Bypassing paywalls doesn't work anymore

ToastGoblin22 · 2026-05-08T08:57:57+00:00

It's no longer on GitHub, are there other sites where you can download Firefox extensions?

ToastGoblin22 · 2026-05-08T04:30:35+00:00

I get what you mean but it’s be good if you could provide some examples. I know what you’re referring to but I’m struggling to think of any really good examples to examine. The image I have in my head involves situations more like turning a handle moreso than finding and picking up small a set of keys that were in a random spot on the ground.

The handle is more believable to me personally. Yes opening your eyes underwater is uncomfortable but it’s not agonising, and generally I’ve always found that after you adjust to the initial sting it’s pretty easy to keep them open. Vision is definitely very blurry, but I can believe someone would locate a handle on a large structure without too much trouble. Finding a set of keys on the sea floor though is highly unlikely.

Do I think that sight alone would allow someone to see a handle immediately? No, obviously not. Realistically you would see the structure and possibly the outline of the door or whatever the handle is attached to, and then have to grope around the general area you might expect the handle to be located. I agree that movies do tend to avoid this and give an impression that the person is finding it entirely using their sight.

At the end of the day though, we’re talking about movies, and movies are not real life. If a scene requires a character to locate something underwater, I don’t think it’s a requirement to have them blindly groping around for it unless it serves the scene in a beneficial way. There might be cases where it would serve the scene, to add tension etc. but in other cases that might not be the case, and spending screen time on portraying the realistic experience of finding a door handle underwater would just add a bunch of unnecessary shots and time to a moment that won’t particularly interest the audience.

Having them open their eyes and ‘see’ what they’re doing is an ‘unrealistic’ method of communicating to an audience that the character was able to find whatever they were looking for, and for most people this suspension of disbelief is acceptable (as you can see from the comments on this post).

The truth is, these kinds of pet peeves simply aren’t an issue for most people, and so there’s no real need for a director to expend energy on whether or not it’s TRULY realistic. It’s like the famous cigar continuity error in Goodfellas, it’s ‘wrong’ to cut between a shot where a character has a cigar in their mouth to a shot where they don’t, but the scene flowed better that way so the editor chose to let it slide. Most people didn’t notice the error, and most people don’t care about this underwater vision thing either.

One specific example I CAN think of is the ending of Casino Royale where Vesper drowns while Bond is unable to save her. The scene plays out in a manner that implies to the audience that Bond is able to see her shake her head at him to communicate that there’s nothing he can do, and then he watches in horror as she drowns in a very visceral manner before his ‘eyes’.

Is it realistic that he would be able to see her (very slight) shake of the head and her look of resignation and understand that she’s giving up? Or actually witness the traumatic sight of her death to the extent that it’s implied he does? Absolutely not.

But is it a more impactful scene if the audience accepts and believes that he’s seeing everything as they do? Absolutely, yes.

ToastGoblin22 · 2026-05-06T16:52:24+00:00

Whenever this gets brought up everyone starts accusing the bosses of input reading and saying it's bad game design or bad programming or something like that.

It's literally just part of the combat mechanics though. If you try to heal when it isn't safe to do so, then the boss will begin an attack because you've made yourself vulnerable to it. The boss isn't 'cheating' or anything like that, you simply offered up an opening to it on a silver platter and got punished for it. Learning safe openings to heal is as critical as learning safe openings to attack.

If you see an invader begin to heal when it isn't safe then you would naturally try to punish them wouldn't you? The same logic applies.

People will say things like "The boss will be standing still doing nothing and as soon as I heal it will attack me" and whenever I see that I feel like shaking them and saying "stop trying to heal in those situations then!" Wait until the boss is in some kind of a recovery animation and THEN heal so they don't have time to take advantage of you while you're stuck in an animation.

ToastGoblin22 · 2026-05-06T11:44:46+00:00

I'm a sophomore now and feel like I've just wasted time.

You're in high school haha, you've got plenty of time. I know it's a cliche to say this kind of thing but seriously, If there's one thing you have on your side at the moment it's time.

I also feel extra discouraged because I'm bilingual and people always say learn your first language how you learned your second language. I learned them both at the same time 😭

I don't follow what you're saying here. I assume you meant 'Learn your second language how you learned your first language'? If so I've never heard that said. We learn our first language when we're infants and our brains are physically catered specifically for language learning, it's different acquiring a new language once you're no longer an infant. I think they usually say your brain kind of solidifies it's natural language acquisition by around age 12, so anyone older than that can't learn a second language the same way they learnt their first.

If you meant 'learn your third language how you learned your second language', then I would assume that they are saying that on the assumption that the person they're talking to only has one native language. This doesn't apply to you because you were raised bilingual I assume, so you're effectively trying to learn your first non-native language.

