#because i planned to write for HoC

[liamthemailman]

he's napping so shhhhh

[liesmyth]

Do you think the Nine Houses follow a Marxist, Keynsian, or Austrians economic model

this ask made me SO happy you have no idea! some vague thoughts

The Houses obviously have to do careful resource allocation. I doubt they have a free market economy, at least not on a system-wide scale. I could see some of the Houses — like the Third or Fifth Houses, which are by all accounts wealthy and with a very large population — develop some kind of internal capitalist economy within the House itself. Namely, private actors who control and own properties, wealth accumulation, competitive markets etc. But ultimately I think even those are subject to strong (local) governmental oversight because, again, they live on space installations in a situation of constant resource constraint. I bet there are quotas for everything.

However! No way ALL the Houses have a market economy. I'm thinking especially those Houses that are very small and/or have a "mission" which means that societal development is carefully planned, and probably the economy is also centrally planned. (Ninth, Eight, Sixth, maybe Second and/or Fourth).

On an overreaching scale (within the Home System) I don't think "the Empire" (as in, John) is overly concerned with the yearly economic development of the Houses, partly because he's been historically absent for decades or even centuries at a time. Verging sharply into headcanon territory, I think the closest thing the Houses have to a real centralised government is military leadership (High Command or the Fleet Admiral, who's the head of the Second House) and when it comes to issues that concern multiple Houses but are more "civilian" in nature, is kind of a free-for-all. I'm thinking about how Harrow thought that writing to ask for help would result in the Fifth or maybe the Third cannibalising the Ninth House — it looks like there's an informal council of House leaders, but no properly organised central government.

Trade: travel and commerce between the Houses is regulated. You can't just take a spaceship and move from the Eight to the Second, for example — movement of people as well as goods depends on a ship schedule that runs on "routes" and I'd bet there's an immigration/emigration quota that's maybe decided between specific House leaders, or maybe a third party. My best bet is that one of the Houses (possibly the Third or Fifth) OR an ad-hoc organisation (which includes multiple higher-ups from said well-off Houses) are the ones who regulate shipping and travel, and either have an ownership stake in the shipping system or administrate it in the name of the Emperor.

The shepherded planets: putting the "imperialism" in "Empire". The Houses definitely exploit their colony planet for resources, as per AYU (talking about the "contracts" that the Empire signs with the occupied planets). However, it's also worth noting that 1) for at least 5000 years, the House system was self-sustaining and hadn't made contact with any other population; and 2) stele travel is kind of a hassle, and only seems to be limited to Cohort ships that we know of.

What I'm getting at is that I think the economy of the Houses is not dependent on their war of conquest — imo it's more of a mission of conquest for conquest's sake, see Corona thinking that the economy of the Houses doesn't quite add up, and Augustine talking like the ongoing expansion of the Houses is a whim of John's and little else. Basically, it seems to be a way to oppress the occupied planet for occupation's sake, and I wouldn't be surprised if the resources the Houses extract from the conquered planets go straight into financing yet more war and occupation and very little (if any) of any wealth they may accumulate makes it back to the Houses.

It COULD be that there's a necromantic equivalent of the East India Company, and my bet would be on the Second administrating it — Harrow doesn't seem to rate them at all, which tracks because Harrow's primary concern is Houses that could be a threat to the Ninth, and the Second being focused on exploitation that's external to the Home System could be an explanation for that. I've also seen speculation that making money from colonialism is the Fifth House's purview (*) but EYE think it makes more sense if the House that are more strongly associated with running the war effort are also the ones making money from it. Or it could be a joint operation.

(*) never forget the iconic tag #we regret to inform you that spreadsheets dad is maybe running the necromantic East India Company @katakaluptastrophy here)

Anyway. Sorry I haven't answered your actual question! GUN TO MY HEAD, if I had to pick ONE economic model to map the Houses onto, I wanna say soviet type economy (think: centralised planning, no inflation, little to no unemployment, tendency towards black market, little to no innovation). I have thoughts about what the consumer needs market looks like in the Houses but nobody needs to hear that. Also, it's def very limited

If anyone has thoughts PLEASE feel free to jump in, I'm always thinking about the logistical side of space imperialism in the necro empire!

[burningcheese-merchant]

Yo If It turns out PV ends up meeting pre-beast SM, then that it'll be very good inspo for Burningcheese fics. Somehow GC ends up in the past or the HoC comes to the future....

My brother... My guy... Trust me...

I am

four parallel universes

ahead of you

😎😎😎😎😎

Story's a work in progress. I'm doing it together with a friend of mine; they want to do the art while I do the writing. I've been trying to flesh out the plot and characters and the like during my free time at home. Friend is busy with school atm, so no art just yet! We both hope to put the story out soon-ish, around March or so. We've got BIG plans, so stay tuned!

I will say this, though: 1) The story has an official name/title + a synposis, 2) The story has an ending (you're not supposed to write the ending first, but it came to me randomly and I got so attached to it that I chose to forsake traditional writing norms to keep it), 3) I've got a handful of established characters I'm juggling, BS and GC will have quite the merry gang of side characters surrounding them lol, and 4) it will be a multi-chapter story posted to AO3. I'll post on here to let people know when it's been updated + I hope to make more general lore posts because I'm having too much fun with the worldbuilding lol

I'm glad you're sharing my vision though haha. Stay tuned to see what my friend and I do with it! Merchant has something special in the oven, don't leave the table just yet

[howtofightwrite]

I'm planning on writing a Pokemon fanfic where the trainer is hard of hearing. They can speak and give commands but it is also normal for trainers to hear the opposing trainers commands and respond to that not just what they see. Which would put them at a big disadvantage, wouldn't it if they could only process visual information? I know you said stuff before about combat being too fast and people don't 'call out attacks' but that doesn't fit here. But also on the other hand, Pokemon don't alwa

But also on the other hand, Pokemon don't always obey their their trainers (usually a trust issue) but perhaps this actually could be a good thing and help turn that disadvantage around since if they trust each other enough for the Pokemon to respond appropriately by themselves if they feel the trainer is making a bad call or not quick enough to respond to an attack called out by the opposing trainer. What do you think? Any other ideas?

Something to remember: Pokemon is a game. I don't mean in the meta-sense that the anime and ancillary materials are based off of the video game and card game, the way you could, for example, describe the Fallout TV series as based on a game. I mean, literally, that the structure of Pokemon itself is a competitive game.

When you start stripping it apart, and really dig into the structure, combat in pokemon is a game where the trainers are the players, and their pokemon are the pieces they're using on the board. This is an important concept to grasp when you're dissecting the material, because it informs why it functions.

There is a concept in games called an action stack. When you're playing a strategically intensive game, you'll often come across some version of this concept. Basically, you announce your action to your opponent, they then get an opportunity to take a legal response (if one exists), and then the action resolves. In situations like this, calling out your actions is a necessary step in keeping your opponent apprised of changes in the game state. It's also (often) necessary as a step to give them the opportunity to respond (whether that's part of the same action stack, or as a following action.)

Now, much like in Pokemon, in casual games, these kinds of declarations, and even the structure of the action stack itself, can become very ad hoc. You wouldn't do this in a tournament environment, but in casual circumstances you'll see players doing things like say, “I'm playing this,” or just drop the card on the table as part of their appropriate action window. (Though, again, this behavior is extremely rude in a tournament environment.)

As you mentioned, the instructions given by the trainer is, technically, for the Pokemon's benefit, rather than the opponent. Also, pieces on the board not following the player's commands is a concept that does exist in some tabletop games. For example: if you botch a Leadership test in Warhammer, you're not going to get the results you were hoping for.

So in this specific case, being privy to your opponent's actions ahead of time is really more an example of intelligence gathering (even though it's at a very limited level.) And, this is, absolutely, a consideration in competitive games. If you can accurately predict your opponent's next action it can let you take preemptive steps to mitigate their move, or even outright prevent them from doing what they want.

Not being able to collect intelligence conventionally is a little bit of a problem, but it's not necessarily a deal breaker. A lot of the time, intelligence gathering in games (for an experienced player) is testing limited information against extensive system knowledge to make educated guesses about what your opponent will do. If you have awareness of the board, you don't always need to actually have specific knowledge about what your opponent is planning. Meaning, if they're extremely knowledgeable about what's out there, they might not need to hear their opponents' every command. With enough familiarity, each pokemon is recognizable on sight, and they have limited move options determined by their appearance (with the occasional outlier or exception.)

Also, lipreading is a thing. It's a lot harder when you're just sampling general use of the language, but when you're looking at a limited number of individual words (and you know which words could be issued because of the aforementioned system knowledge) it can become quite possible for someone to pick out what a trainer is telling their pokemon, even if they wouldn't be able to hear the words normally (or lipread a stray conversation between strangers.)

Incidentally, if you're thinking that it's unreasonable for someone to have the stat sheets for over 1k pokemon committed to memory, that's in line with what you need to have committed to memory for a number of competitive games, if you're operating at a high level. Chances are, if you're a highly ranked M:TG player, you'll probably have at least 2-3k cards committed to memory even if you can't use them in Modern anymore.

-Starke

[dcdreamblog]

Thought I'd throw you a question about your workplace for once. Or something tangentially related to it, at least. I've seen claims that the Hall of Justice in Washington DC is built on the site of the original headquarters of both the JSA and the All-Star Squadron. Is there any evidence to suggest either team ever operated primarily out of Washington?

