horny looking at me and told me how sexy I was and I could never wrap my head around how that even works. It even annoyed me after a while. As a teenager with raging hormones I sometimes watched porn but I often only watched half the video because I was more interested in sparking a fantasy centered on myself rather than being attracted to the people in the video. So why did I ever sleep with anyone? I get romantic feelings, yes, absolutely. Sometimes that's enough, to love someone. And then sexual desire, sure, depending on my current libido state either yes or no.
I could never answer the "boobs or ass" - question. I am attracted to women - I can't tell you how I know that, but the question just doesn't compute. They're body parts, what do you want from me? Same with men. What's most attractive in a man? Idk, if he's a decent person? That's usually very sexy. And I don't mean that in a sexy way.
I often feel "attraction" towards actors I deem talented(often actors that aren't even alive anymore or younger versions of actors that are like 70 now). But if I view it realistically, if those people came up to me and proposed to sleep with me, I'd turn them down immediately.
So what am I then? Aceflux, like I thought? Full-blown ace with low libido? Or am I actually an allosexual person with low libido who has dramatically misunderstood the ace community?
I'd appreciate some help.

My story. No holding back on what happened
A friend Someone I could talk to all day to about Metal Gear One of two people I didn't hate at that school Someone keeping me from letting it all out and screaming at my teachers and classmates who all made me miserable. Someone I could be open to about my sexuality. About how I was the only gay person in my grade, in a school full of trumpies that all hated me
You invited me to sleep over Just as friends The tension was high I felt there were words you wanted to say By the next morning you let it loose Asked me if you wanted to go out So timid and nervous Gave me a necklace Rainbow obsidian, a fox My favorite animal With a little letter inside
First date not so good. Second, we were at your house again. First kiss. Lost my virginity. I loved you.
I told you about my home. About the abuse.physical.verbal.so often. I told you about my past. How I turned to awful people. About being groomed by adults for pictures. Starting age 12. Made me feel loved. Told him he made me feel genuinely cared for.
Summer. I was sick in my bed. You asked if you could come. Said no. I was sick. Biked over anyway. Dad let you in. He was working the lawn. Hurt too much to even turn over and look at you. Told you to go away. Said some lovey dovey shit. Don't remember. Sat on the bed and started pulling down my pants. Kicked at you. Got rougher. Forced yourself on me. Tried to fight back. Fell on the floor. Told you to stop. Kept trying. You spit and wiped it down there for the both of us. Stuck it in me. I cried and wailed. I stopped seeing you for a month. But we never broke up really
I started seeing you again in person Back to being my sweetheart At least for a while But hell was on preheat Spent as much time as I could from home Spent it with you in your room At night you started again This time I was silent Deer in headlights I was scared of your parents You would coo me at the end of each session Made me feel loved Made up for what you kept doing Even clean me up of shit and blood I wouldn't move from the bed the next day until the afternoon because I didn't want his parents seeing me limp and waddle. His caring fascade faded as the months went by. Even growled at me to shut up and stop moving one night while he was assaulting me
Didn't mention. He was a pedophile. Even if he was a month younger. Whispered me vile things while he did things to me. Treated me like how you would trying to calm a fussy baby. Sometimes if he couldn't finish in me he'd jack it to cp anime. Bought me little girls clothes to wear for sex.
Two years we were together. The first assault happened a few months in. Assaulted nearly every week.
Funny thing. I was supposed to go to one theater today But someone in our group forgot their id so we went to another theater He and his toy were the only other people at that showing I saw him He saw me They scrambled out of their seats and walked out as fast as they could I yelled at them Get the fuck out Friends were kinda shocked Funny How he's scared He should be And he should know running won't save him Today I'm going to involve the law.

ChatGPT:
The sun dipped below the horizon, casting long shadows over the desolate desert landscape. Three little pigs huddled together in their makeshift hideout, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the big bad wolf. This was no ordinary gathering of swine; these were the notorious Pigs brothers - a trio known for their unconventional business ventures and questionable moral compasses.
​
The eldest pig, Saul, was the mastermind behind their operations. He had a sharp wit and an even sharper tongue, making him a formidable negotiator. With his slicked-back hair and a cheap suit, he oozed confidence and charisma. Saul always had a knack for turning a profit, whether it was selling overpriced straw to unsuspecting farmers or peddling flimsy sticks as high-quality construction materials.
​
Chuck, the middle pig, was a tech genius with a meticulous eye for detail. He could rig up security systems and surveillance cameras with his eyes closed. If there was one thing Chuck excelled at, it was staying one step ahead of the authorities. He had a knack for making their operations airtight, keeping their secrets safe from prying eyes.
​
Jimmy, the youngest of the three, was the wildcard. He had a silver tongue and a penchant for deceit. His gift of gab was matched only by his insatiable thirst for adventure. Jimmy had a talent for talking his way out of tight spots, relying on his quick thinking and ability to spin a tale. He was the master of disguise, assuming different personas to get what he wanted.
​
The three pigs had recently made a name for themselves in the real estate market, constructing houses in record time and selling them for a fortune. The first pig, Saul, had built his house out of straw, promising potential buyers a cozy and affordable home. Chuck had constructed his house out of sticks, claiming it was a sturdy and modern choice. And Jimmy, always one to go against the grain, had built his house out of bricks, boasting that it was an impenetrable fortress.
​
As darkness enveloped the desert, the silence was shattered by a howl in the distance. The big bad wolf had arrived, his ferocious reputation preceding him. He was relentless in his pursuit of the pigs, determined to bring down their empire. His booming voice echoed through the night, "Little pigs, little pigs, let me in!"
​
Saul smirked and stepped forward, his voice dripping with confidence. "Now, now, wolfie, let's not be hasty. Why don't we sit down and discuss this like civilized creatures?"
​
Chuck activated the surveillance cameras, capturing every move the wolf made. He could see the beads of sweat forming on the wolf's forehead, his anger growing with each passing second.
​
Meanwhile, Jimmy slipped out the back of his brick house, disguised as an innocent lamb. He approached the wolf cautiously, his voice filled with innocence. "Oh, Mr. Wolf, please spare us. We're just three humble pigs trying to make an honest living."
​
The wolf's eyes narrowed, suspicion evident in his gaze. But Jimmy's charm was undeniable, and his words managed to penetrate even the toughest exterior.
​
The negotiations continued late into the night. Saul offered the wolf a cut of their profits, enticing him with the allure of easy money. Chuck assured him that their houses were impenetrable, further enticing the wolf to back down.
​
Finally, the wolf relented, realizing that these pigs were not to be trifled with. With a defeated howl, he slinked away into the darkness.
​
The three little pigs stood tall, their victory secured. Their empire continued to flourish, fueled by their cunning and audacity. And as the first rays of dawn painted the desert sky, the Pigs brothers reveled in their triumph, ready to take on whatever challenges lay ahead.

My husband has been sick in bed with pneumonia all week, went to urgent care on Thursday and got antibiotics. I'm on very little sleep, work has been kicking into high gear and I've been juggling my toddler. Oh, and she got sent home from daycare yesterday for throwing up.
Last night my husband collapsed on the way to the bathroom, and I called 911 for him to be taken to the hospital, got a neighbor to stay with my 2.5 year old and followed in the car. I stayed for two hours, and a doctor had not seen him. Went home, relieved my neighbor, and got a few hours of sleep. Kiddo slept through the whole thing. She was up and bouncing around this morning at 5:30, so I said screw it, get in bed with me, and she's been watching Bluey since 6, while eating dry cheerios. My husband has been in the hospital for 7 hours, and still has not seen a doctor. He's conscious and okay, most likely severely dehydrated, but they do have him on an IV.
His dad might drive in from out of state today, and I'll just send him to the hospital. I have tons of laundry to get done, and need to get groceries. We've been surviving on Memorial Day cook out leftovers all week. I'm exhausted, and have no idea when I will get a real break. I might be able to pass her off on neighbors for a couple of hours, but with her being sick, I don't want to expose her to other people. I might need to take Monday off, I am that exhausted. Oh, and today is my birthday.

Hi all this subreddit has been so helpful so I wanted to write down how things went. I'm obsessed with my little guy and so happy everything went smoothly.
I have been diet controlled with some spikes from week 28 until week 37 when my fasting numbers started to spike from mid 80s into high 90 low 100s. No one told me in the Dr office that once I was on metformin it would be recommended to be induced before my due date until it was practically week 39.
Friday before memorial weekend we were expecting a call to schedule a date to be induced but no one called back. This got me nervous all weekend haha. We actually had a last Dr appt Tuesday after memorial and finally got a call at 9:30am. We confirmed to have it done 06/01 and arrive at hospital the night before to start. At the doctor's appt, I was told I was 1cm and confirmed baby head was down. End weight gain was about 20-22 lbs and my grown scans have shown he was not a big baby or caused any concern.
Arrived at the hospital at 7:50pm to check in. I had not eaten anything for dinner yet. Got settled in and changed by 8:30 and they had me take some oral medicine (forgot what it's called) to soften my cervix. Was told I could only eat until midnight. Ate a small bowl of chicken noodle soup from Panera and a couple of snacks I brought from home. Took one last metformin as well. Sleep was kind of sporadic.
At 8:30 my delivery doctor came in and gave me the rundown and checked that I was 2cm. I was then hooked up to the IV and started pitocin. After speaking with the nurse, gauging pain, and when the anesthesialogist would come to administer the epidural, at around 9:45ish I said I needed to ask for it. Pitocin contractions felt like I was going to explode from the inside out. I had to wait for the fluid bag to empty before they could start the epidural. By the time this was done, it was maybe 11am. Pain level was like an 8-9 and all I could do was breathe and listen to directions. Finally got it done and moved to lay down and wait for it to kick in.
Wow am I thankful for it. I do not know how I would have survived labor without it. It makes me wonder if a natural labor would have felt differently. I could now finally rest and wait until I am 10cm. The adrenaline from the contractions before the epidural wore me out.
I probably was in and out of sleep until just before 3pm. Around then it felt like the contractions felt a little stronger and I thought the epidural was wearing off. Right when I said that and pinged the nurse, my doctor came in, checked my cervix and said well you're 10cm, it's go time 😂
Here is where I thank my weightlifting journey of 3-4 years. My nurse held one leg and my husband the other. To push I was told to do a deep breath, hold, and do a constant push as if needing to poop for ten seconds. Do this three times per contraction.
I did this for maybe 15 minutes with them and my nurse said I'll tell you when to stop. It's insane how much this whole induction was with just nurses. I saw my doctor for maybe 20 minutes total. Anyways they got him in for the final pushes. 15 minutes later he was out!
Immediately he was placed on my chest and I thought I was going to me more emotional, but more so relieved that it was practically over and he was crying on my chest.
I only had a minor tear probably not large enough to be classified. Was stitched up and had mom and baby skin to skin time.
The pushing was the easiest part of all of this 😭. He came to be 6lbs 8oz and 20.5". They tested his blood sugars four times over the course of a day and they all passed! Thankfully my collistrum was enough and found a method for him to feed well.
Overall just so so so relieved everything worked out and thankful for all the previous moms on Reddit writing out their experience 🥰. I'm currently eating a fat stack of pancakes with syrup, orange juice, grapes, pork sausage, and scrambled eggs. 🫡 There's light at the end of the tunnel.