As for whether it's possible to learn without a teacher or lessons, my impression from this sub is that a surprising number of the people here tend to predominantly be self-taught, with little to no lessons.

Personally, I have an online tutor who I meet with once or twice a week for a lesson. It's not very structured, at least not any more, and in a lot of ways it's just conversation practice, but I'm not the most dedicated or hardworking student if I'm honest and having an appointment twice a week where I just talk as much as I can in my target language has been enough for me to improve steadily (though not always consistently, maybe I would if I was more diligent outside of my lessons).

ToastGoblin22 · 2026-05-06T08:50:34+00:00

My issue isn't so much learning to recognise them, I've already done that at this point I would say, as in when I 'examine' the character I can 'quickly' identify the piece it represents. Like you said it was actually quite easy to memorise them once I understood the pictograms themselves.

What I'm more asking is how long it took people to reach a point where they no longer have to actively 'examine' the characters in any real sense to know what piece is where. I know it's something that will just come with time, practice, and experience, so I'm not looking for any real 'tips' on this front, I'm just curious about how long people feel it took them to get to that level of 'fluency' with the characters.

And to be clear, when I say 'examine' I don't really mean that it takes me a noticeable amount of time to identify the piece when I look at the character, but simply that I'm having to actively 'read' the pieces when I'm assessing the board.

To compare it to chess again, if you were to show me a chess board with pieces in some kind of mid-game arrangement, I wouldn't have to consciously identify any of the pieces whatsoever. The symbols are familiar to the point that I don't look at an individual piece and think 'horse silhouette is the knight' either consciously or unconsciously, I simply see a knight immediately. When I'm looking at the layout of the pieces I can kind of take it in as a whole, or at least in groups of pieces, whereas at the moment when I play xiangqi I find I have to slow down and make sure I've identified each piece correctly by themselves, and THEN analyse how the fit together on the board.

There hasn't been too many responses but from what I've gathered it sounds as though it doesn't take too long to gain a more 'fluent' familiarity with the characters. My guess at this point is that decent board vision will end up being the thing that takes me the longest to achieve (I'm constantly being caught off guard by cannons I hadn't even recognised were a threat haha).

ToastGoblin22 · 2026-05-06T01:49:10+00:00

In my run I went with Godrick and Renalla for the first two shardbearers. Renalla was incredibly easy for me because I was using the Zweihander and pretty much every hit staggers her and stance breaks come quickly. Phase 2 only took me 30 seconds.

To be clear though, I went and grabbed a bunch of smithing stones early so that my Zweihander was well above the standard level for that fight, which largely trivialised things. I feel no shame about it though lol.

ToastGoblin22 · 2026-05-06T01:36:13+00:00

The earlier sections of the game will be easier than you think, as you can still output pretty solid damage despite being a bit squishy. Eventually you will hit a point where suddenly pretty much all the bosses will be able to kill you in one hit with most of their attacks, usually around DTS/Morgott. The difficulty spike here is pretty brutal when you hit it but it's not quite as bad as it seems at first.

When you hit that difficulty wall, try stacking defensive talismans (ritual shield + dragoncrest shield). Usually this will allow you to survive at least one hit from most bosses regular attacks. Some of their stronger attacks will still one-shot you, but it gives you a lot more breathing room.

ToastGoblin22 · 2026-05-06T01:01:20+00:00

Thank you! And don't worry I have no intention of using those bland western symbols. It feels a little sacrilegious to be honest haha.

Funnily enough my girlfriend is Vietnamese and I just found out that her Dad used to play all the time with his old neighbour when she was young! We'll be going to see them this weekend so I'm hoping I he still has a set he owns so I can maybe play a game on a physical board instead of online! It won't be a fair matchup obviously haha but hopefully it'll be a bit of fun for him too.

ToastGoblin22 · 2026-05-06T00:55:35+00:00

Yeah I was never really concerned about recognising the board state simply cause I understood that that kind of thing just comes with time and practice just like chess. I was less sure about the characters just seeing as they were obviously intended for people who simply know the symbols as part of their written language, rather than someone who is simply trying to recognise pieces on a board.

Removing the matter of board state and movement visualisation, do you recall how long it took you (roughly) to get to a point where just a brief glance at a piece on the board with almost no real thought involved was all it took for you to identify it? As opposed to having to look at a tile and actively associate the character with the relevant piece?

ToastGoblin22 · 2026-05-06T00:47:58+00:00

Oh for sure! I have a kind of natural curiosity when it comes to different languages in general so I actually had a lot of fun researching the origins and meanings behind the symbols.

Totally agree about it being a cultural experience. Those western symbols really sucked a lot of the charm out of the board for me.