I've heard this before and its a slight truth that has been twisted and simplified and then reinflated until it barely actually resembles itself. And it stinks because obviously the Hall of Justice is by itself a really awe inspiring (and regular inspiring) building.

(A photo, by me, of the Hall from across the reflecting pool after my last visit to DC in August of last year)

Now, obviously the idea that it stands on the footprint of the All Star Squadron's headquarters is kind of ridiculous. The All Star Squadron famously operated out the Trylon and Perisphere in Queens, New York. I ought to know considering it is currently where I work and is very much still standing in as close to its original glory as we can get. The original JSA Brownstone was in what was, at the time, Civic City, PA which has now been incorporated as a neighborhood of Philadelphia between the city center and Fawcett City. They moved out of that original building when relations with the post war government became tense and the JSA no longer felt it could trust the building to not be bugged or otherwise compromised. Subsequent opening of records has shown that they were very right to be paranoid as the building WAS bugged. The original Brownstone was demolished around the time Civic City was incorporated into Philly proper, before the appearance of Superman reignited interest in superheroes and their history. Their second headquarters, constructed after the team's resurgence in the modern day was in Gotham City but was demolished during the OMAC crisis and surrounding events. Their current base of operations is in what was formerly known as the Belmont Building in Manhattan's Battery park. Left to Sandy Hawkins after the death of his aunt Dian Belmont and hist mentor Wesley Dodds it has been renovated into a building fit for housing an active superhero team and has a small museum collection tended to by the ever lovely Ma Hunkel (I have to call her Ma now in these write ups because she reads them and she told me I gotta) So where is this rumor coming from? Is it just a hoax? Marketing spin? Well no, see. The JSA didn't HAVE a base right when it was formed. Obviously. No organization like it had ever been created much less ad hoc on the personal advice of the then sitting president. So for the first few months of the team's tenure their "headquarters" was a rented out floor of a high rise hotel that was lightly altered to the team's needs. THAT hotel was passed around from real estate firm to real estate firm slowly but steadily falling out of modern fashion before the business itself declared bankruptcy and was sold at auction a few years after the League formed. It was purchased by Wayne Enterprises who originally wanted to renovate the hotel but when those plan hit some unspecified snag the land was offered to the League in light of its history as the first meeting place of the first superhero team in history. The land was donated by Wayne Enterprises to the League (one imagines for a FAT tax cut), the hotel was demolished and the Hall of Justice built in its place. So, yes the Hall of Justice IS built on the land of the first base of operations of the Justice Society. Just not the first building built FOR the JSA specifically and it was no longer their base by the time the All Star Squadron was even founded.

[hendrik-ten-napel]

Most of the time, I like to have a fairly worked-out game when I start testing. No notes-on-a-napkin for me. But yesterday, I went into a playtest without the full material for the first time. The sessions were going well and I wanted to see how it would feel to do some design at the table.

The last category of clues for my mystery game is called Recapitulation. They serve to answer the question: "What do you plan to do about [the antagonist]?" While I had some idea of what those clues could be, the image hadn't really cleared up. So I thought: maybe I can just see what we need.

When the first moment to drop such a new clue came around, I still couldn't figure it out. In general, that could've become a moment of panic for me, but this time, probably because of the specific group I'm testing with, I didn't. Instead, I explained the issue—which was still scary!

After I explained what clues I was looking for, the players all pitched in. We used the scene that was just interrupted as an example and tried to think of good leads. We also thought about changing the question to something more narrow, like: "How will you avenge [the victim]?"

Then it hit me. A good, general clue that I could contextualize for the situation at hand, and that would work well with the question we started out with. I've been thinking about that moment, about how the conversation helped create it. Why didn't the player's suggestions irk me, for example?

The game is a Carved from Brindlewood. It's a hack of The Between, mostly. The things me and the players discussed yesterday, the clues and questions, weren't mechanics per se. More like the content of those mechanics, I guess. That made a difference, I think.

It was like discussing possible fiction. That's what I've concluded up until now, at least. While I'm not fond of discussing mechanics, at least not ad hoc, nor do I like unrequested notes on my writing, this was closer to play, closer to workshopping a scene, for example.

So I learned something about the details and elements of a game that I am comfortable determining at the table, and that feels like a nice, little achievement. I let go of some control, I trusted the people I know to care, and it worked: that first clue led to nine more today. I've finished writing the Recapitulation.

[weirdstrangeandawful]

I was super lucky to grow up in Canada's capital and go to school a couple blocks from Parliament because, let me tell you, sitting in on the House of Commons is absolutely worth it as hell. And you can just do it. My friend and I would simply skip class and go visit and other times we'd hang out in the gallery after class and listen in.

If you're looking for drama, question period is where you're going to find it because that's where the most contentious issues are brought to the government so that's when most members of the public show up.

But I highly recommend sitting in on random other bits. Some things you get to hear and see:

Petitions. Parliamentary petitions have to be brought in front of the House and then responded to in writing within 45 days. Most petitions do not lead to meaningful change so most people don't see what gets brought up let alone the knee-jerk reaction members have to it (as much as they try to hide it) and they get disheartened. Most petitions actually do get a reaction from members!

Debates over bills and motions that pass easily. It's so easy to read the news or watch question period and think that members are incredibly polarised and hate each other to bits but many things just make it right through with incredible politeness.

The most out of tune rendition of Happy Birthday I have ever heard in my life. Poor Geoff Regan (amazing Speaker) had Happy Birthday sung to him by the entire House. Yes, they put forward a motion and he upheld it. No, they cannot sing. No, I don't think they even all sang it in the same language. Yes, he looked distressed.

The bit after question period. This is really interesting. The last time I went happened to be during the NAFTA talks in Trump's first term when Chrystia Freeland was Minister of Foreign Affairs. There is a mass exodus of MPs after question period officially ends but I remember being especially impressed by the sudden civility and complexity once the crowds left. Suddenly, with Freeland sitting mostly on her own against a few passionate opposition members, it was a lot easier to focus on the questions being put and the answers. I learned a lot.

Your MP. I lived in Ottawa at the time so my MP was there pretty consistently (I am no longer her constituent but I still appreciate her immensely) so I got to see what role she played in the House. I got to see who she was sitting next to, what she too notes on, who she whispered to, etc. So much goes on behind the scenes and you can get glimpses just by sitting in. If you're outside Ottawa and want to see them in person, just ask them when they'll be physically in the House so you can plan your trip.

Talk of dolphins. Maybe. Okay but seriously, you get to see talk of bills that have like nothing to do with you but are super interesting. I got to hear discussion on the protection of dolphins! I know like nothing about dolphins but neither did these MPs! It is so nice to hear things that are extremely contentious but not directly attacking you. You get to realise that hey, these people don't actually hate every population they don't have a stake in.

Some notes on accessibility:

I actually haven't gone back to Parliament since I moved out west so I haven't actually been there since the renovations started and the HoC got moved to West Block

From my experience, you basically have to go through airport security to get in since the 2014 shooting and, after the recent incident, I expect it's even tighter so keep that in mind

If you need to see a certain member or side of the House, you will need to sit in the opposite gallery. It is really difficult to look down at the side you are sitting over.

I haven't been since I've used mobility aids that have required more space but my recollection is that the seating in the gallery was similar to a movie theatre (I can't remember if there was any specific accessible area)

For hearing, it was impossible to hear for even hearing people and they know this so they have devices connected to your seat like a bar of plastic similar to a bad rendition of a landline telephone earpiece (think large plastic bar with speaker). You can switch between direct feed, French, and English and possibly a few other modes that I can't recall though I don't think they were other languages. My Deaf friend with CIs and I (HoH, pre-HAs) struggled but got by. I don't know if they've improved this since they moved. I hope so.

Email your MP if you want to go. This is your right and this is their/their assistants' job. If you are unable to attend and they will not assist, that is a constitutional and probably procedural violation.

Also CPAC exists but, I'll be honest I haven't used it so I cannot comment on what that misses (I may look once the election happens and Parliament is back in session and update but no promises)

[schraubd]

Losing Your Chevrons

Somewhere, an environmentalist wished upon a star: "I hate big oil. It's a blight on the universe. If only Chevron would disappear forever!" and a monkey's paw curled once. I was steeling myself to write about Loper Bright and my official welcome on behalf of the Con Law professoriate to the Admin Law professors joining the "burn all your lecture notes and start from scratch club", and then Trump v. United States came down. Even though the latter is a more immediate big deal and is closer to my expertise wheelhouse (I've fielded far more inquiries from former students asking "what is going on!" with respect to the Trump decision than any ruling in my entire career, Dobbs included), I really don't have all that much to say at this moment. That may change -- in fact, it almost certainly will, as I try to work this blog post into an essay -- but for now I'm going to lay off and just write what I planned to write about the demise of Chevron. My short version take is this: in many, many cases, we'll see little difference between before and after. This prediction, however, should not be confused with sanguinity. Rather, it is a recognition that judges are human, with the normal assortment of human interests, talents, and vices.  In most deep-weeds administrative law cases, where judges neither know nor care about the difference between, say, nitrogen oxide and nitrous oxide, they aren't going to actually do a deep dive review of the law from scratch. These issues are hard enough for a team of subject-matter experts with Ph.Ds in the hard sciences grinding away for months. For a judge with a J.D. from Hofstra who last took a statistics class in 11th grade? Forget about it. In practice, no matter what the doctrine purports to demand or what they claim to be doing on the opinion pages, judges will end up deferring to reasonable agency interpretations of the law unless they're howlingly off-base -- which, of course, is why we ended up with Chevron in the first place. Any objective observer of courts sees this sort of thing from judges all the time -- there are all sorts of cases where nominal "de novo" review is the furthest thing from, because judges simply find the topic boring, repetitive, or impenetrable (you can usually spot these cases by their use of the phrase "after careful review ...."). This will be what happens for many if not most cases on obscure rules in unremarkable issue areas. What will change is in those administrative rules on hot button issues of high-salience. Here, Loper Bright doesn't make judges any smarter, but does give them a green light to start substituting their judgment for expert agencies who at least have some measure of accountability to the political process. In other words, Loper Bright won't universally result in the substitution of inexpert judicial policymaking for the judgments of administrative agencies; rather, it will result in that substitution on an ad hoc and arbitrary basis whenever the judge who happens to be draw the case has an idiosyncratic or ideological hobbyhorse to ride. The administrative state will be able to carry on, with a cutaway for partisan judges to meddle more openly whenever partisan proclivities instigate an urge. So there's your consolation about the end of Chevron. Feeling better? I thought so. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/ow8Pq4G