Hey Hey Hey buds. We are back at it again with the Alien ER. how was your week? I hope it was good. This week we have our first glimpses of what Martinez's combat experiences were like, i do mean a literal glimpse. I have a couple of chapters to really drive home the day's events in detail later on. We also have shiksie breaking out of her shell a bit today, and get some more insight into how she treats people.
anyways let's get this bread.
---------
Regrettably for Martinez, walking Lysa back to her home would be the last part of his night he would describe as enjoyable in any way. By the time he made it back home, it was well past two in the morning; the few hours of sleep he did manage to get were restless and filled with memories he would rather forget. The events of the night had whipped him back years in his life.
Usually, Martinez would not get night terrors anymore, but they still on occasion reared their ghoulish head. Thankfully Martinez was not able to vividly recall the nightmares from today, but he knows he had them because he woke up in a cold sweat. Whenever they are vivid he feels like garbage for days afterward; He becomes little more than a writhing mass of anxiety and regret wishing if anything he could go back and change what happened. The faces of his brothers contorting and twisting in agony were seared into his mind and soul, the vivid dreams were him going through those events over and over again, as if the grim reaper was showing him a horror movie of his past.
He had been to therapy for years trying to eventually move past the memories of what happened on Verilon. The therapy did help for a while, but eventually, he stagnated and stopped going; he could not accept that he was the only one left, He could not move forward; so he just did his best to keep going on living with the memories, his brother's deaths held tightly on his soul, like a ball and chain.
He still hated that the lowest moment of his life was what the Navy decided was what he should be rewarded for. That bright gold cross on his dress blues was nothing he was proud of, it was just a bitter reminder of his failures; He thought it might as well be a cruel joke life had for him.
The last time he had thought about Verilon was a few months before he arrived here on Draun; He had heard through the grapevine that his old unit was getting ready to start building up to redeploy there. He was glad he was reassigned so he did not have to return to that hell-blasted desert world. He had his turn in the sandbox, it was someone else's chase to spend a year there.
After having woken up three separate times throughout the night, Martinez had given up on getting any sleep at all. He only had two hours left until he had to go to work anyways, the few hours of sleep would not make a difference to his well-being anyways.
He took to answering some of the questions Shiksie had given him, but focusing on the intricate details of alien anatomy while completely lacking sleep was not easy by any means, the words on the datapad were twisting and blurring into one another. Before he knew where the time went, the shrill beeping of his alarm clock had already started to fill the apartment.
As he idly went and got ready for the day, he was glad he did not try to get Lysa to stay the night. He would have hated her to see him like this, he would rather no one see him like this at all. The fact he felt this made him feel broken, and to him, a woman he had only been on one date with would certainly think the same. Sometimes life has a funny way of working out, he supposed.
Halfway stumbling into work with a yawn Martinez could not wait for the day to be over, he was planning on just going through the motions and doing his best to keep Shiksie off his back. He set himself up in his usual corner and started to read from the datapad; In all of Martinez’s experience if you looked busy, or at least looked like you were doing what those over you wanted, they would likely leave you alone.
Surprisingly the one who threw a wrench into that plan was Therin. The small avian alien had spotted Martinez as soon as he entered and scooted his chair nearby. Therin tapped Martinez on the thigh.
“So how was your night?” Therin chirped. Hoping his little ploy from the previous night worked out well. They were busy at the shop last night and he was about to leave when the police called, but the cop mentioned Martinez and his Aviex girlfriend were on a date; He just could not help himself to mess with the new guy and maybe push him towards spending some more time with someone other than Shiksie, or Ivorn.
You would know how it went you little shit, Marinez thought as he tucked the datapad back into his scrubs pocket and then turned towards his co-worker
Therin looked at Martinez, his feathers slightly puffed up. He stood on the chair and got slightly closer to Martinez Intently looking Martinez over. Therin took particular interest in the small circle of healing puncture wounds on his Human compatriot's shoulder. “What did your lady friend do to you?” He asked jokingly.
“Therin you already know what happened, I got into a fight” Martinez grumbled. Not wanting to have the prodding bird ask further into the rest of the evening. He already knew that Aveix, where hated and did not doubt Therin knowing about him and Lysa’s more intimate time, would be trouble.
“Oh come on new guy, I'm asking about after I was on the phone with the cops” Therin replied, “Did you have a nice evening?”
Martinez stepped slightly away from Therin. “Look man, I had a long night. Nothing happened after the fight” Martinez groaned
Therin shook his head and tapped his wing claw on Martinez’s shoulder. “Those little marks I can see tell me otherwise” he chirped
Dammit, I was hoping those were not visible, Martinez thought. Martinez had always worn slightly larger scrubs than he needed to out of comfort, he did not make much effort to hide the bite mark on his trap, but it's not like it's anyone else's business who he goes on a date with anyways.
“I mean it, nothing else happened,” Martinez growled. Hoping Therin would get the hint and drop the subject.
“Oh yeah, whatever you say new guy” Therin chuckled “So when is the wedding?”
“Fuck off Therin,” Martinez said jokingly, pushing Therins chair away from him with his boot “Don’t you have something better to be doing?”
Therin chuckled a little, before scooting his chair back towards the center desks of the room “Wow you really are Shiksies trainee, you are already acting just like her'' He said before tapping his wing claw on his datapad. Therin wondered what else he might be able to do to mess with Martinez about the events of last night, when he opened the list of current patients he saw his answer.
The bird has more jokes than I thought he would Martinez thought, while pulling back out his data pad. At least Therin was a good sport about who he went out with, unlike those two Urintal did. The fact Therin was giving him a little bit of shit wasn’t surprising, It was in a way customary for the old salts to poke fun at the new guy's love life. At this point, Therin was the only one who knew he had gone on a date at all, and he hoped it stayed that way at least with Skiksie; If Ivorn figured it out, Martinez doubted he would care much; Martinez had already met Ivorns chipper girlfriend at his point.
I should get back to studying before Shiksie shows up, Martinez thought as he buttoned his top up a bit higher than he preferred. Martinez did not want the others to see the hickey or dig any more into his private life than he was comfortable with.
—
Shiksie arrived at work excited, she was eager to see what Martinez had managed to study during his time away from work; She had given him what she saw as a small number of questions and things he should have been studying over the weekend. She had always done her best learning when she had a nice calm place to read, at least the new Human hopefully had that allotted to him at his own home.
If he did a good job answering what she had given him, she would hopefully be able to increase the rate of his training; She had no idea how long he was going to be here but she wanted to get Martinez certified as a basic Interspecies technician as soon as possible; Getting Martinez that certification would be a great boon for the shop, she and the others could then allow him to assess class green patients without their oversight.
When she entered, something was off in the shop. She could hear Therin and Ivorn chatting happily about their weekends, but the place smelled horrible. A rancid combination of stem cells, iron, pine, the same strange scent Martinez gave off when she knew he was agitated. She initially assumed Martinez just had forgotten to wear his scent suppressors, but when she rounded the corner and saw the massive gash and pink hemostatic gel on the human's face she knew something was definitely off.
Getting closer to Martinez, Shiksie was still nervous about being around him; She felt slight twinges of fear of him striking at her, or her overstepping and boundaries she had yet to learn. While they had managed to build a shaky but cordial relationship at best, she would rather not jeopardize what they do have.
The Human smelled like he had when they had their meeting, along with his heart pounding extremely quickly.
Is he nervous about something? Shiksie thought as she made it next to him, once again without him noticing. She wondered if she should stop sneaking around him, but she would rather not bother the Human whenever she could. Assuming her mere presence was more often than not a bother to the man.
She peered over his shoulder to catch a glance at what he was currently studying. It surprised her, he had quite a few tabs open on the datapad, but the current one was her list of questions. Most of them had not been answered, but he was flicking back and forth between the list and the other tabs searching for answers.
Shicksie could not help but feel her tail sway a bit faster, the fact that he was doing what she asked was certainly progress in repairing their abysmal start to working together. She walked past him, and headed towards her desk; With the human still not having noticed her entrance.
Shiksie decided to not dig into whatever had Martinez on edge, even if she was worried that it has him so unsettled. She assumed if Martinez wanted to talk to her about it, he would do so; most species did that after all, and humans were supposed to be rather social; even if Martinez seemed a bit more… reserved, he was still Human at the end of the day.
Later in the Morning Dr. Harnsis arrived and the crew had their pass down from the night shift regarding any patients that were already in rooms. They only had a Urintal in one of the rooms. He had a broken jaw and dozens of other fractures across the rest of his body. From the briefing, Shiksie knew the Urintal was caught up in some fight the previous night, but with no injuries that were directly life-threatening, He would be perfect practice for Martinez. The Urintal had surgery on his jaw and was still asleep from the heavy painkillers that night shift had pumped into the Lizard-like Alien.
“I will take over the treatment of the Urintal,” Shiksie said, jumping on the chance to treat the patient that was already here. The Urintal were a green species that had been in the Galactic Union for thousands of years. It would be a perfect chance to have Martinez assess a patient and go through the discharge process.
“Very well Shiksie, you, Therin, and Martinez handle that first. The patient should be ready to leave within the hour” Harnsis Chittered as he pointed at the two of them with his larger forelimbs.
Shiksies' ears twitched when Martinez groaned and muttered under his breath. It was rare she mishears someone, but she did not understand why Martinez was muttering he would rather not. She glanced over and saw that therein was patting Martinez on the shoulder reassuring him of something.
What the hell happened? Shiksie thought as she walked toward the two of them.
“Martinez, pull up the patient's charts and their species data; You will be giving myself and Therin a briefing on the species before we go into the room. Do you understand?” Shiksie asked.
Martinez pulled out his datapad, and lazily saluted “I will get it ready” he groaned, before tapping on the screen.
Shifting her attention towards Therin. The bird looked up at her and tilted his head slightly. “What's up Shiksie? Do you need something from me?” Therein chirped.