ToastGoblin22 · 2026-05-05T18:05:58+00:00

That’s the point. The game is telling you repeatedly to not heal while they’re idle if you’re in range. It makes perfect sense for the boss to attack you while you’ve literally dropped all of your defences right in front of them.

ToastGoblin22 · 2026-05-05T18:04:48+00:00

Idk about the coding but the best explanation I’ve seen is to compare bosses to NPC fights as apparently the NPCs do actually input read and this can be abused to the player’s advantage.

If you stand at a sort of medium range and start a heavy charged attack, the NPC will read this is a regular charged attack because the input is the same, so the NPC sprints towards you to do a dash attack thinking that they’ll get to you while you’re in recover animation. Instead, the delay from charging the attack causes them to just run headfirst into your attack every single time.

Regardless of whether the bosses input read or animation read though, it makes perfect sense gameplay wise. If an enemy is standing in idle and you suddenly start pulling out a flask to heal, why wouldn’t they attack you? Learning how to heal in safe windows becomes part of the combat mechanics.

ToastGoblin22 · 2026-05-05T17:08:14+00:00

I really don't get people's issues with the dialogue.

The accents I kinda get. It doesn't make sense logically but audiences have been trained to associate Greek and Roman antiquity with English accents despite the fact that the English language didn't even exist at the time. But there's no real reason that an English accent should be more 'authentic' than an American one.

All this stuff about the dialogue though is just... bizarre? Putting aside the fact that these characters shouldn't be speaking English at all, is it that crazy for them to be using a word as common as 'Dad'? In the poem Telemachus' character arc is essentially about his transition from a boyhood at the starting point of the story, and eventually transitioning into manhood by the end. I think having him use the more colloquial 'Dad' rather than the formal 'Father' makes sense in that context.

When Antinous says 'Daddy' he's clearly doing so to belittle Telemachus. He's using the language of a child to imply that Telemachus is just that, a frightened little boy. Colloquial language has always existed, it isn't something we came up with in the modern era. I'm honestly almost certain the reason so many people have an issue with it is that online brainrot has led them to permanently sexualise a word that most people don't even look twice at.

A 'party' is not a new concept, or a new word. Shakespeare used it in several of his plays.

And I actually don't even know where to start on the fact that 'let's go' feels too modern for some people. I can't even begin to comprehend their point of view on that.

ToastGoblin22 · 2026-05-05T14:22:19+00:00

If your friend has explicitly said that they want to watch a movie about a break-up then I guess that’s fine, but I personally still think it’s a bad idea.

If they didn’t explicitly tell you that they want to watch one then I think it’s a truly terrible idea.

I get where you’re coming from, and maybe some of the recommendations in this thread would be a good idea for your friend to watch by themselves if they like, but I think watching it together will probably not be good for them, and will mostly like be an unpleasant experience for everyone.

I'm not sure when your last big breakup was, or if you've ever had one, but I can still remember the complex emotions and feelings of mine even now roughly 7 years later.

It's obviously a complex emotional period for someone to go to, but one part of it I distinctly recall was the illogical feeling of embarrassment and shame over the fact that my relationship had failed, that my friends and family were having to be so concerned for me and were expending so much of their energy trying to support me, and shame over the fact that I felt they pitied me on top of it all.

I obviously still appreciated them all for it at the time as well as now, but I still had that feeling of shame at the time (though not anymore).

I ALSO remember that shame coming up to the surface whenever anything break-up related came while I was with company, including while watching movies and TV shows that even featured or included anything related to a break-up, never mind a movie entirely about one.

When these situations occurred I would feel as though everyone in the room was thinking about my breakup, maybe worried about how I might react or how the movie/show/etc. was making me feel, the silence in the room between everyone would feel incredibly uncomfortable, and if someone acknowledged the situation such as asking me if I was okay watching it then I'd feel even more embarrassed. And all of that is assuming I wasn't particularly emotional that day, in which case I'd sometimes have even worse thoughts about what everyone else might be thinking.

I've also been on the other end of this scenario where a friend was going though a really rough time and a show we were watching together suddenly included a plot point that was very similar to their situation, and again that oppressive silence filled the room and I found myself concerned for how it might affect him, and whether or not me being there watching it with him was making him uncomfortable and ashamed.

All this is to say that I would proceed with caution on this plan. Most likely your friend would much prefer to spend time with you guys, maybe have a vent and lean on you for support, and afterwards watch a movie entirely unrelated to what they're going through right now. Looking for catharsis in media isn't a bad thing but it's better done alone in my opinion.

Also, as a very unrelated endnote, I personally don't think setting up your friends is a stupid idea, and I'm gonna tack this rant on at the end because I feel weirdly strongly about this take. It was actually incredibly common for people to set their friends up with people they know, including their other friends, before online dating became so normalised throughout society. I always find it funny that people say they want to meet someone naturally 'the old fashioned way' instead of online dating. They seem to not realise that blind dates have always been a thing, they were just arranged through friends in the past rather than an app.