[blorb-el]

Don’t know if you made a post on this but what’s your opinion on DCAU Clark and how unapproachable(?) they made him in the later JL/JLU series without ever resolving it? Like I know the Cadmus arc hinges on him never considering himself a possible threat but it seems there was room for no much introspection outside a couple moments (that were later backtracked).

I've had like 6 half finished posts about this buried deep in the drafts for a year because I have capital B Brain Rot about this, but every time I tried to write it out I got six sentences in and wanted to rewatch the entire DCAU in order to get my facts straight. This time I'm resisting the urge, so forgive me if I forget specific episodes

Also, unfortunately for you, it’s nanowrimo, which means my brain is in Type All The Words Mode, and not Communicate Effectively and Succinctly Mode, and also I need a break from WSBF chapter 8, so. You’re getting a 3.5k essay sort of answering this question but not really. you will see

Thank you to my fellow lawyer for the defense of Rectangle Clark @januariat for helping to put this together

I do rewatch STAS and JL a fair amount, but much less JLU, so I actually don’t have much to say about the specific execution there. I’m planning on rewatching it soon. But for now…

To me it boils down to two answers. The Doylist answer, and what I think the writers really did have in mind, is that they came up with the Cadmus plot, knew it was an absolute banger of a storyline, and decided that it was worth compromising Superman's personality in order to write a good story. which is not something I can fault them for - as a fanfic writer, I make the same calculated tradeoffs every time I set out to write a fic. Characters are tools for narrative, even if these particular characters come with an additional weight of the tradition of collaborative storytelling that their most effective stories honor.

However, I do think it’s possible to, post-hoc, cobble together a Watsonian, narratively satisfying (if fucked up and sad) character arc for DCAU Clark if you also take STAS and JL into account. I think the key to understanding his character arc is his relationship with control. Throughout STAS, JL, and JLU, and then one more time in Batman Beyond for good measure, over and over again, he's manipulated and his powers and body are used as resources for other people. Obviously that’s not much of an excuse for becoming more authoritarian/overbearing/etc, Fascism Is Bad and I personally think a more IC superman would retreat more than double down (as in Kingdom Come), but looking at the totality of things that have happened to him before Cadmus, it's a little more understandable why he'd get close to snapping under the strain. Here's my personal reading of his arc, and the events that might have led to Clark behaving so irrationally in JLU.

cut for sheer length, but also mentions of manipulation, sexual assault, victim blaming, that sort of thing

One of the recurring themes in the DCAU is villains dehumanizing, depowering, and/or manipulating Clark. In STAS, Parasite, Lex via Bizarro, Talia and Ra’s al Ghul use him as a source for their own power. The Preserver and Maxima treat him like some exotic prize, disregarding his wishes. Jax-Ur and Mala use him and then betray him. But the most impactful, by far, is Darkseid.

In Apokolips Now, Darkseid defeats Clark, puts his bleeding body into public stocks, and drags him through the middle of Metropolis. Clark’s only rescued by the last minute intervention of the New Gods, and as a parting shot Darkseid murders Clark’s friend in front of everyone. Even though Clark prevents Earth from turning into Apokolips, it’s a huge emotional loss, and they don’t shy away from showing his rage and helplessness. But it’s when Darkseid returns in Legacy, the finale of STAS, that Clark’s life truly takes a turn for the worse.

Forgive me if this is all plot recap to you, anon, but I feel like a lot of people don’t know that STAS ends with Clark being mind controlled, heavily implied to be sexually assaulted, and forced to try to take over the Earth, killing god knows how many people in the process. When the military finally brings him down with a Kryptonite warhead and imprisons him, they nearly kill Supergirl in the process. Then Lex almost gives him a lethal injection, with a US general looking on, implying that the government approves of killing him. Lois breaks him out, he tries to get help for Kara from Dr. Hamilton, and then goes to Apokolips. Most fights in STAS have him shrug off blows. He ends this one bleeding from his mouth, looking almost dead. When he finally casts down Darkseid, tells the Hunger Dogs (the slaves on Apokolips) that they’re free… they turn away from Superman. They cluster around Darkseid to protect and heal him.

Those universal truths of a lot of Superman stories, that goodness and liberty and the American Way* always win? They don't in STAS. A representative of the US government (as far as he knows) has tried to kill him. He lost his temper and spoke in a harsh tone of voice once, because Kara was dying and he was hurt and desperate, and now his friend Dr. Hamilton, the man he trusted to repair the Kryptonian ship, study his body and his powers, one of the people who knew him best in STAS, is afraid of him - and, as we find out later, takes immediate, drastic, and violating action against Kara and against him. The series ends with the small town man standing on the roof of the Planet, hearing people hate and fear him, wondering how people will ever trust him again.

*I hate this phrase personally when used as a Superman Motto, but it's used here as a contrast to the fascistic imagery of Apokolips Now and Legacy (as well as Brave New World, which, hoo boy, we aren’t even getting into that one).

Six months (iirc) after the STAS finale, in Secret Origins, the US government has agreed to let a visibly older and wearier Superman help disarm the nuclear stockpile - only for this to backfire on him because it was a Plot by the White Martians. Clark’s let down the country again. He’s helped aliens invade again, and to make matters worse, he sped away in the middle of an attack to break into an official government facility to free J'onn. Clark founds the Justice League beginning from a place of personal failure, as a check on himself. Clark has power and wants to help people with it, but he’s been turned against people he cares about, and has twice now failed to protect the world. It’s worth noting that Legacy put him into the world stage; before, in STAS, I can’t think of any true worldwide threats besides maybe Jax-Ur and Mala.

Most of the rest of season 1 of JL isn’t particularly Clark-focused, although he does appear in a lot of episodes, but the themes of some of these episodes are potentially relevant to understanding his character later, so: brief bullet point summaries.

During In Blackest Night, Clark sees his respected colleague turn himself into an authority that turns out to be incompetent investigators looking for a scapegoat. Interesting. Surrendering to governmental authority/oversight didn’t turn out too well here. 

During The Enemy Below, on Clark’s advice, Aquaman tries to solve his problems peacefully with diplomacy and is immediately shot in a life threatening assassination attempt.  Peaceful diplomacy doesn't work so well for him.

During Injustice for All, Lex is dying of cancer. Clark tries to reach out and is rebuffed, with Lex going on to try to found a team to kill him and the rest of the League.

During Paradise Lost, Clark sees his respected colleague turn herself into the authorities and immediately get banished from her home for the crime of trying to save it with all the resources she had at her disposal. Interesting. Surrendering to governmental authority/oversight didn’t turn out too well here, again. 

During War World, Clark’s again captured for exploitation. This is essentially a retread of The Main Man from STAS, doubling down on how some people see him as a thing to be exploited.

During Fury, Clark’s completely ineffective at preventing an attempted genocide of half the world’s population.

Season 2 opens with Twilight, one of the most important episodes for understanding Clark’s mindset during the Cadmus arc. Imagine, if you will, the above happening to you. Darkseid shows up at your workplace. And the man you’ve worked with the longest, your friend, your ally, tells you to cry him a river, build him a bridge, and get over it. Tells you to get over being brainwashed, manipulated, and humiliated. Tells you to get over having your broken and bleeding body paraded around the streets of Metropolis, tells you to get over having your friend killed in front of you for trying to defend you, tells you to get over almost getting your cousin killed. Sure, Brainiac is a planetary-scale threat; Darkseid and Apokolips are in real trouble. Clark was wrong to write off Apokolips and its people, and the League should absolutely have intervened in the situation. But the way Bruce went about it was… one of the harshest things DCAU Bruce has ever done, and one of the only times the narrative seems to actually agree that he was an asshole about it. And even then, you really need the context of STAS to understand why Clark is so furious and hurt in this scene.

Clark relents and goes along with Bruce’s plan to trust Darkseid, only to end up betrayed again, the whole ruse just another ploy for Brainiac to gain control of Clark, torture him, and use Clark’s body to upgrade himself. Clark had spared Darkseid back on Apokolips at the end of Legacy, on Kara’s advice. But now Darkseid’s come after him, again. Used him again to put not only Earth but who knows how many other worlds at risk, now that Brainiac’s even more powerful. It’s the downfall of Krypton, over and over again. And when Clark goes to end it, I think he doesn’t care that the base is about to go, as long as Darkseid goes down with it. That isn’t a price Bruce is willing to pay, so he teleports Clark out. And he’s wrong, again. “No one could have survived that.” Well… no, Bruce. Darkseid does, and Clark knows it.