Shiksie was not sure about what happened but she had to know what she was about to step into. “Yes I do, follow me,” She said flatly before turning around and walking away. Therein following quickly behind.
Once the two of them were well out and away from the center of the shop, far enough that Shiksie was certain Martinez would not hear them. She turned around and knelt in front of Therin. The bird looked at ease like he normally did. Shiksie had never seen anything disturb Therin over the last few years; Therein always just shrugged most issues off, or would on occasion try to pull pranks at others' expense, much to her chagrin. She wanted to make sure the situation was the former and not the latter.
“Therin, does Martinez’s injury have anything to do with that Urintal?” She asked as she leaned her hands on her knees.
Therin fluttered his wings and puffed out his plumage; faking offense to the question. He did not want Shiksie to ruin his chance to see the drug-hazed Urintal being treated by the person who put them in the hospital. He was hoping that Urintal would freak out and try to run away.
“I have no idea, Martinez did not tell me anything at all about what happened,” Therin lied.
Shiksie gave Therin an ice-cold glare that was as sharp as any scalpel. She did not believe the bird at all, he was far too obvious when faking anything. “Therin, I know you are lying. I can hear your heart rate increasing, and I know you aren't afraid of me like Martinez is” Shiksie sighed.
Therin only increased his bolstering refusing to let Shiksie stop his only good joke on the new guy stop before it even started “I mean It, I don't know anything that happened, Why do you assume I know more?”
“Because your pranks are seldom if ever funny, it's clear enough you know more” Shiksie said, tapping her finger on her knee. She looked up behind Therin towards Martinez who was still diligently reading from his datapad, she did not want Martinez to be freaked out and leave. She had caused that with a new trainee once, and Therin once as well. “If anything bad happens to Martinez out of this, I'm holding you accountable, Got it?” She hissed.
Therin backed up and swallowed his spit. He would rather not piss Shiksie off but with the video of Martinez throttling the Urintal he had seen before work. He had no doubt nothing bad would happen to the Human.
“Don't worry Shiksie nothing bad will happen” Therin said.
Shiksie stood towering over Therin, She shook her head. Therin was too stubborn and she knew it, If he wanted a prank to happen it would. No matter how twisted she might think it is. She also wasn’t so stupid as to not pick up on the implied admittance she managed to get out of Therin. “Come on, you are going to be doing this assessment with him after all,” Shiksie said, gesturing towards Martinez.
Shiksie and Therin returned to Martinez as he was finishing his initial reading of the needed information. He initially hoped it was just a coincidence that another Urintal would be here, but once he saw the scans of the patient's bones, he had no doubt his next patient was going to be the man he and Lysa kicked the crap out of the previous night.
He could recall each hit he had seen on the Urintal and was able to point out what ones were his and what ones had to be Lysa’s. The amount of damage was surprising, and the number of fractures was unreal; nearly every rib, and limb had at least one fracture if not more.
Hopefully, this asshole is way too dusted to recognize me, Martinez thought as he looked up at Shiksie and prepared to give the summary of the patient and the Urintal species as a whole.
Shiksie paid close attention to every word Martinez said, Holding tightly onto them. The majority of his summary on the Urintal was accurate; A few mistakes here and there, but he did not have the summary of all the green species memorized as she had. She offered a few corrections but the errors would not affect anything.
Then the summary of the patient's wounds and needed treatment came up, Martinez gripped the datapad tightly and had to periodically pause to take a deep breath. His heart rate would suddenly accelerate. She leaned in closer and got a good view of the Humans dark bark-colored eyes, whenever he paused she saw the vibrant brown was far smaller than normal; He had that same look in his eye from when he took a fighting stance in the storage room with her.
She looked over at Therin, the bird either did not notice how uncomfortable Martinez was or simply did not care. What the hell are you trying, She thought as she started to boil. She was not about to let whatever was going on happen, at first it might have been him trying a prank, but Therins short-sightedness might get the Human or the Urintal hurt.
“Stop,” Shiksie said as she carefully reached her hand out and rested it on Martinez’s shoulder. Martinez recoiled when she touched him, being pulled back from whatever trance he was in. She gently patted his shoulder “Martinez come with me” She said flatly.
Martinez looked up at her sweat rolling off his brow. “Uhh, are you sure? We haven't even seen the patient yet?” he meekly said in protest.
Shiksie had worked with soldiers and police officers enough to know Martinez had some kind of Trauma, and these events were obviously triggering something. The patient can be handled by Therin, while she figures this out. His training be damned, his health came first; even if he likely did not want her to intervene.
“Yes I am sure,” Shiksie purred. She pulled the datapad out of his hands “I need you to come with me now”
She passed the data pad to Therin and glared at the small bird, Therin looked like he was trying to hold back laughter about the state Martinez was in.
I will pluck out your feather you little bird, Shiksie thought. She always thought Therin was a reliable nurse, and a decent friend to have small talk with; but not much else.
“Therin, go ensure the patient gets out of here,” Shiksie said.
Therin looked like he was about to protest the interruption to his idea of a joke, but even Therin did not want to mess with Harnsis’ right hand. Her icy glare had him skittering off toward the patient's room.
“Come with me Martinez, '' Shiksie said softly, doing her best to seem unopposing to him.
Martinez grumbled slightly, he did not want to have to spend more time alone with Shiksie. At least today she seemed to be slightly less forceful with him. The two of them walked out of the office, Martinez saw Shikise pull out her datapad and send a message off to someone, he assumed it to likely be Harnsis. He hoped whatever Shiksie had sent wasn’t going to reflect badly on him. He had knuckled down through his PTSD and episodes to treat patients before, he has never really had the choice not to do so, at this point it has just become a habit.
Once the two of them were out of the building Shiksie led Martinez towards one of the small gardens that was nearby to the building. It was just a simple fountain that had some benches nearby. A ring of well-kept flower beds surrounds it, this time of year they were in full bloom; dozens of vibrant colors swaying like waves as the wind gently pushed on them. Shiksie had always liked it out here, it was not uncommon for her to eat lunch or take a break out here after a particularly nasty patient or situation.
“Would you like to take a seat?” Shiksie asked Martinez while gesturing towards the nearest bench.
Martinez did not say a word, but at least for the moment his heart rate had gone down slightly and he seemed more calm. She was overjoyed that she seemed to be right on the money and that it had something to do with that Urintal that was setting him off.
“Would it be alright If I have a seat as well?” Shiksie asked, still treading carefully around Martinez and his need for boundaries.
The look Martinez gave her was a surprise, it was a strange mixture of shock and confusion. Like he was amazed, Shiksie was asking for permission to do anything.
“Yeah go ahead,” Martinez said, scooting to the far side of the bench as Shiksie sat down nearby.
“So would you want to tell me what happened with the Urintal?” Shiksie asked.
Martinez groaned, he should have figured the moment the icy cat had stopped him she knew something was wrong. He was in no way going to tell her every vivid detail of his previous night, nor did he want her of all people to know the details of what happened in his past. The fact those two events were stacked on each other was just a lot for the sailor to tackle at once.
“I would really rather not, but I assume based on my injuries you probably already know something,” Martinez said
Shiksie sighed, leaned forward, and rested her elbows on her knees. She looked away and at the fountains flowing water, already well aware that just looking at Martinez had upset him before. She wanted him to feel safe and able to talk if he wanted.
“I have my assumptions, but nothing concrete,” Shiksie replied. “I would like it if you trusted me enough to talk about anything bothering you”
Martinez wondered if she truly meant that, She had done a lot to try and help him be welcome; That does not mean she should be fully trusted though.
“Shiksie I just want to get back to work,” Martinez said with a deep sullen tone. Shiksie could still easily smell the sheer amount of adrenaline oozing out of him.
“Listen I'm not going to force you to tell me about it, I just know you want to. You would not have followed me if not” Shiksie replied, “let's just sit here for a while, you can just tell me anything you feel comfortable with, alright?”
Martinez shifted awkwardly and looked towards Shiksie. The fact she looked almost as bad as he did was something he was not used to seeing from her. She was looking off at the far side of the fountain, her tail and ears were more still than he had ever seen them.
Maybe she is not as cold as I made her out to be, Martinez thought.
The two of them sat there in silence for a while, neither certain how long it was but eventually Martinez resumed talking. Shiksies' ears twitched to listen in on what had happened. Martinez walked her through the events of the previous night, but he left out what his dreams had been about. He just told her that the whiplash of going from a nice relaxing date to being in a fight for his life had brought up bad memories from when he was in the Navy.
Shiksie was surprised by the story she heard. She did not expect Martinez to have started to date so quickly, She felt that thorn in her side remembering how badly she messed up with meeting him; Not that she wanted to date Martinez, but the fact he was so easy to get along with just showed her how badly she failed. The most shocking part was how he hospitalized two Urintal, one completely on his own. She just had a few more things about the previous night she wanted to ask.
“Why did you jump into the fight so willingly?” Shiksie asked.
Martinez sighed slightly unsure of the answer himself. He immediately thought it might have been “because it was the right thing to do” but even he knew that wasn’t the whole answer. He felt guilty about not being able to help in the past, and he would be damned if he could stop something bad before it happened.
“I'm not sure” Martinez lied, he just did not want to tell Shiksie about his previous fights with the Human Navy.
“That's alright, we don't always do,” Shiksie said. She thought back to her own parents, how she was still to this day unsure why they sacrificed themselves, or even why the accident caused that sacrifice to happen.
Shiksie looked back at Martinez for the first time since they sat down. Her usually sharp predatory features seemed far softer than before. She did not even hear Martinez’s heart run away when they made eye contact.
Martinez smiled softly back at her, his usually fiery glower a much duller blaze. It wasn't the usual inferno she saw in him, more akin to a tired dwindling flame.
Before she had a chance to say anything else she felt her datapad ringing indicating a call. Looking at the screen, her own heart sank. Why is the director calling me?
​
​
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So what did you think? lemme here it I love to talk to you all. updoot if you liked.
side note: I am planning out my next project to be a offshoot set on Verilon, in the current day of the story.
​
your bud
-pirate
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Next:
Previous :
https://www.reddit.com/humansarespaceorcs/comments/13t55y6/human_trauma_section_eleven_blood_and_bandages/
First
https://www.reddit.com/humansarespaceorcs/comments/121mgy1/human_trauma/