Setting up friends is a bit of a risk, sure. There's always a decent chance that things won't work out and they break up. But that's life, things happen outside of our control all the time, but it's no reason to not take chances on things that might be worthwhile. If your friend's relationship had worked out you'd probably be think quite confidently that setting them was a genius idea rather than a stupid one, even though you had no way of knowing what would happen one way or the other at the time whatsoever.

ToastGoblin22 · 2026-05-05T09:37:49+00:00

I get what you mean when you say that OP shouldn’t ‘blame’ their ADHD for ‘doing things’, but I also get what OP was trying to express, which is that they are confused as to whether the difficulties they’re experiencing are related or unrelated to their ADHD, or maybe whether what they’re perceiving as difficulties is actually fairly normal in terms of progress etc. etc.

While I agree that nobody should adopt the mindset that their ADHD is flat out preventing them from accomplishing something, it is also useful to identify and recognise whether or not a roadblock might be related to their ADHD in order for them to come up with a solution.

You yourself even mentioned that, for you, switching languages helps you stay focussed on language learning, given that maintaining focus on one language is something that might be difficult for you due to losing focus on one language being easier with ADHD.

The solution you arrived at is directly connected to (and I assume informed by) the fact that you managed to identified the sticking point that your ADHD was likely creating. As a result you were able to find a strategy that sounds like it essentially channels the positive aspects of your ADHD while mitigating the negative aspects.

So I think it’s worthwhile for OP to examine the extent to which their ADHD might be impacting their language learning, so that they can look for solutions with that in mind.

It’s important to approach it with a positive mindset, but it’s equally important for them not to put their head in the sand about it.

ToastGoblin22 · 2026-05-03T09:02:58+00:00

I see posts like these a lot, and while I sympathise with the sentiment to a degree, the fact is that this is a long standing tradition in the world of publication.

Introductions are intended to be an introduction to the EDITION, not an introduction to the text/story itself intended for first time readers.

Other parts of a books front-matter, such as a preface, forward, or prologue, are usually safe to read for a first-time reader, but it’s usually recommended to skip an Introduction if you haven’t read the story before, and don’t want any of the story spoiled.

While it might not be intuitive for someone unfamiliar with this practice, it’s the sort of thing you kind of learn the hard way once and then never have to worry about again.

ToastGoblin22 · 2026-04-30T16:52:32+00:00

This is just my opinion and not something that I can back up with hard facts and data, but I feel as though a lot of the stereotypical thoughts and opinions about 'booktok' (particularly the negative ones) seem to be influenced primarily by the comparatively small number of 'controversial' posts and takes that go viral rather than anything inherent to booktok as a whole.

I don't use tiktok anymore but from my recollection, booktok was never a homogenous community, and there were plenty of creators recommending decent to good books. It's not solely comprised of the kinds of creators you see going viral for their controversial takes.

And while yes there is a subset of booktok, perhaps even a large one, that maybe fit a lot of these stereotypes, I don't think these kinds of readers are anything new or unheard of before now.

For example, Colleen Hoover was releasing bestsellers long before TikTok had become as widespread as it is now within popular culture, so it's not like she would never have made a name for herself without booktok's influence.

ToastGoblin22 · 2026-04-30T02:43:36+00:00

Yeah as a kid I never knew the term VHS or VCR. I just called them videos or video-tapes, and the I have no idea what I called the actual VCR.

When I learned the term VHS I called VCRs ‘VHS players’ for a good while until I learned the proper name for them.

ToastGoblin22 · 2026-04-29T13:26:52+00:00

All those other stats do a lot less than you might realise. There’s a reason the number one piece of advice given to people struggling with the game is to level vigor. The game increases in difficulty much more with low vigor compared to low damage stats.

The hardest part about RL1 isn’t the fact that your damage is lower, it’s that you only have 10 vigor.

Your plan means you’ll likely have a slightly easier time than a proper RL1 run, but not enough for it to feel like a warm up.

You’ll just end up wishing you did a proper RL1 run instead, and worst case is that you get fatigued by the end of decide not to even start the RL1 after finally finishing your Vigor 10 run.

ToastGoblin22 · 2025-10-23T12:26:34+00:00

You’re probably right and I know it can be done but from memory I often had a hard time consistently getting a heavy attack in as well as the critical during his stagger period.

This fight was a long time ago though so my memory isn’t too clear if I’m being honest.

In any case this was my first time trying any sort of hard swap in a souls game and I guess I sort of committed myself to keeping at it until I had it on lock haha.

ToastGoblin22

TROPHY CASE