During Tabula Rasa, Lex manipulates Amazo the exact way he tried to use Bizarro. Clark once again fails to guard against a terrible, potentially world-ending threat, and in fact makes the situation worse by his very presence.

Then we come to Only a Dream, another key episode in understanding this version of Superman. Clark’s deepest fear is that his powers will keep on growing beyond his ability to control them, eventually destroying everything around him. In his nightmare He kills Lois and Jimmy, destroys the Daily Planet, and grows into a brutish, hulking, clumsy figure, first crying out for someone to help him, and then losing hope. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone. He goes back to the Kent farm and curls up in the spaceship in the fetal position, convinced that he’s only going to hurt anyone who tries to help. Is it any wonder, since that’s literally what’s happened to him in Legacy? Is it any wonder that he’d want to give up, to retreat? If we’re to take the World of Cardboard speech literally, he’s already having to focus on this restraint every day, in every interaction. This is my personal explanation/hc as to why in every single fight he lets himself get knocked around a bit first; he’s calibrating how hard he can hit back without doing irrevocable damage. Anyway. Deeply fucked up 2 minutes of horror. Wish they’d explored this a little bit more in later seasons.

Then, directly after this, it’s A Better World. After we’ve just seen that his worst nightmare is hurting people by being unable to control his powers, we come face to face with a world where he’s hurt people by the precise and controlled application of his powers. Justice Lord Clark uses the same Superman Robots we saw Kara use in Legacy. He’s become quite adept at his lobotomization techniques. Later on in JLU, we see ‘our’ universe’s Clark attempt to lobotomize Doomsday the exact same way Justice Lord Superman did. Again, Clark fails to protect the world from himself, and to make matters worse, the guy to save the day is Lex Luthor. I’d be a little miffed if the maniac who wants to kill me so so bad turned out to be instrumental in saving the world and now I owe him some unspecified favor in the future. Clark’s met with failure and distrust trying to fix things his way, now he tries to do things in an uncharacteristically sneaky way and… gets met with more dislike and distrust.

Eclipsed continues this trend of hurting his friends; he’s temporarily mind controlled and hurts Wally.

In The Terror Beyond, he fucks up and puts the world in danger again, all because from his point of view, he tried to prevent Solomon Grundy being manipulated and used (like he himself has been used over and over again).

In Secret Society, his frustration comes to a peak, amplified by Grodd’s telepathic manipulation. He’s been trying to do his best, but he snaps that he’s had better luck fighting armies alone (dubious plural there, but he did pretty much evaporate an army in Legacy, so at least once, ok) and that he’s had to hold back his abilities in order to be on the League. Again if we take the World of Cardboard speech at face value, this is true, and we see it in the episode when he accidentally hurts Shayera with heat vision despite shouting a warning beforehand. It’s also telling how other members of the League have the ability to constantly voice doubts about its usefulness and cohesiveness as an organization (hi Bruce) but when he expresses the same doubts everyone gasps. When he expresses his doubt and frustration, when he steps away, the organization that’s collectively saved the world several times falls apart; they’re reliant on him, and he has to be aware of the entire existence of the League as an extra burden of responsibility.

Since both this episode and the Cadmus arc as a whole are meant to show his flaws as a leader, it’s worth examining the foundations of that leadership as established in the DCAU. Clark’s the leader of the League, but narratively, Bruce is its brains and its ethics and Wally is its heart. As a result, Clark is filling the role of leader of the League without the narrative scaffolding that gives him the respect comics incarnations of the character are generally accorded. (I’m admittedly only drawing here from the JLA runs I’ve personally read, Morrison/Porter 90’s JLA and the early Fox/Sekowsky 60’s JLA). Superman might not technically be the First Superhero according to these continuities, but he is respected as though he is (and as we comic book nerds know him to be). The League in these comics treat him as something of an ethical standard bearer, a primus inter pares, as well as being the muscle. In the DCAU, Batman, having founded the DCAU with BTAS, is the First Superhero, and the entire plotline of the Justice Lords centers Wally as the emotional anchor of the team. Clark doesn’t have that pre-established stature. What really qualifies him to be the leader, besides the fact that Bruce doesn’t want to do it? His position seems precarious, relying more on Superman’s pre-established reputation than his actual onscreen characterization. Centering Bruce and Wally are legitimate creative choices I don’t even necessarily disagree with, but it means Clark-as-leader functions quite differently than more traditional JL structures.

Hereafter is something of a healing point for him. It’s a little fucked up that Superman almost bashes Vandal Savage’s head in with a rock, but you take what you can get at this point. He comes out of it fine, but everyone else is forced to reckon with what he means to them. Hereafter coming directly after Secret Society is a very good reunification for the League. Shame about what’s gonna happen in three episodes.

In Wild Cards, he’s useful to address the immediate threat but ineffective to stop the real, countrywide (worldwide?) threat. (I should note that of course I don’t expect every episode’s threat to be solved by Clark; I’m just pointing out a trend that I think his character would perceive as failures on his part. If the writers ever let him reflect.)

JL ends as it began, with another massive alien invasion that Clark helped facilitate in Starcrossed, by working with the Thanagarians during the first part of their plan. As a fellow exile, a fellow alien, he’s hurt and angry with Shayera’s betrayal… even though, in the end, in probably one of his best moments, he votes to allow her to stay in the League.

(Sidenote: almost every interaction Clark has had with other aliens have been despotic societies or individuals: Jax-Ur and Mala, Apokolips, Maxima’s planet, War World, and now Thanagar. The Guardians built robotic police/foot soldiers to enforce their will. Even New Genesis is ruled by a benevolent dictator. Martian society is nearly extinct, overrun by… more alien despots, surviving only with J'onn. Argoan society is nearly extinct, surviving only with Kara. At least Lobo isn’t a fascist? Small consolation.)

JLU begins after a short time skip. I’m not as familiar with JLU episodes since it’s been a while since I’ve watched them, so I’m not going to attempt an episode-by-episode breakdown. Also this post is already way too long. But the point of this post is to look at Clark’s overall arc until this point, and see how it informs his decisions in JLU. For a more JLU-specific informed point of view check this post by januariat!

What we have is a man who naturally wants to take responsibility on his own shoulders, a doer and a fixer who wants to get into the ring and solve problems, who wants to use his abilities to help, being confronted over and over again with a string of personal failures, manipulation, and betrayal. When he tries to set a boundary about not being willing to help the man who took over his body and forced him against his home in Twilight, he’s told to get over it by his most trusted ally. When his deepest fears are revealed in Only a Dream, we see them having been already realized in Legacy. And when he’s presented with his dream of a peaceful life farming, a family that loves him, and no responsibility to save the world, it’s ripped away from him in For The Man Who Has Everything.

Ultimately, I don’t have a good answer for exactly how he doubles down in JLU S2, because I need to rewatch all of it with this understanding of the character. But I think you can see the shape of a traditional Superman character in there, trying and trying again and again to do the right thing, putting himself on the line - only instead of learning from his experiences and letting them inform his actions, he’s carrying the weight of years of suppressed trauma while trying to hold up the entire Justice League. This long, long run of failure, manipulation, betrayal, and distrust adds up. And there’s only so much weight one person can hold on their shoulders, even if they are a Superman.

(And then as the nice little capstone to his story, in Batman Beyond's The Call, he’s kept under alien mind control for years! With the way Starro clings to his chest, he probably hasn’t been touched in years! Trapped in his own mind, forced to watch as yet another alien species uses him as a tool to hurt his own teammates and invade the Earth! And that’s the last we see of DCAU Clark! What a fun little ending to his character arc that doesn’t make me go insane whenever I think about it. Very very very normal about this.)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Tessa Stuart at Rolling Stone:

KRISTA HARDING’S DAUGHTER was eight weeks old when that police cruiser pulled behind her on the interstate and hit the lights in September 2019. She called her boss at the Little Caesars in Pinson, Alabama, where she’d just been promoted to manager: I’m going to be a little late, but I’m coming in! Don’t panic. Harding’s registration tag was expired. She figured the officer would write her a ticket and she’d be on her way, but when he came back after running her driver’s license, he had handcuffs out. There was a felony warrant out for her arrest, he said: “Chemical endangerment of a child.” Harding used her most patient customer-service tone to ask the officer if he’d please check again. But there was no mistake, the cop confirmed: He was taking her to the Etowah County Detention Center, almost an hour’s drive away. “I’m in the back of the cop car just bawling my eyes out, like, ugly-face-snot-bubbles crying,” Harding remembers. She was worried about being away from her newborn, and she was confused: Chemical endangerment of a child? “I think of somebody cooking meth with a baby on their hip,” she says. 

She’s right to think that: The Alabama law, passed in 2006, was intended to target those who expose children to toxic chemicals, or worse, explosions, while manufacturing methamphetamine in ad-hoc home labs.  Harding says it took at least eight hours to be booked into a cell that night, and it was more than a week before she was finally allowed to see a judge. She was still leaking breast milk, and desperately missing her two daughters. Her family wasn’t allowed to bring her clean underwear, so every day she washed her one pair, saturated with menstrual blood, in the cell sink, then hung them to dry.