Netflix’s Bridgerton prequel had a big opening — one that also boosted interest in its parent show.
Queen Charlotte A Bridgerton Story debuted at No. 1 in Nielsen’s streaming rankings for May 1-7. The six-episode prequel, which premiered May 4, had 1.89 billion minutes of viewing in the United States for the week, easily outpacing every other title. Nielsen also notes that viewing for Bridgerton tripled for the week, coming in at 125 million minutes (though well outside the top 10 original series).
​
The 1.89 billion minutes of viewing for Queen Charlotte is equal to 31.47 million hours, a little over 20 percent of the worldwide total (148.28 million hours) that Netflix reported for the show’s opening week (Nielsen and Netflix use different methodologies for their measurement, so the Nielsen figure is a rough estimate of how much of the show’s audience came from the U.S.).
​
The previous week’s top title, Netflix’s The Diplomat, slid to ninth overall (and fifth among original series), with 711 million minutes of watch time.
Firefly Lane stayed in second place, improving by about 13 percent week to week to 1.25 billion minutes.
Sweet Tooth grew by 16 percent and also crossed the billion-minute mark with 1.07 billion minutes of viewing.
Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso came down some from the prior week’s series high but still posted a strong 715 million minutes of viewing.
The Mandalorian (319 million minutes) also hung in the top 10 originals list two weeks after its third season finale on Disney+.
The Netflix debut of the Tom Hanks film A Man Called Otto delivered 879 million minutes of viewing, easily leading the movie rankings and finishing fourth among all titles.
​

The top streaming titles for May 1-7 are below.

Overall

1. Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story (Netflix), 1.89 billion minutes viewed
2. Firefly Lane (Netflix), 1.25 billion
3. Sweet Tooth (Netflix), 1.07 billion
4. A Man Called Otto (Netflix), 879 million
5. Cocomelon (Netflix), 759 million
6. NCIS (Netflix/Paramount+), 722 million
7. Bluey (Disney+), 719 million
8. Ted Lasso (Apple TV+), 715 million
9. The Diplomat (Netflix), 711 million
10. Better Call Saul (Netflix), 673 million

​
Original Series

1. Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, 1.89 billion minutes
2. Firefly Lane, 1.25 billion
3. Sweet Tooth, 1.07 billion
4. Ted Lasso (Apple TV+), 715 million
5. The Diplomat (Netflix), 711 million
6. Workin’ Moms (Netflix), 579 million
7. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel ,(Prime Video), 416 million
8. The Night Agent (Netflix), 410 million
9. The Mandalorian (Disney+), 319 million
10. Beef (Netflix), 309 million

​
Acquired Series

1. Cocomelon, 759 million minutes
2. NCIS, 722 million
3. Bluey, 719 million
4. Better Call Saul, 673 million
5. The Big Bang Theory (HBO Max), 638 million
6. Shameless (Netflix), 557 million
7. Grey’s Anatomy (Netflix), 515 million
8. Succession (HBO Max), 501 million
9. South Park (HBO Max), 473 million
10. Heartland (Netflix/Peacock), 448 million

​
Nielsen’s streaming ratings cover viewing on TV sets only and don’t include minutes watched on computers or mobile devices.
The ratings only measure U.S. audiences, not those in other countries.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/streaming-tv-rankings-may-1-7-2023-1235505652/

Kita looks back to Raya who tosses her a bag. Snapping her out of the momentary daze that had overcome her. Inside the bag are some clothes Raya got from the raiders, as well as some coin.
"The weather will get strange to the East," Raya says.
Kita looks down to the strip below, noticing that no one has reacted to the shooting that just took place. No security or armed guards are on their way to investigate this massive crime scene.
"Why haven't we drawn any attention?" Kita asks.
"Shootouts between raiders are probably common. Most cities can barely afford to maintain their leadership, let alone armed guards,"
"Lucky us,"
"It won't be the same in the East. The city he spoke of is far wealthier than this one?"
"You've been there?"
"No. But I've heard they conduct trade in meats, medicines and vegetables. I'm not sure what their wealth may look like, but I'd presume it includes security,"
"I'll keep that in mind. Ready to go?"
"Go?" Raya asks, startled. "We're not ready yet,"
"Of course. Because we obviously need…"
"A tipi. Food and water, too. I'm surprised food isn't the first thing on your mind," Raya jests.
"Right!," Kita chuckles. "Are you doubting my love for a good meal?"
"I would lose that bet," Raya responds. "We'll buy enough to get us to the next city- It will take two or three nights for us to reach it,”
"I was thinking the exact same thing," Kita says, shrugging her shoulders.
They both make their way back to the strip, where they've bought themselves a two-person tipi that will keep them covered in case they run into the myst. The few bottles of water they bought cost more than the tipi, which surprised Kita considering everyone needs water. How could the poor people possibly afford this?
They walk amongst the passing bodies of the busy street, scouting for a store that sells food that would be good for travelling. The storefront Raya steps up towards is selling pastries, nuts and dried fruits- so boring. But it's travel food so it'll work best.
"How much for the creamy tomato soup?" Kita asks the chef.
"12 coin," He grunts, passing a glance between the both of them. "Should I ring you up for some of that too?" He asks Raya.
"Yes," Kita answers, glaring at Raya to agree.
"I'm askin' the responsible one," The chef dismisses Kita's answer.
"What are you trying to say, old man?" Kita grits her teeth, returning eye contact.
"We'll take two of the soups as well," Raya responds, placing more coin on the counter. "For travel," She adds.
"Understood, You can wait at one of the tables over there and I'll bring it all out for you," He points at the shared dining area.
"Much appreciated," Raya says.
"You better use love when you make it too," Kita scolds as the man walks away, ignoring her.
"Looking for love, sweetheart?" Says a seductive voice from over her shoulder. Kita turns to lock eye contact with a bright pink set of pupils. It's the tall, orange-haired girl with a white fringe. Her tight skirt hugs her curving body as she towers above Kita.
"Uhh…" Kita stammers, overwhelmed by her beauty as she recognizes it's the girl from before. The nerves are getting to her, and saying anything is proving to be more of a challenge than anything she's faced thus far.
"Smooth," Raya scoffs at Kita's response.
"Did the mission go as planned?" The petty lady says, leaning closer to Kita as she caresses Kita's arm.
"Y-yeah... I'm a hero now," Kita responds.
"Not mine, though," The lady frowns, placing a hand on Kita's.
"Well… I could be," Kita smiles. "Right now, even,"
"You're quick like that, are you?"
"When I need to be," Kita responds, "I often like to take my time,"
"You can take all the time you need, sweetheart"
"Does your, uhhh, friend still need saving too?"
"He does, he would be very disappointed if I didn't bring you back with me… To save him,"
"Then I better not disappoint," Kita responds, prompting the lady to take Kita's hand. "I'll be back," Kita says to Raya.
"Mhmm," She mumbles, "Don't take too long,"
Kita walks behind the tall lady, holding her hand as she watches her rear sway from left to right with each step. The high heels she's wearing make her legs and bottom look so firm. It's quite a seductive sight.
Kita takes one last look at Raya before she enters a tipi, behind the orange and white-haired lady, where she sees the man with the latex pants and stunning pecs.
He passes her a smile, "Welcome home, babe,"
•°•°•°•
The sun peaks over the hills, radiating heat across the barren land as Kita and Raya hike to the next city. Fully supplied with food, water and a change of clothing in the event the weather cools down.
Kita's going through a lot of lengths to get to this kid. She wasn't expecting him to have been taken to a whole different city but by this point, there is not much she can do besides follow the trails. There's not much else for her to do anyway. From everything that Raya has told her, she wouldn't stand a chance against the dark one right now. She needs a minimum of two hundred souls by the time she decides to do that. It's a bigger challenge than she's prepared to deal with right now.
"Will the myst pass over us?" Kita asks Raya.
"Not yet," Raya responds, pointing to the horizon on her right. "When it does it will come from the South,"
"How do you know that?"
"The stars. Depending on their alignment. The myst will generally travel from East to West, or North to South. But this can vary slightly,"
"I was told it also grows larger with each rotation," Kita adds.
"This is true, although not many are aware of it."
"How are you aware of it? Must be because of that fancy, royal education you got,"
"It is primarily from experience," Raya chuckles."But my fancy education did teach me a lot,"
"You can probably do large calculations and stuff with your mind, huh?"
"Something like that," Raya replies.
"Well then, you can manage our coin," Kita chuckles.
"That's a given. Unless we want all of our coin spent on an assortment of soups," Raya quips.
"That wouldn't be a bad use of coin," Kita answers, licking her lips. "A meat soup would be amazing,"
"And expensive," Raya adds.
"Coin is made to be spent, no?"
"On more than just food, Kita,"
"Sure. There were a few pretty men and women I wouldn't mind spending my coin on either,"
"Of course," Raya grunts, "And after the sex we can die of starvation,"
"Were all of your kind immune to having a good time?" Kita asks sarcastically.
"I'll have you know that our national celebrations were unrivalled. People would travel from distant regions to attend them,"
"Such a well-mannered princess could never participate in such antics,"
Raya chuckles, reflecting on her days of royalty with a smile prancing on her face. "Back then, I wasn't the most well-behaved Princess,"
"Oh? You were a rebellious heir?"
"I would often drink to the point of inebriation. Whether I was at a celebration, at the castle or even on the battlefield,"
"A drunkard princess. I'd love to see that," Kita laughs.
"I've reformed since then," Raya chuckles.
"Did Mother and Father approve of your behaviour?" Kita asks with her impression of Raya's posh voice.
"They did know... No one did. In my drunkenness, I would successfully win battles, entertain my family at the dinner table, socialize with my citizens, and spearhead the council on behalf of my Father,"
"All whilst alcohol was plaguing your body?" Kita asks, stunned that this polite, patient princess is a productive alcoholic.
"I presume you don't drink?" Raya chuckles.
"Ugh, no," Kita scoffs, "I prefer to alter my consciousness, rather than dull it,"
"The expectations everyone had for me were overwhelming." Raya says, scratching the back of her neck, "My family expected me to always be the shining example. Always smiling and strong. My soldiers expected me to be Brave… And ruthless in the face of any foe. And my people expected me to understand them and their needs. Despite how they would ebb and flow." She shrugs, "I'd be lying if I said it wasn't overwhelming… Dulling my mind was the only way I could cope with it all,"
"Are you drunk right now?" Kita squints in suspicion.
Raya laughs, "I no longer carry that burden. I only drink for leisure when it is available,"
"Way to dodge my question,"
"You'd know whether or not I was drunk. I'm much more susceptible to its effects these days,"
"No longer reliable in combat?" Kita asks.
"I still fight with skill… But I'm clumsy under the influence,"
"A drunken, warrior princess," Kita laughs, "There has to be a joke for this," She adds, rubbing her chin as she contemplates.
^{AUTHOR'S NOTES
Read ahead on RoyalRoad [https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/68702/soul-stealer-anti-hero-reincarnation-fantasy](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/68702/soul-stealer-anti-hero-reincarnation-fantasy})
^{Kita's thoughts - Post Chapter 13
"mmm, I needed that,"}