Harding says she eventually learned the warrant for her arrest had been issued because of a urine test taken at a doctor’s visit early in her pregnancy. Sitting alone in her cell, she conjured a vague memory of her OB-GYN warning her local authorities had begun to crack down on weed. The comment had struck her as odd at the time: Nine years earlier, when she was pregnant with her first child, the same doctor at the same hospital had told Harding, who’d smoked both pot and cigarettes before she was pregnant, that she’d rather Harding kick the nicotine than the weed. (Studies are unequivocal about the fact that cigarettes contribute to adverse pregnancy outcomes, but the research on weed is less conclusive, with some doctors arguing it at least has therapeutic benefits, like helping with morning sickness.)

But in the years between her first child and her second, something had changed in certain parts of Alabama. In Etowah County, in 2013, the sheriff, the district attorney, and the head of the local child-welfare agency held a press conference to announce they intended to aggressively enforce that 2006 law. Instead of going after the manufacturers of meth, though, they planned to target pregnant women who used virtually any substance they deemed harmful to a developing fetus.

“If a baby is born with a controlled-substance dependency, the mother is going to jail,” then-Sheriff Todd Entrekin said at the time. Police weren’t required to establish that a child was born with a chemical dependency, though — or even that a fetus experienced any harm — a drug test, a confession, or just an accusation of substance use during pregnancy was enough to arrest women for a first offense that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. One public defender would later call these “unwinnable cases.” Over the following decade, Etowah County imprisoned hundreds of mothers — some of whom were detained, before trial, for the rest of their pregnancies, inside one of the most brutal and inhumane prisons in the country, denied access to prenatal care and adequate nutrition, they say — in the name of protecting their children from harm. 

[...]

In the past two decades, Alabama has become the undisputed champion of arresting pregnant women for actions that wouldn’t be considered crimes if they weren’t pregnant: 649 arrests between 2006 and 2022, almost as many arrests as documented in all other states combined, according to advocacy group Pregnancy Justice, which collected the statistics. Across the U.S., the vast majority of women arrested on these charges were too poor to afford a lawyer, and a quarter of cases were based on the use of a legal substance, like prescription medication.

Today, Marshall is the attorney general of Alabama, and just a few months ago, the state’s Supreme Court used the same logic — that life begins at conception, therefore an embryo is legally indistinguishable from a living child — in a decision that was responsible for shutting down IVF clinics across the state. The ruling was a triumph for the fetal-personhood movement, a nationwide crusade to endow fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses with constitutional rights. Personhood has been the Holy Grail for the anti-abortion movement since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, but outlawing abortion — at any stage of pregnancy, for any reason — is just the start of what legal recognition of embryos’ rights could mean for anyone who can get pregnant. Experts have long warned that elevating an embryo’s legal status effectively strips the person whose body that embryo occupies of her own rights the moment she becomes pregnant.

Across the country, this theory has led to situations like in Texas, where a hospital kept a brain-dead woman alive for almost two months — against her own advanced directive and the wishes of her family — in deference to a state law that prevents doctors from removing a pregnant person from life support. (The hospital only relented after the woman’s husband sued for “cruel and obscene mutilation of a corpse.”) Or in New Hampshire, where a court allowed a woman who was hit by a car while seven months pregnant to be sued by her future child for negligence because she failed to use “a designated crosswalk.” Or in Washington, D.C., where a terminally ill cancer patient, 26 weeks pregnant, requested palliative care, but was instead subjected to court-ordered cesarean section. Her baby survived for just two hours; she died two days later.

Or in Alabama, where, in 2019, Marshae Jones walked into the Pleasant Grove Police Department with her six-year-old daughter expecting to be interviewed for a police investigation. Months earlier, Jones, four and a half months pregnant at the time, had been shot by her co-worker during a dispute. In the hospital after the shooting, Jones underwent an emergency C-section; her baby, whom she’d named Malaysia, did not survive. Rather than indicting the shooter, though, a grand jury indicted Jones, who they decided “intentionally” caused the death of her “unborn baby” because she allegedly picked a fight “knowing she was five months pregnant.” The charges were ultimately dismissed, but Jones’ lawyer says her record still shows the arrest, and Jones, who lost her job after the incident, struggled to find work after her case attracted national attention.

The threat this ideology poses to American women is not contained to Alabama: Recognition of fetal personhood is an explicit policy goal of the national Republican Party, and it has been since the 1980s. The GOP platform calls for amending the U.S. Constitution to recognize the rights of embryos, and representatives in Congress have introduced legislation that would recognize life begins at conception hundreds of times — as recently as this current session, when the Life at Conception Act attracted the co-sponsorship of 127 sitting Republican members of Congress.

[...]

Taking inspiration from Black Americans’ fight for equal rights, the anti-abortion movement began thinking of its own crusade as a fight for equality. “The argument that the unborn was the ultimate victim of discrimination in America was really resonant with a lot of white Americans, a lot of socially conservative Americans — and it was vague enough that people who disagreed about stuff like feminism, the welfare state, children born outside of marriage, the Civil Rights Movement” could find common ground, Ziegler says.  By the time the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade in 1973, the idea that a fetus was entitled to constitutional protections was mainstream enough to be a central piece of Texas’ argument that “Jane Roe” did not have a right to get an abortion.  

The justices rejected that idea. “The word ‘person,’ as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn,” Justice Harry Blackmun wrote. But he gave the movement a cause to rally behind for the next half-century by adding: “If this suggestion of personhood is established, [Roe’s] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment.”  Making that happen became the anti-abortion movement’s primary focus from that moment on. One week after Roe was decided, a U.S. congressman first proposed amending the Constitution to guarantee “the right to life to the unborn, the ill, the aged, or the incapacitated.” It was called the Human Life Amendment, and though it failed to make it to a floor vote that session, it would be reproposed more than 300 times in the following decades.  By 1980, the idea had been fully embraced by the Republican Party: Ronald Reagan’s GOP adopted it into the party platform — where it remains to this day — and in 1983, the Republican-majority Congress voted, for the first and only time, on the idea of adding a personhood amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That vote failed. 

After their 1983 defeat, activists turned their attention away from the U.S. Capitol and toward the states, where they sought to insert the idea of fetal personhood into as many state laws as possible: everything from legislation creating tax deductions for fetuses or declaring them people for census-taking purposes, to expanding child-endangerment and -neglect laws.  Activists pursued this agenda everywhere, but they were most successful at advancing it in states that share certain qualities. “You could draw a Venn diagram of American slavery and see that what’s happening today is in common in those states,” says Michele Goodwin, a Georgetown University law professor and author of the book Policing the Womb. “Some would say, ‘Well, OK, how is that relevant?’ Slavery itself was explicitly about denying personal autonomy, denying the humanity of Black people. Now, clearly, these laws affect women of all ethnicities. But the point is: If you’re in a constitutional democracy and you found a way to avoid recognizing the constitutional humanity of a particular group of people, it’s something that’s not lost in the muscle memory of those who legislate and of the courts in that state.”

Rolling Stone has a solid in-depth report on the war on women and reproductive health in Alabama, going into detail the fetal personhood movement.

[archonofdivinity]

rewrite!frank and claire underwood. house of cards (2013) | richard siken | isaac marion - warm bodies | necrophilia variations - supervert | without you i’m nothing - placebo | richard siken | daily express | here i am music video | here i am (tom odell) | house of cards season 2 interviews (spacey/wright) | franz kafka | tumblr user unhappeningsuggestions | marina tsvetaeva

more info about the rewrite under the cut.

for those who don’t know, my version of us!hoc is kind of a fix it to the bad writing of the underwoods from the s3 finale onwards. the two still separate but this is because they realise how unhealthy they’re getting for each other and their power struggle. also in my version, frank comes more so to terms with claire raping him in 3x02 and he feels a deep distrust over her. he still gets shot and the two reconcile, realising they need each other after all. however in this version, frank doesn’t make claire his running mate and donald stays on. after he wins the 2016 election, frank’s liver problems start acting up and he learns the complications are terminal. unwilling to accept a slow painful death, he hatches a plan to cement himself in history and not be seen as weak. finishing off amworks in a final stage, he then frames a home invasion in his house in gaffney and has claire kill him, ensuring his legacy as a man who saved employment and claire as a hero who tried to save her husband’s life.

[just-some-castaways]

~

Hello Lovelies!!

I understand there are not many people who have happened upon, or will happen upon, this blog, but I find motivation seems to stem from writing as if for an audience. It adds a feeling of urgency, a desire to write well instead of just writing for oneself.

So for those who do happen upon our blog, welcome!

Myself, and a few of my fellow authors, are working on a novella titled "The House of Crows." It's set in the early 2000s, primarily centered around a group of beings known as "Wardens." It's a gothic-mystery, with some psychological thriller on the side. - The story follows a young woman named Alice Miller, a farm girl pursuing her dream of working in police forensics. She did not however, foresee that it might lead to her helping to track down a shape-shifting, arcane magic wielding psychopath after the brutal murder of her boyfriend.

She will soon come to find that the realm of the arcane, pacts dating back to the Salem Witch trials, and well known ghost stories are far closer to the truth than to fiction.

-

We're very excited to share what's been our passion project for the last several years, and bring this world from a jumbled bundle of thoughts into a tangible (and hopefully legible) piece of fiction.