Feels like the next season should be starting already.
WHO’S READY FOR HOCKEY
The playoffs are back! And it wouldn’t feel like the playoffs without some friendly competition among fans. And a real prize this time!
Welcome to the Game Winning Goal Challenge for the 2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Last Night's Scorer(s):
William Carrier
The rules are simple:

• For each matchup on a given day, list the one player for each game you expect to score the GWG.
  
• This means that if there are 2 games in a given night, you choose one player from one team in Game 1, and one player from one team in Game 2.
  
• To make your selection, leave a primary comment with the first and last names of each player you select. Guessing closes strictly at puck drop of the first game of the day. The following morning you will receive an inbox letting you know you guessed correctly or berating you for making an incorrect selection...
  
• Get as many GWG scorers right as possible during the playoffs and be crowned GWG Guesser... Champion... Person... This year I'll splurge and send some dumb prize related to your team of choice for like $20.
  
• You spell it wrong - you get no points. I use the NHL.com spelling of player names, which typically omits special characters like accents.
  
• First and last names are required.
  
• Edited comments are disqualified. If you fuck up your selection and need to change it, delete it and repost.
  

Without further ado, today's matchups:
FLA vs VGK
Leaderboard: Nostradomusknows 9 boondocknim 8 von_winklestein 6 squitman 6 Bullets_TML 6 bakkafish 5 FlyersLaForest 5 Escalotes 5 MarlboroRum 4 iluvbrunch 4 connor_bedard 4 DJZbad93 4 72athansiou 4 TrueBrees9 4 Chris4Hawks 4 OhEnder 4 chimpsimulator 4 LegendaryCanuck 4 diecommajerks 4 TTcolector 4 Puckrawker 3 Proposal_Mountain 3 sasksasquatch 3 MileHighClub2017 3 MillennialWithNoJob 3 baconboy132 3 shoegazer44 3 Cw2e 3 YellowMarkerIsGreat 3 Elwood426 3 jessasaurusrex5 2 5mins4fighting 2 eltigre6667 2 Styxdog 2 ppParadoxx 2 DrewKratos 2 ddottay 2 siel04 2 RedSlider18 2 Weigard 2 abstractarrow 2 ACMop 2 OrchidCareful 2 Mapleleafguy83 2 Taigherh 2 joelaray 2 MountainBaker8217 2 heyethan 2 Soco_Amaretto_Lime 2 SilentThing 2 timhoff24 2 abysmal327 2 OneOfTheCoolGuys 2 thibs69 1 Dadalid 1 nascarfan624 1 WillFerrellisthegoat 1 Academic_Paramedic_5 1 ConnorBurnsRed 1 magilbert338 1 Fuckablealien 1 HockeyandHentai 1 Party0verHere 1 AmeriCanadian98 1 Gruntmaster720 1 togu12 1 SilenTyphoon 1 notacopbelieveme 1 MaleCakar 1 kmarino121 1 Emergency-Skill-3000 1 nationofcool83 1 Pouletchien 1 SomethinboutChickens 1 TTcolectorOTT 1 Sarth_Didious 1 II_Kaladin_II 1 thrawaway9991 1 Ilostmypickles 1 InevitableZero 1 mk14225 1 homicidal_penguin 1 ycorvic3 1 TotallyToTo 1 Lubec1969 1 AVSTREV2996 1 86thewaffle 1 e4mica523 1 MadSwiss 1 ndkjr70 1 ThomasRupert 1 Mr7three2 1 ocsic4321 1 SexAndDanger69 1 baghdadjokes 1 CatsandPathfinder 1 YEGG35 1 frost_biten 1
PM me if you feel there's a mistake in the scores. ¯\(ツ)/¯ Because It's The Cup

This man (29) has been chasing me for 1.5 years. I’m 31 F. After not considering dating him for years, when we matched on another dating app, I said okay let’s go out to eat. I let him pick the place. At the end of the night I paid the bill cause I thought I had a discount (which I didn’t). We both got many drinks. We went out another day to a pub and I paid a large cover and we both got drinks) and ladies enter for free). I never keep a score of what we eat at my house where we spend time and he is sweet enough to bring me food and cook me food at my house too. We make a good team of chefs. But I feel that a responsible person should at least have a conversation about finances if they continue to buy food and drinks that their lady is paying for. This man who claims to want a relationship with me had warned me he is insecure about his earnings. So after he didn’t have a conversation about the finances or offer to split at a later time in life maybe, I asked him if we can set a monthly/quarterly budget so neither of us overspends. I told him I know many places in the city and we can plan better in the future. He was nice to me up until this point when he started being inconsistent and saying he will call but wouldn’t and then just apologise and the whole cycle again. I also asked him if we could discuss our life goals so see if our lives converge before we get too serious. After about 2 weeks of being ignored I told him why don’t we just end it to which he said he needed time and after I showed dissatisfaction said he’s coming over right now. I shut it down because i dont want attention just because i gave you an untimatum. I told him he should contact me on his own free will. No contact, no explanation. Fast fwd a few more days, I ask him if we can split the restaurant bills cause life’s tough with expenses and I don’t mean to be rude. No response. His response was to remove his WhatsApp photo. I think he wanted me to think he blocked me or is that how some people show their emotion? I told him I have crazy high fever and losing sleep over it, no response. I also apologised for being nosey about his life and explained that I wanted to plan for us and we both have past wounds so a lack of response hurts me. No response.
I do understand the income disparity but how am I to know that the man chose a place for a date knowing he wouldn’t pay for himself? What if I hadn’t paid? Would he have dropped me after the first date? I don’t know what he makes to an exact degree of expenses he is comfortable with. Maybe he could have offered an alternative suggestion or had the tough conversation sometime without making me look like a bad (suddenly not so loveable anymore) person for bringing it up. I also considered his ego, his feelings are hurt but is it right to leave me guessing cause you don’t have answers to practical questions? I’m also thinking maybe he doesn’t have the capacity to show up for himself which is why he is unable to show up for me. But am I making excuses for their bad behaviour? I mean I understand depression (not saying he has it but considering worst case) but is it an excuse to be bad to someone else? I cant wrap my head around how someone who was so into me and wanted me for years is now behaving like this.
Note: I’m dating to marry. I do well for myself. I have a pet, too. But I don’t earn enough to splurge on two at restaurants.

BeyondtheGM EP 22 featured special guests Doodles CEO Julian Holguin and head of Business Development and Strategy Austin Hurwitz. Great listen where many heard the vision from the Doodles team for the first time.
Heres the show if anyone wants to listen back. https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1OdKrzqrMbYKX
I've shared some of the Doodles related Q&A and alpha below:
Can you share some details about your latest announcement for those who haven't seen it yet?
Julian: Doodles is partnering with a company called Camp to launch our first ever immersive retail experience and for those of you that don't know what camp is, it's basically a network of hybrid play / shopping experiences where the front of the establishment is basically a toy store, but think of it like a specialty toy store. It's kind of like a modern day FAO Schwarz or something like that. It's got all the viral kids toys. It's not just like walking into a Toys R Us or a Target or something like that, t's kind of got that specialty feel to it. That makes up about I'd say less than a sixth of the space but in the back of that toy store, there's this hidden door and a camp counselor is waiting for you if you purchased a ticket to the immersive experience, you push through that magic door and behind that is essentially a 6000 square foot immersive experience that totally brings the world that you're going into to life. So they partner with some big IP to actually program those experiences. Los Angeles is Nike. It's called Nike Kids Camp.
New York is Disney's Encanto, a really big Disney animation movie that kind of took the world by storm last year. Dallas is Mickey Mouse and friends. Atlanta is The Little Mermaid. So obviously some of the biggest IP in the world. We are launching a new location with them this summer. So basically, we're going to be introduced to a whole new set of potential people in the particular market that we're going to be in because these experiences actually serve a purpose in those specific markets for longer than say 2 or 3 days. They are permanent establishments in those markets. So we're going to stay there for about 3 to 6 months and then the Doodles show will likely go on the road to some of their other locations. The solution that camp solves is what do you do with your family today? What do you do today? Do you have something to do with your kids, which is always on a parent's mind, right? Whether you're taking them to the park or you're taking them to Disneyland or you're taking them wherever you want to go. This is like a 2 or 3 hour thing that is really kind of hard to replicate, that gets people out of the house and you can have truly an incredible time.
My kids love it. So the the cool thing for us is that we get to bring one of our core competencies to life in a really material way where we know it's valuable to pop up at these big cultural moments like South-by and Art Basel, but it's a pretty resource intensive process to do that, and it's a pretty budget intensive process to do that. So we figured it made a lot of sense to kind of reallocate some of that funding into turning this concept into a true business, which is essentially what camp is, One, we're going to be selling merchandise, we're going to be selling tickets to the event, we're going to be selling sponsorships to the event. So there's a real business there but the big opportunity for Doodles is there's going to be thousands of new people that don't know anything about Doodles coming into this experience, and we have the opportunity to bring them into our world. We have the opportunity to bring those people on chain, especially with what we have planned and how the technology is almost going to be invisible to the people that are in there.
It's ultimately just going to be a great digital / physical consumer experience. So really, really excited. The utility that that's going to drive ultimately to holders is VIP all access, it's going to be free entry, whereas everybody else has to pay. There's going to be merchandise credits, there's going to be true like white glove concierge services. So whenever a Doodle holder is going to go to the the space in a given day, week, whatever it might be, they're actually going to have the really VIP experience that's going to come with all the bells and whistles and they're going to feel very, very special and not the kind of experience that everybody else is going to have when they go to the event and hopefully in time that space is going to travel so a lot more Doodle holders are going to be able to take part in it but one of the big things that we've heard in general from holders about our live events is, oh man, it's two days, three days, like what if I'm not able to make it that particular weekend? This is going to enable people to have a little bit more travel plans put together if they do want to make it all the way out here but the cool thing is, it's going to travel.
We're still going to do live events in other parts of the world but this is a big one for us. The other part is that we're actually going to introduce our first line of kids merchandise, goods and apparel, which is something that the community has been asking for. We have a lot of parents in the Doodles community and it's also a way to introduce the brand to a lot of new people. As far as the experience itself, there's going to be like dayparting programing. So kids and family programing is going to be in the day for the most part and then at night there's going to be stuff that's more focused on adults. So multiple generations can take part in this. It's going to be a blast. I can't wait for everybody to see the designs, what the experience is going to look like, how it's going to connect to our collector ecosystem in the studio and bring NFT's to life in a really meaningful way. It's going to be awesome. Can't wait for you all to see it.
I'm looking forward to the day parting. I'm wondering if you could share any timelines, anything in terms of location and where we can expect them or should we stay tuned?
Julian: The location is going to be a reveal within itself so I don't want to say that here because the reason we're not bringing up the location yet is because there's a really big opportunity to get a lot of local press. You want the local newspapers, radio stations, local bloggers and everything like that talking about it. So we want to reveal the designs and everything when we announce the location so we get as many people in the particular area that we're going to be in aware of the activation as possible. Timing wise, the experience is going to open in August. There might be a little fluidity in what exact time in August but it's August right before the school year starts for everybody so it's not too far away and then as far as like you asked kind of a leading question with adult versus kids experiences. You know, if you grow up in New York or any of these cities and you do kind of more mellow, like you've been kind of like boozy painting before or doing like casual things you bring drinking like wine and beer into it. It turns into like a really fun night out for adults. This isn't going to be a rage fest kind of thing but the idea is that we're going to be able to serve alcohol and create some really cool friend and family driven experiences that are a lot more geared towards adults. So it'll be a good time.
What's it like working with Pharrell and what's his involvement with the Doodles project at the moment?
Julian: That that was the first thing we did. Again, remember how much interest there was in the blue chip NFT projects back in April, May, June of last year and there were a lot of opportunities for us to work with some major major musicians that have global reach and millions of followers and we really saw the value in working with a creator to help us incubate the brand but they needed to be dynamic and Pharrell is the most dynamic, genius, brilliant creator that in our opinion has really ever lived and he spans music, he spans art, he spans fashion, film, television, technology, everything. So, we had started talking to him basically right when I started and we got the deal done very quickly. Pharrell is a pretty material part of the business, most of the work that he does is kind of behind the scenes, the Pharrell pack and him coming into the Doodles universe as a character was the first big collab that we did but we're working on music together, we're working on audio identity and visual identity and brand development etc and the doors that guy can open are truly unprecedented, the rooms that he's walked us into. I don't want to name drop but top C-suite in the world, top creators in the world, top everything. Pharrell's name comes with so much weight because he has the respect of everybody from business to creative and fashion and everything in between and the thing that surprised me most well, I shouldn't say surprised me, but the thing that I think would surprise most people is how shrewd of a business mind the guy has, he's always leaning into new technology, new ways of doing things. He's kind of contrarian, but he really understands business. He really understands opportunity and he's very leaned into Doodles, which is exciting. We couldn't be more blessed to have his have his support and have his mind on the on the company.
I really enjoyed Scott's (Burnt Toast) version of Pharrell. Could you talk about the expansion of the Doodleverse and the ethos behind it?
Julian: If you look at the end card to the most recent trailer that promoted the Pharrell pack, Doodles2, the stoodio, everything that we released last month, what you're going to find in that is a bunch of random Doodles characters that could be anybody, could be anybody on this call, could be people in South Dakota, could be people in Hong Kong, could be people wherever.
Then you see Pharrell, who is Pharrell in that universe and then you see our mascot who is obviously going to be the main character of our fictional universe. So you have the real world in there, through their Doodle, you have Pharrell who's also part of the real world in there through their Doodle and then you have the fictional characters from Doodles in that photo as well. So if you think about where we're going as a brand, we're developing this fictional universe of characters that are derived from the original collection. So you've seen the mascot, you've seen the cat, all of that stuff is going to be developed into a fictional line of programing and then running parallel to that is the lifestyle brand that is Doodles, right? You make your Doodle, you buy your Doodle merch, you go to Doodles events, you're on Twitter talking to other Doodles, there are Doodle holders that are more well known than other Doodle holders simply because they engage more and they're more kind of public figures in the community and we kind of believe that as that starts to grow, those two, that kind of lifestyle brand and real world aspect of the Doodles will crash into the fictional world at times.
Maybe you do see a creator or someone that you know in the actual fictional world of the universe, or maybe you as a Doodle holder, whether it be through your Doodle or the customized Doodle that you create, will be in that fictional universe as well, the same way that Lady Gaga was a character in The Simpsons, or The Weeknd was a character in The Simpsons, set in the fictional world of The Simpsons but they're Lady Gaga. They're The Weeknd. So we have this really cool track of programing where you can bring digital identity to the table and collecting. We have this kind of sincere belief that digital identity paired with collecting connected to every single consumer touchpoint, whether it be going to the movies, watching television, buying stuff at retail, playing video games, if you can bring that back to a collecting hub where the brand knows who their most loyal supporters are, who engage with the company the most, who are supporting the most and you can reward those people and create aligned incentives as our business grows. That's something really special that brings the brand and the ultimate collector closer together, which makes them feel like they are part of the universe because they actually are going to be part of the universe. They're not going to be just a passive participant and the best way I can give you kind of a framework for how that doesn't exist today.
If you look at most movie IP, they license the movie rights out to a distribution company that actually puts the movie out, which then goes to theaters so they don't actually own the relationship with their customer. You buy merchandise through another third party, so they license it to another third party. They license their books and publishing rights. They license their music rights. They license everything out and they don't actually own the relationship with a lot of their audience. So they have no way of knowing who their most loyal supporters are, who goes and sees the movie three times, who plays the game, who buys the merch, who shows up at the theme parks and the events? What's really cool about the technology that we all work in is we could figure out a way to track all of that and make sure that those people are not just being seen and heard, they're getting stuff, they're getting more rewards, they're creating this sense of identity being close to this brand because they're actually going to feel like they're part of it with all the activations that we have planned. We think that's a business model and a mindset that doesn't exist today and that that's really where we're leaning in.
Are there any projects or founders or individuals that you guys chat with a lot or anyone you guys want to meet?
Julian: Yeah, obviously day to day work kind of gets in the way of, you know, people spending too much time together but Luca and I talk pretty often, he actually hooked me up with a couple of the plushies for my kids. They loved them. So there's there's definitely love and support there. I talk to Greg from Yuga every now and then, I've connected with Zag a couple of times but it's not as much as it should be and I think that's kind of the real takeaway, is that, we should be coming together as leaders in this space more often, because if one of us wins, all of us wins and there's so much incredible work being done right now, we just we need to figure out better ways of kind of taking ourselves out of the day to day and the kind of the pitting ourselves against each other that exists so much on the timeline right now and just remember, we're all fighting the same fight, right? We're trying to take market share from all the biggest companies in the world, not from each other. If Web3 makes it, it's not going to be just one of us that makes it. It's going to be a few of us. It's going to be a bunch of us and it's ultimately just going to create more opportunity for everybody building in this space. So more of that 100% needs to happen.
How do you feel about the sentiment? Obviously you guys went through a lot of FUD and now you're kind of bouncing back. How do you feel about the NFT space and where you guys kind of see yourselves fitting in?
Julian: I think anybody who saw our keynote at NFTNYC last year, we are doing every single thing that we said we were going to do. I think there's a misconception in how long this stuff actually takes to develop, to reach millions of people around the world, how long it takes to get music to market and film and television content to market and true partnerships and things like that. You know, especially when you kind of have the bar for quality that Doodles does. I think one of the areas that we've fallen flat is just communication and community building in general and I think that's something that if hopefully you've been paying attention lately, you've seen that there's a real concerted effort internally to try and bridge that gap and to try and rebuild that vibe in the Doodles community. It's something we think about every day. Austin has been invaluable in that regard and truly making the community understand that we are a Web3 company. We do care deeply about this space. We do sincerely believe in the technology and what it's going to do for brands and IP.
We really do feel like every action and activity we take is not just going to benefit Doodles, it's going to benefit everybody in our community and everybody in the Web3 community at large. So has it hurt to see kind of Web3 not as pumped about Doodles anymore? Yeah, it's definitely something we think about, but we're not going to sit here and try and sell, sell, sell to the space on why we're great. What we're going to do is just prove it by shipping product and show people that we really are in this for the right reasons and it'll start to make more and more sense over time. We're kind of sick of talking about what we're going to do and we're just going to show people and think by the end of the summer, by the end of September, you're going to you're going to see a very, very different looking business that the community is truly at the center of. So we're excited for that.
You guys are talking about collectibles and I think Burnt Toast recently shared a photo of a monochrome dude. You guys are working with All Rights Reserved who is definitely a premium art / toy sculpture producer. I would love to know a little bit more about how you connected and maybe a little bit more that around what we can expect for that that drop.
Julian: So this relationship predates me joining but Evan got introduced to SK, I believe through Todd Kramer, who's a big art collector, and he has a gallery in New York and I believe they really hit it off kind of from the beginning and the first the first vinyl that came out was so successful, people were going crazy for that thing and it became very clear that hese vinyl stand toe to toe with Bearbrick statues and Kaws statues and we had a real opportunity in the designer toy market. So we really wanted to start to double down on that concept and try and play in that space. So we've been developing a strategy for a while on how we actually bring that to a wider audience and get that in the right kind of environment so this, this summer, August, actually, we're going to be doing a big drop tied to the physical's, the vinyl that you saw. There's going to be multiple colorways. There's going to be some really interesting, I'll say expanded things outside of the toy, outside of the figure itself but it's going to have some specialty retail distribution so it'll be at some key retailers, both digital retailers and physical retailers, All those retailers are going to be distributed around the world.
There's some pretty select markets that we're going into and then that is going to lead directly into the camp opening a few weeks later. So it's pretty exciting. The vinyls are definitely a big area of growth for us because we see them as a way to reach new collectors, new people. It's not enough to try and sell everything to the people that are here today, what we need to be able to do is actually bring these these experiences and these products to as many new people as possible. I think one of the things that Luca actually said when they did the toys was, being financially independent so you don't need to continue putting more and more NFT's in the ecosystem. I don't think that means any of us are going to stop producing NFT's but the whole idea of being able to make those experiences incredible because you have a real business outside of it. I think that is a really great takeaway and something that we think is possible through this drop and the other stuff that's coming soon. We're talking so much more man. It's going to be crazy.