Cheers! (Primary author: Madeline) (World building and character creation: Nathanael) (Editing and planning: Katie)

P.S. This blog will continue to be the platform for future posts about this project, because realistically it's unlikely to get enough traffic to justify a separate blog. So every House of Crows post will be tagged with #HoC in case you'd rather not slog through dozens of random midnight ponderings XD

@petrichor-poet <33

[faeralcat]

The Revolution Of

AO3 LINK:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/9283484/chapters/21038579

SUMMARY: In a far away land ravaged by disease and death, a king prays to his ancestors for guidance. In response, or perhaps by sheer coincidence, a prince and his sister appear, and grant him the shining, miraculous power of eternity. Years later, princesses all over the world attempt to become the next prince's True Rose Bride. Little do they know, eternity does not exist, and a revolution is about to occur.

TAGS:

No Archive Warnings Apply

but the reader can ship whomever

Utena/Anthy

Utena/Miki

author's otp is utena/anthy tbh

Tenjou Utena

Himemiya Anthy

Kaoru Miki

Arisugawa Juri

Ohtori Akio

Shinohara Wakaba

Takatsuki Shiori

Kiryuu Nanami

Kiryuu Touga

Saionji Kyouichi

AU

can also be interpreted as canon continuation of anime

retelling of the movie and anime with the same themes

derived from a dream

channeling inner Be-Papas/Ikuhara

Metaphors Everywhere

roses everywhere

spoilers everywhere

Fluff

RETROSPECTIVE COMMENTARY: I don't think this fic aged particularly well. Not in terms of content (although, maybe that is the case too) but in terms of writing ability. I mean, most of the stuff I publish on AO3, then and now, needs some serious editing. But since I currently mostly write only for fun and practice, that's not happening. Any editing I do is ad-hoc or only to get rid of those unsightly typos.

At the time of writing, however, there is a (non-Utena) fic that is being edited by a friend. So soon! Soon, I will have something I didn't pull out of my arse in the middle of the workday at a reasonable writing time, like dead in the night noon!

Anywho. Here is the fic that revived (jumpstarted?) my writing career.

Also, I do not like Utena x Miki. Not one bit. Not then, and not now. I'm certain it was a decision I made because that pairing was the one I saw in the dream this fic was based off of.

BONUS:

In the fic notes, I mentioned that the fic itself was an "outline" for an Utena fanfic (doujin) I wanted to make. Unfortunately, plans for that have long been dashed for other brainrot things (cough bakudeku) but it's not like it never started! I once shared this on this blog but unfortunately, not anymore. For now, hopefully.

[wild-karrde]

NEW YEAR (almost), NEW TAG FORM!

Taking a page out of @galacticgraffiti's playbook here to get my tag list cleaned up for next year. Had planned to do this at the end of the year, but things are about to be REAL busy, so I'm going ahead a bit early.

At the end of this week, I will be discontinuing my old tag list, so if you still wish to be tagged in my fics, you'll need to sign up again with the new link (found here, will be added to my Master List).

EVEN IF YOU ARE ON MY TAG LIST NOW, YOU MUST SIGN UP AGAIN. Also, PLEASE DO NOT SIGN UP IF YOU DO NOT INTEND TO REGULARLY INTERACT WITH MY WRITING (hiatuses are an exception to this).

Going forward, I will also no longer be accepting ad-hoc requests to get added. I will be redirecting people to the link just because it makes life easier for me (and sometimes I'm not able to update the list right away and don't want to forget). I also have added a question for you to remove yourself if you change your mind at any point (THIS IS A NO-PRESSURE SITUATION!)

Thanks so much for all your support this year!

Tag List: @seriowan @partoftheeternalsoul @rosmariner @misogirl828 @ellichonkasaurusrex @zoeykallus @the-sith-in-the-sky-with-diamond @gjrain20-starwars @staycalmandhugaclone @redheadgirl @fordo-kixed-rex @wizardofrozz @ariadnes-red-thread @justanothersadperson93 @leftealeaf @kaminocasey @echos-girlfriend @lucyysthings @obihiddlenox @merkitty49 @littlemissmanga @clonecyaree @baba-fett @sleepingsun501 @rexxdjarin @samspenandsword @babygirlrex0504 @ladytano420 @fxlsealarm @runforrestr @djarrex @corrieguards @the-cantina @witchklng @wolffegirlsunite @fives-lover @teletraan-meets-jarvis @rain-on-kamino @ladykatakuri @ladykagewaki @arctrooper69 @hidden-behind-the-fourth-wall

[krinndnz]

An Ad-Hoc, Informally-Specified, Bug-Ridden, Single-Subject Study Of Weight Loss Via Potassium Supplementation And Exercise Without Dieting

Here's the short version: I lost 30 pounds in 6 months by chugging a bunch of potassium salt and exercising a lot. My subjective experience is that cranking my potassium intake way up made it possible to do a lot more exercise than I had been doing without also eating a lot more. Exercising more without also eating more led to weight loss (as one would hope!). I did not diet: I ate as I had been doing and as it pleased me to do. Do with the raw data as you please.

Losing weight this way is unusual and worth paying attention to because many things about increases and decreases in weight and obesity are very poorly understood. Many people would like their personal weight and obesity levels to be different, so anything that improves our collective understanding of how to make that happen is valuable. However, losing weight this way is an experiment: it's not necessarily safe to do what I did! Part of why I did it was to find out what would happen, and if you have any kind of existing kidney problems then you definitely should not do what I did. Note to other transfemmes: if you're taking spiro, that counts as a kidney problem.

I also don't want to overstate the significance of this experiment: what I've been up to in the last 6 months amounts to a single data point that happens to also be 1,100 spreadsheet cells. It's a data point that is highly suggestive, sure, but it would be extremely ambitious to say that it proves anything beyond "this worked for me" and perhaps "it's not impossible for this to work". I am writing about it because as far as I know, this particular experiment is something that nobody else has tried, and, again, anything that improves our collective understanding here is valuable.

The long version comes next: how I came to be doing this experiment, what I did in the experiment, what I plan to do next, and finally what I think about it all. The really long version is the ongoing conversation that this post is part of, starting with A Chemical Hunger, which is a book-length literature review about the 1980s–present global increase in obesity prevalence, also the posts about single-subject research where the same authors discuss the limits of what can be learned from experiences like mine, also the Experimental Fat Loss guy and his wide variety of diet-only experiments, also some critics who disagree.

How I came to be doing this

At the tail end of 2022, I noticed both that my BMI had hit 30 and that I had become very unhappy about my weight. There's a specific photo where I didn't realize until I saw the photo that my belly was hanging out over my waistband and it's vividly unpleasant in my memory. Around the same time, I happened to find the potassium-supplementation community trial that the Slime Mold Time Mold folks were running. The value proposition was "this will be easy, cheap, and safe, but also it might not actually work," and that sounded good to me, so I signed up for it and took a modest amount of potassium all through December and January. It kinda-sorta worked: I lost 6 pounds. Not nothing, but "it kinda-sorta worked" is the most one can really say about losing 6 pounds in 60 days.

The low-dose potassium delivered on all of what the SMTM folks promised, though. It was easy, cheap, and safe. So I kept doing it and, since I was already doing the potassium, decided that I should get an exercise habit going. I am a big believer in the idea that it's a tremendous amount easier to go from doing Something to doing More Something than to go from doing Nothing to doing Something. The low-dose potassium got me through the first step: once I was doing Something about my weight, it was relatively easy to do More Something. When the community trial ended in early February, I didn't have to worry about messing up its results by departing from the trial's instructions, so I started taking more potassium and building my own experiment. I also kept in touch with the SMTM authors, who were very encouraging. 🐯💕

By late March I had brought myself up to daily amounts of potassium and exertion that seemed good to me, and I stuck with those. This is the first time in my life I've focused on trying to lose weight, and I was not fully prepared for how demoralizing it is that the weight change from day N to day N+1 sometimes seems perversely unrelated to what you were doing on day N. Fortunately I have experience with spreadsheets, so I put together a tracker for myself that focused on the trailing-week average of my daily weight and exercise measurements as well as long-term graphs. Three months of data were enough to put together a chart whose trendline said very, very clearly, "what you are doing is working — keep it up!" With any kind of long-term project it's very important to create and sustain sources of feedback. All else being equal, the longer it takes before you can get a read on "is this going well or poorly?", the worse it will go.

I decided that my goal would be to get my BMI from 30 (the lower limit of "obese") to under 25 (the upper limit of "normal"). Happily, the math is very easy there: for my height, a BMI of 25 rounds off to 200lbs. I further decided that I was willing to spend all of 2023 working on this. That decision is why I'm writing this post now: halfway through a project is a natural time to pause and take stock.

What I did

By the end of March, my regimen was firmly settled and I kept at it through the end of June without further tinkering. The daily goals I settled on were 10,000mg of potassium and 1,200kcal of exertion. That amount of exercise worked out to be 90 to 100 minutes per day. For contrast, in 2022 my average amount of exercise per day was 15 minutes and my average exertion was 500kcal.