One thing I would like to hear your thoughts about is how are you trying to to bring value back to holders from these events? If I walk into a Camp store, do I know that Doodles is a originated from an NFT project or is there another another strategy like a Trojan horse?
Julian: I think the goal for us and thank you for that question, but the goal for us is more how do you eliminate the technological barrier between someone that has no appetite for it but might be interested in your brand? And as the brand grows and as the technology gets a little bit more seamless and people start to understand what the original collection actually means, that there's a lot more demand for that because there's only 10,000 of them. So if we all of a sudden reach millions of people and those millions of people know that there is this collectible that started it all, it's the original artwork but that artwork is also it's the first edition Pokemon card, right? That's kind of the parallel that I'd say and then that art is attached to this essentially membership, that is the ultimate access pass within the ecosystem, right? Like the Pharrell pack, there was only 300 of them, but you couldn't get one if you didn't have an original Doodle So that was basically a free airdrop. You had to hit certain metrics, engagement metrics within the community to actually get the pack but that was just one iteration of it. We'll have that for a lot of drops where, there will be, a certain amount of things that are free and the free thing will always come to people that own the original Doodle and then the free entry specifically speaking about camp, free entry to the experience when everyone else has to pay, merchandise credits and then a true white glove concierge service where you're you're going to reach out to Doodles before you go and then you're going to be set up with this kind of VIP experience at that location.
If you believe that Doodles has the opportunity to grow and turn into a bigger brand, you know that free airdrops and claims and free claims on merchandise in one location is not going to be all the utility that there is for the original collection. We're going to build a lot more than that and that is kind of how we see value trickling back down to the original token, we're also going to be licensing people's Doodles to use in media, to use in products. We haven't done it yet because we just haven't figured out the right way to make it scalable. It's kind of a big thing to set that precedent this early, especially if you have the kind of ambition we do to go as big as we want to go but we are thinking about that and we are going to bring that to market soon and then the last thing that I'll bring up is just the Doodle bank, which is honestly, I feel like a really under the radar thing. We have a $5 million or so fund that only people with a Doodle can access to build businesses around the Doodles brand, to build creator platforms around the Doodles brand. I would love to see a Doodle holder try and access the Doodle brand to actually build some of the stuff that you've been able to build, right? How can we help subsidize costs so they can create their own podcast studio so they can advertise their content a little bit more all through the Doodles brand, which is ultimately aligned incentives
You as a creator get bigger. Doodles gets more of a microphone because you're getting bigger as a creator and then the last couple pillars of the Doodle bank is also rewards , so how can we use the funds in the Doodle bank to actually create more rewards for Doodle holders, is it sponsoring a concert tour? Is it trying to get memberships to a specific social club? There's so many different things that we can use to drive value back to the original token with this fund and ultimately empower the creators and the entrepreneurs that exist in our ecosystem. So I'd say we're doing so much to try and drive value back to the original token, but I think people will I think people will start to see that when there's truly like real world utility Pharrell pack was one iteration. We've done an airdrop with the Dooplicator, we're doing this experience with camp and it'll keep going from there.
Have you guys kind of like established your council? How do you guys kind of think about the Doodle Banks as it operates as I guess a "DAO" tied to Doodles itself? What does the structure look like, high level?
Austin: In terms of where we're at with it right now. We've installed the first class of the DoodleBank community council, which consists of a chair to oversee the council, a treasurer who is distributing the funds and tracking the finances, an events lead who is going to be building out community global programing, a grants lead, which is really when Julian speaks about how do we empower individuals to build businesses, whether it be through grants or ways to prop up businesses through their IP and then a rewards lead who is focused on how can we bring in additional benefits to holding a Doodle. They have been live since the top of May and right now are developing the processes for how approvals come in, what the approval process looks like, effectively what are our guidelines and what we're looking to support, our budgets overall per quarter and then have also been fielding questions and feedback from the community. So it's been great. They serve multiple roles in addition to just their remit, given their different titles. They're also really our first line of taking in feedback and doing product reviews.
Austin: They're all under NDA and really have a clear sense of where we're going. So it's been great to be able to build with the community in that way but our intention is that in pretty short order, like within call it the next few weeks, we want to get these processes out to the community for feedback and start taking in the first set of proposals. We also really love the nouns model of like the prop house RFP, so for things that we know we need to do as a company, but we want to be able to empower the community to be able to help build with us we effectively want to have bounties that we can put out there, whether it be to create content or create merchandise or whatever the case may be, have it be more of a two way street than just reactively taking in proposals. We're we're moving really quickly. I'm literally in a Slack channel with with the council right now as they're giving me all of their weekend updates but it's been progressing and hope to have more for the community soon.
I'm curious to see how you guys do it. I think we've noticed that you need a processes onboarding and kind of filtering and then also controlling budgets and you sometimes see proposals that are grossly overestimated so being smart about allocation, making it efficient etc
Austin: It's a great point to illustrate and we are very fortunate with the few individuals we have as Treasurer and the grants lead. John Shank, who is our Treasurer was a CFO for a large corporation for a long time and really focused on having a balanced budget. How do we ultimately bring additional funds into the bank and what are the checkpoints over time? So instead of distributing all those funds up once, how do we ensure that we're getting the necessary reporting and then Eyal who is our grand lead has actually run incubators in the past and ensuring that we have the right checks and balances as we're deploying that capital to ensure what you just said doesn't happen, that we're not put in a situation where we're deploying funds and we're not seeing the direct action that's being taken against them.
Does it mean that there are no more pop ups this year or are there also some plans to keep going with the pop ups or other plans?
Julian: It definitely does not mean no pop ups. That's core to our DNA and it's also such an incredible onboarding opportunity, when we went to Something In The Water festival, Pharrel's festival in Virginia Beach, there were so many spokes to that partnership where we basically brought a 30 by 30 space. We sold the new collaboration that we had on site with ice cream. So all these people now have Doodles products that were there and bought the merchandise and right next to that was kind of a live demo of Doodles2 where we were able to capture people's emails so we can send them marketing after the fact. We got a few thousand emails at that activation, we sold a bunch of merchandise and we basically introduced a lot of people to the brand and on the other side of it like, okay, what does that do for the holder apart from growing the ecosystem, which we do find pretty valuable to ultimately Doodle holders and our entire ecosystem but we were able to secure 50 tickets that we gave to the community for free in a raffle and they were VIP tickets. They were super close to the stage, there were credits involved in them and for the people that went, it was a really awesome experience and then the other piece is that when you talk about creators in our community. JKB, Juicy, Kat, Sammy. I'm not sure how familiar any of you are with them, but they're very prominent members of our community.
They've been around for a very long time. They basically started their own media brand based on their Doodles PFP's and this is the second time that we've actually had them kind of live blog and create content on behalf of Doodles at the actual festival. So you saw them kind of do like A day in the life with Doodles and JKB, taking content of like festival goers, the stages, the experiences and then distributing that stuff, on Twitter and their other social channels. So it was a really cool thing that we could do for creators in our space and what I'll say kind of directly answer your question is, Something In The Water was just the first festival thing that we've done this year. We're going to show up at other music festivals. We're going to continue to do live events and what we built for something in the water was an activation that can travel a lot more easily. So South by Southwest, Art Basel, those things were very hard to pack up and repurpose, we have aspects of that, but this new activation that we've built, we can actually ship it from place to place and we can continue to add on to it depending on the actual activation itself. So festivals will always be and other live events will always be a way to drive utility for holders and also onboard new people into the ecosystem.
Julian: Doodles is about fun, man. We want to color the world with joy. We want everybody to feel the vibes and it's incredible to work on it every day. It's hard keeping things a secret, it's painful sometimes.
Can you tell me anything about the Pharrell album? I understand it's with Columbia, who are part of Sony Music. Is there anything you can kind of say on the project and when that could be landing?
Julian: Sure. So the album's not actually going to roll out as a traditional album where there's like a bunch of songs they're going to roll out. It's going to roll out kind of song by song and more as a platform on a perpetual basis. Columbia is going to distribute the music and I don't want to give too much detail because there's going to be a lot of hype in the reveal but you're going to see things like a music video set in the Doodles universe featuring whatever artist is going to be on it. Pharrell curated or produced tracks. Collectibles that are paired both physical and digital with the actual music itself and wide distribution so the songs are going to be on Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, radio, etcetera. So that's kind of how it's going to come to life and if you looked at Pharrell as a Doodle and Pharrell coming into the Doodles universe as a character, imagine some of your favorite artists coming into the Doodles universe as a character too. It's going to be a pretty eclectic mix of artists and it's going to roll out again, like I said, over time. That really is all I can say at the moment, but we'll update everybody as soon as we possibly can. All I can tell you is it's going to be fire.
You guys recently made an amazing acquisition with GoldenWolf Studios. Can we expect more animations and stuff on the Socials? What's the sort of direction with Golden Wolf and how did that come about?
Julian: That's a great question. So we acquired Golden Wolf back in January. They are an Emmy nominated creative studio. They're one of the most highly regarded animation studios in the world. Lot of brand notoriety from them in the entire animation industry. The goal, if you think of what Doodles is, there's a term in media called transmedia and that essentially means you tell stories on different channels, right? So different channels means you could be telling stories through live events, you could be telling stories through the distribution of toys, you could be telling stories through social media, you could be telling stories at the box office with a big film and the whole point is, you're not trying to fit one story or one thing for each of those channels that have very unique characteristics from a distribution standpoint. So Doodles is the kind of brand that needs to tell stories across all of these channels and meet people where they are, where they're actually spending their time versus trying to put the same thing out across the board. So GoldenWolf, which is very much specializes in social content and brand identity in advertisement. They're an incredible partner to keep kind of the always on content flow pumping out for Doodles, which is just starting to ramp up now and at the same time, with all the incredible creators, plus Scott and the people that we're working with in the traditional entertainment industry, bringing the actual story together, the universe that is Doodles, who the characters are, what adventures they go on, what is the backstory? What's the conflict?
Golden Wolf, Scott and a few others are actually developing that now and that is going to manifest itself through all of our content, through all of our product, all of our storytelling opportunities, while we're also developing long form content. So what does Doodles look like as a streaming television show or a motion picture? How does Doodles go into music videos like Golden Wolf is going to produce the music videos. So from a creative standpoint, we have, in my opinion, the best creative studio in the world, developing Doodles content and brand and I'll just say we just started the integration recently, there's kind of been really nothing yet. We've gotten started. It's been amazing, but there's so much coming from Golden Wolf soon and then I'd say on the flip side, Golden Wolf being in Web3 is not an insignificant thing either. So yes, it's amazing that they're going to help develop the Doodles IP but Golden Wolf has a lot of other ideas that NFT's and blockchain technology could be a really great format for incubating that IP or bringing new stories to life and new projects to market and leveraging the tech in new ways and Ingi who founded that company ten years ago is one of the smartest guys in the entire space, he's a true innovator, leaned into tech really leaning into AI tooling and how that can help Doodles as a business, how that can help the whole animation industry as a business. So we're just kind of seeing a little fruit from that partnership right now, but it's going to continue to grow pretty, pretty significantly from there. We really do have a crazy, talented team like Scott and then also Sammy and Alfie. There's so many brilliant creatives at Golden Wolf, and you'll get to know a lot of them soon.
Have you guys made any made any new key hires or are you guys planning to make some key hires to kind of push this forward?
Julian: We kind of wrapped up the majority of our hiring after our head of business and legal affairs came into the company about a month or so ago. I mean, we're at 60 people right now across Doodles and Golden Wolf, so we're pretty staffed well, there's some more product and engineering resources that we're going to be bringing in so we can be quicker to market with a few things but I'd say we're pretty well staffed at this point.
So to build on top of what you've said, I was wondering if you guys could give us any insights into the Doodles culture, the work culture.
Julian: I love that question. So we just opened an office in Miami a couple months ago. Our team is distributed, so we have some people that are remote. We have some people that are here in Miami. We have an office in New York. We have an office in London and again, there are people that are remote. So for the people that are in Miami, the office is pretty awesome. It's got a pretty, pretty cool view. It's right in a really good area of the city and when you walk in, it's very much neutral tones and colors and things like that and then we make the space pop with product that we have. So there's vinyls all over the office. We bring other IP into the office like we have this gold Mickey Mouse that that Jordan donated, it was a Fantasia Mickey Mouse with him holding a Bitcoin instead of a magic ball, just a lot of different artists and IP that we respect to try and inspire some creativity in the space. We have this really cool synthesizer that Evan got made, where people come in, play it. It's actually like a Doodles synthesizer.
We have a merchandise kind of like retail display. We have all of our statues on display. So you can check out our brand, learn a little bit more about us. We also have this pretty cool ice cream set up like actual ice cream and then the New York office couldn't be a different vibe. It's more of a grunge studio, true artsy vibe and then it's the same kind of thing in London in Shoreditch. The original GoldenWolf office.
It's awesome. I think what we're trying to bring to life is the inspiration of creativity and trying to emulate a lot of the incredible IP that we respect so much and we do remote work sessions, so we try and bring people all together, at least once or twice a quarter so we can all get those creative juices flowing, build relationships with each other because if we're going to truly be a community outside of the company, we got to be one internally first so it's been really cool trying to build the culture here and I think we've been doing a pretty good job.
I'm wondering for future pop ups or activations or installations that you guys are having, will there be places where people can actively onboard into the community, whether that's Doodles2 or the original collection?
Julian: Definitely at what I'll call Non-endemic to Doodles stuff, so festivals and more consumer facing events. The reason why we showed up at South by Southwest and Art Basel last year was because we were this really hot Web3 brand in a sea of some of the biggest companies and brands in the world. Whereas as when you go to the when you go to the NFT events, you're like the headline. Right? I think the opportunity to gain notoriety in those environments is really a big opportunity, but it's also an opportunity to bring your holders close to the action that all the influencers of the world, are part of. So when Doodle throws the massive event at Art Basel and it's like one of the tickets of the weekend and our holders are the VIP entrance into that thing we're going to continue to do stuff like that. We really love that concept and at the same hand, use that opportunity to bring new people into the brand. The goal right now is to onboard, people into kind of like information gathering until the stoodio product is actually out of beta. So we're collecting emails so we can retarget these people and make sure that they understand who we are, what we're doing, etcetera so that's kind of the strategy for us.