I used my smartwatch's exertion number ("how many calories are you using above the amount you need to burn to be alive at all?") and gradually walked up my daily goal, settling at 1,200kcal/day partially because it was working and partially because one hour of watch face equaling 100kcal was helpful for being able to read "how close to my goal am I?" without thinking hard about it. Most of the exercise was treadmill time, usually a brisk walk or light jog. Over the months I also did some running, some bicycling, and some hiking, but treadmill time was the reliable, unremarkable, do-this-every-day core of my exercise regimen. It took a while to ramp up to that amount of exertion and there were definitely days when I stumbled, for good reasons and bad. However, in general I hit the exertion goal and in particular had it absolutely dialed from early March to mid-April.

It was easier to be totally rigorous about the potassium-intake goal — it helped that that part only took a few minutes per day, instead of 90+ minutes! I used potassium chloride powder (whatever came up first on an Amazon search since all KCl should be alike) mixed with regular Gatorade (i.e. not the sugar-free kind) to make it taste okay (I recommend blue Gatorade, it's the closest to appealing when kaliated — the yellow lemon-lime was meh and the fruit punch red was awful). I added two heaping teaspoons of KCl powder to a 20oz. bottle of Gatorade and drank that. KCl is about 52% potassium and a heaping teaspoon of it is about 6500mg, so I rounded up a smidge and called that 6600-and-a-bit milligrams of potassium per bottle. On Thursdays and Sundays I drank 2 full bottles and on other days 1.5 bottles. I recorded this as 10,000mg of potassium on regular days and 13,500mg on Thursdays and Sundays.

Is 10,000mg of potassium a lot? It's a lot more than average! The SMTM potassium trial post contextualizes it helpfully:

For a long time, the recommended daily value for adults (technically, the “Adequate Intake”) was 4,700 mg of potassium per day. But most people don’t get anywhere near this amount. In every CDC NHANES dataset from 1999 to 2018, median potassium intake hovers around 2,400 mg/day, and mean intake around 2,600 mg/day. In this report from 2004, the National Academy of Medicine found that “most American women … consume no more than half of the recommended amount of potassium, and men’s intake is only moderately higher.” Per this paper, only 0.3% of American women were getting the recommended amount. Similarly low levels of intake are also observed in Europe, Mexico, China, etc. But in 2019, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine changed the recommended / adequate intake to 2,600 mg/day for women and 3,400 mg/day for men. They say that the change is “due, in part, to the expansion of the DRI model in which consideration of chronic disease risk reduction was separate from consideration of adequacy,” but we can’t help but wonder if they changed it because it was embarrassing to have less than 5% of the population getting the recommended amount. In any case, recommended potassium intake is something like 2,500 to 5,000 mg per day for adults, and many people don’t get enough. Potatoes are exceptionally high in potassium. A single potato contains somewhere between 600 and 1000 mg of potassium, depending on which source you look at. They are the 6th highest in potassium on this list of high-potassium foods from the NIH, and 9th on this old list from the USDA. If you do the math, this means that someone on the potato diet, eating 2,000 kcal of potatoes a day, gets at least 11,000 mg of potassium per day, more than twice the old recommended intake.

This explanation is most of why I decided to stabilize at about 10,000mg per day: because that's about how much potassium people were getting during the SMTM potato diet community trial. Because that community trial involved around 200 people, it was unlikely that there would be any truly heinous health effects from knocking back that much potassium, especially together with the anecdotal evidence that inspired the trial. Aiming for that amount also meant that it would be easier to compare my results to something that worked decently well and to ask questions like "is there something special about whole potatoes, or is it mostly the potassium?" If it's mostly the potassium, you'd expect my results to be closer to the full-potato-diet results than to the low-dose-potassium results — which is what happened.

I measured those results in a very basic way: ordinary bathroom scale, first thing in the morning, every day. Considering how much noise there is in weight measurement, there's just no advantage to measuring it more often. I kept the circumstances of the weigh-in simple and stable, trusting that that was good enough. I also measured exertion in two other forms — step count and exercise minutes — but that was mostly for my personal curiosity because both are basically downstream of exertion as such. Similarly, I tracked my sleep but didn't expect that to matter a whole lot.

While I was affirmatively not dieting, I want to make sure to talk about my food habits because I could be missing something that's easy for others to see as unusual but seems totally ordinary to me. My meals are heavy on pasta, rice, bread, and granola. I work diligently to get enough dietary fiber. I eat some meat but not a lot (eating a pound of meat in a week would be above average for me), and I enjoy coffee but not a tremendous amount of it since usually I make Chemex-style coffee and having a bunch of that in a day would be too time-intensive. My go-to snacks are cashews, pistachios, cherries, and granola bars. Like most people, I should eat more dark leafy greens than I do. I use a generous hand when measuring out olive oil. I believe that if you need either milk taste or milk fat, you shouldn't half-ass it, so when I need milk taste or milk fat, I rely on whole milk and heavy cream. Fats, generally, taste good. I eat more whole food and food I personally cook than I eat packaged and processed food, and I only infrequently eat restaurant food (weekly pizza night, maybe twice a month other than that). I really like sour candies but basically stopped eating them last autumn after some very patient coaxing from my dentist. Once in a while, dark chocolate, usually with the nuts and fruit.

I ate as I had been doing: I ate the food I felt like eating and ate as much of it as I felt like eating. If I felt like eating more or less, I did that. Since I wanted to keep the exercise habit going regardless of whether or not I lost weight, it was very important to me to not make the exercise any more difficult than it had to be. Going hungry would definitely make it more difficult, so I avoided doing that. One way in which I'm very sure my experience generalizes is, it's much easier to persuade people to try "add this supplement to what you're already eating" than to get them to try "replace all of your current food with potatoes," especially when talking about long-term or indefinite-duration changes.

What I plan to do next

I'll be thrilled if I can recapture something like the 7-week March/April streak I had going. Most days in this period (44 out of 49) were PB days (i.e. a day where my trailing-week-average weight was the lowest it had been since the start of the year) and no two consecutive days in this period were non-PB days (i.e. if a day wasn't a PB day, both the day before and the day after were PB days). I was losing almost 2lbs per week and exercising a lot and I felt great. However, my intuition is that that was the honeymoon period of going from mostly-sedentary to exercising regularly, and that I should expect further progress to be more difficult, to be like the less impressive results I got in May and June.

Still, the thing as a whole has definitely been successful enough that I'm going to keep at it until the end of the year, re-evaluating again in December (and maybe when I hit my weight-loss goal, which should happen around halfway between now and then). Since I'm using January 1st as my anchor date for the start of the experiment, it lines up nicely with the calendar if I just keep going all year and see what happens. Besides, I only need 6 months more to generate a year of data, while someone going from a cold start would need a whole year.

Given that I have a setup that is working pretty well, I'm reluctant to tinker with it. I might add one more high-potassium day in addition to Thursdays and Sundays, and I might start tracking some extra data — even though I'm not trying to change them, recording my food habits seems like the most helpful additional thing I could record.

If I develop health problems I'm gonna pull the ripcord (and post about it). There are already too many shitty fake weight loss regimens in the world that fuck up the health of people who try them, we do not need more.

What I think about it

Since I'm the one doing this experiment, I get to be excited about how it's working out for me personally, which is to say, very well indeed. Right now it seems pretty certain that I'll be able to reach my goal of losing ~50lbs in a long-term-sustainable way and just as importantly, getting myself to a much better baseline state of physical fitness. I feel pretty great about that part!

The experiment is not just for me, though: the reason it's an experiment rather than just "I'm trying to lose weight" is that I am keeping track of things carefully such that other people could carry out the same steps I did and get results similar to or different from mine and ideally everyone eventually comes to pretty firm conclusions about whether this — losing weight via potassium and exercise without dieting — works or not. My chugging potassium and Gatorade for six months to a year is the very beginning of that process, and I expect that the difficult parts of the process will be carried out by people with more expertise and resources than me.

I also expect that I have not tumbled to the One Weird Trick for weight loss that everyone else just overlooked. As someone with plenty of programming experience, I have a hearty suspicion towards "well, it worked on MY setup" stories. One obvious alternate explanation for my successful weight loss is "well yeah, you doubled your exertion and kept your food intake the same, of course you lost weight" — but I don't find that explanation satisfying. To start with, if it were that easy, people would do it more often. There are a tremendous number of people who would like to lose weight and a tremendous marketplace of devices, services, and professionals to help them use exercise for that purpose, and yet in a 20-year NCHS study, average exercise rose without obesity falling. It's also very, very easy to find fat people who exercise plenty — you will find them more or less anywhere you find lots of people exercising, as well as in places like sumo stables. A member of my family has taken up powerlifting in the last year, making him both fitter and heavier by quite a bit.

Additionally, there's studies like Keating 2017 concluding that short-term exercise intervention doesn't do enough to matter, or like the Wu 2009 work concluding that exerise-and-dieting isn't meaningfully better than just dieting over periods of 6+ months, and then there's the STRRIDE study, Slentz 2004, concluding that jogging 20 miles a week can get people to lose about 7 pounds over 8 months. The STRRIDE study caught my eye because it's pretty similar to what I did: they took obese mostly-sedentary folks, had them exercise more, and forbade them from eating less. However, once you do the math the results are much less similar: the average STRRIDE participant did around half the exercise I've done for at most a fifth of the weight loss (i.e. around 1lb/month vs. around 5lbs/month and around 3mi/day vs. 7mi/day). If someone else told me "Krinn, your naïve just-hit-the-treadmill exercise regimen is 2.5x as effective as an exercise regimen supervised & measured by professionals," I would want them to provide some compelling evidence for that.

If you tell someone you want to lose weight and would like their advice, it is overwhelmingly likely that the advice will involve exercising more. Everyone has heard this advice. And yet, as Michael Hobbes observes in a searing piece for Highline, "many 'failed' obesity interventions are successful eat-healthier-and-exercise-more interventions" that simply didn't result in weight loss. Even if we as a society choose to believe "more exercise always leads to weight loss, most people just fuck up at it," that immediately confronts us with the important question, why do they fuck up at it? and its equally urgent sibling, what can we learn from those who succeed at it to give a hand up to those who have not yet succeeded?

I find the SMTM authors' metaphor for this helpful:

[exercising more and eating less] is not an explanation any more than "the bullet" is a good explanation for "who killed the mayor?" Something about the potato diet lowered people's lipostat set point, which reduced their appetite, which yes made them eat fewer calories, which was part of what led them to lose weight. Yes, "fewer kcal/day" is somewhere in the causal chain. No, it is not an explanation.

Since I've been doing this for six months, I feel pretty certain that the potassium is doing something positive for me and I'm entirely willing to put in another six months to find out what happens for me. Finding out whether that generalizes is beyond my power: all I can do is explain what worked for me, one middle-aged Seattle housewife, and hope that it's useful to people who are in a position to do serious work about it.

One kind of serious work that's available is the very cool analytic techniques that other people in this conversation have used while looking at their data. If you are the kind of person to get elbows-deep in R or Matlab, feel free to grab my day-by-day measurements for that (I release this data under Creative Commons' CC0 if that's relevant to you). I'm not going to do that, though, partially because it's been a long time since I last used R but mostly because of the thing I said earlier about my whole experiment basically being one data point. If you have a data series, then yeah, get in there with some numeric interrogation, but if you only have one data point, that data point is what it is and statistical analysis can't really add to it. All I can claim here is that this is a new data point: people going about their everyday lives do not spontaneously increase their potassium intake severalfold and the background work from the SMTM potato diet and potassium community trials tell me that no-one's run a study looking directly at what happens if you do increase your potassium intake that much.

Do you want to increase your potassium intake that much? If you do, I have to re-emphasize the potassium community trial's safety warning: if you have existing kidney problems, do not try this. Also I'm gonna deploy the boldface again to make sure I get this across to other trans women: on this topic, taking spiro counts as a kidney problem! I am not a doctor and I'm extremely not your doctor, you should talk to your actual doctor if you have any kind of potential kidney issues and even if you're in good health and want to try chugging a bunch of potassium, you should titrate up gradually the way the SMTM writeup suggests (which is also the way I did).

In addition to a general spirit of responsibility, those warnings are important because otherwise just telling you that this is easy would sound like a recommendation. Did I mention that the experiment was easy? Easy easy. Piss easy. Lemon squeezy, etc. Of course building an exercise habit wasn't easy, but the potassium part didn't make it easier or harder, and the potassium part itself was pretty trivial. Mix this powder into Gatorade a couple times per day, drink it, done.

That said, if you do want to try this, godspeed and please write down how it goes for you. I recommend building positive reinforcement into whatever you use to track it; my personal spreadsheet for this is adorned with color-coding and happy emoji. I also recommend at least thinking about the following questions, whether you're going to do this, evaluate the results of this, or both.

How safe is it, in general rather than for me particularly, to chug this much potassium? This is the big one: "just mix potassium salt into Gatorade and drink it a few times a day" is so incredibly easy that even if the effect size is small, it could benefit a huge number of people, but of course it doesn't benefit them if it's not actually safe to do that.

Does this replicate? If it's not safe it matters a lot less whether it replicates, so the safety question comes first, but if it is safe, then one would immediately want to find out whether it works for 1% of people, 10% of people, or 50% of people.

How much do other mineral nutrients, particularly sodium and magnesium, matter for this? Maybe they need to be combined in some specific way, as this Twitter thread suggests.

Do sex hormone levels matter? I'm a trans woman and I've been having problems with access to HRT in this timeframe. Given how many things in one's body testosterone and estrogen affect, and given that previous obesity research has shown differences based on hormone profiles, that's definitely something to keep an eye on. Also because spironolactone in particular messes with renal function and potassium metabolism, I expect that it affects this. Digression: spironolactone is total bullshit as an anti-androgen of first resort. It sucks and I hate it and I should have switched to other anti-androgens even sooner than I did. If you're using spironolactone as an anti-androgen because it was the first thing your doctor tried for that, you really should try something else and see if that works.

I steadfastly avoided dieting. I like my existing diet just fine, and that's why I preferred the "what if I just chug a bunch of potassium" plan. All else being equal, I'd rather try things that let me eat what I like than things that require throwing my relationship with food into upheaval. But of course you wonder, what would happen if you did combine dieting and exercise and potassium? The ExFatLoss guy has been busy trying a lot of diet-only interventions and he's got a lot of interesting results. I am not the person to try it, but it's one of the obvious things to try, so I hope someone does try it.

How does this interact with the munchies? If you decide to try what I tried and you, like me, enjoy living somewhere where marijuana is legal, I think you should look at whether the potassium changes how you experience marijuana-induced hunger/overeating. One of the things I found very striking about the matter is that it was possible for me to chug enough potassium that the marijuana-induced hunger was drastically reduced. I expected the opposite since the potassium was causing me to eat less (relative to exertion) at other times. However, I have very strong habits about marijuana (exactly twice a week, edibles only, same amount every time) and I'm not willing to change them for this, so who knows how this aspect will work out for others. Definitely something to keep an eye on, though. Even if I wasn't losing weight, the potassium reduces marijuana-induced overeating enough that I'd probably keep going with it just for that effect.

Conclusion

I spent 6 months trying to lose weight with lots of potassium and exercise but without dieting. So far I have succeeded. Unless something disastrous comes up, I'm going to keep trying it for at least another 6 months and going to keep recording what I'm doing. I'm particularly curious to see where I'll plateau, since I assume at some point I'll start getting really hungry and/or tired instead of accidentally starving. I hope that my experience and the data I've recorded from it, are useful to people who are looking into questions about obesity and weight. Please feel free to use my data and my writeup (this post) for that. If you want to try doing as I've done, good luck and stay safe: this has worked for me but it is still experimental, it might be unsafe and/or fail to work for you.

[caermorrighan]

10 steps to choose your journals and planners for 2025

Its planner season and all the planners are shiny and pretty and you want all of them. Maybe last year you brought one too many (I know I did) or the wrong one (I did that too). Maybe you are new to this selection process. Maybe you've been stuck in a journaling rut and need a change.

This is for you.

I'm going to walk you through ten steps to choosing the right journal. I suggest you run this through and then review it a couple of times before you buy.

1) Write a list of what you want to do with your planners and journals. Do you to do personal journaling? Planning? Memory keeping?

Importantly, this is a list of things you want to do and not a list of journals. It might look like this:

personal daily journaling

important upcoming appointments

commonplacing

future planning

daily planning

backlogging (lists of tasks relating to a project)

health tracking

The only journal I am going to identify early on is a work journal, as I always keep this separate from everything else. This is mostly focused on daily to do lists and appointment lists.

2) Against that list, think about what kind of space each item needs in comparison to other items. Mark them with t-shirt sizes. Small, Medium, Large.

My example:

personal daily journaling - L

important upcoming appointments - S

commonplacing - L

future planning - M

daily planning - M

backlogging (lists of tasks relating to a project) - M

health tracking - M

work to do lists - M

work appointment lists - S

3) Against that list, think about your planning horizon (or journaling horizon, though this is simpler). Do you plan daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, all of the above? Do you journal daily or when you feel like it?

My example:

personal daily journaling - L - daily

important upcoming appointments - S - monthly

commonplacing - L - ad hoc

future planning - M - weekly

daily planning - M - weekly

backlogging (lists of tasks relating to a project) - M - ad hoc

health tracking - M - daily

work to do lists - M - daily

work appointment lists - S - daily

4) If you are already planning and journaling, write a list of your challenges. What is not working right now? If you don't plan or journal and want to, write about what has been blocking you.

I currently feel like I need too many books open at once. I often plan to do too much at once.

5) If you are already planning and journaling, what do you love about your current set up. What brings you joy? If this is new, write about what you envisage feeling like when you journal successfully?

I love decorating and being able to look back at the amazing thing I have created. I love long form journaling and being able to work through my ideas. I like having everything written down so I don't forget things.

6) Do 4 again. And then do 5 again. These are really important. If you don't plan or journal, what has been blocking you and what do you What is new compared to your current set up? What are you expecting to do with it?

I need my everyday carry (EDC) to be light and also have a hard enough structure to write on in less than ideal writing conditions. I need to be able to plan differently for weekdays and weekends.

7) Now you have all the pieces, its time to slot them together. What goes well with what? What would you rather keep separate?

I group mine into 3 sections - plan, progress and ponder. Planning is what I anticipate I am going to be doing. Progress is how I am going to track how I am doing against the plan. Ponder is for more long form things like journals and commonplacing.

For me the appointment and weekly planning is in Plan as I do it in advance, and my daily plan is in Progress because I do that on the day. Health tracking is in Progress. Journaling and commonplacing are in Ponder.

8) Now try to lay out the things you want to group. On one page? On different pages but the same book? On a blank page or a weekly page or a daily page? Get a spare notebook or a piece of printer paper and lay it all out.

I am trying to lay mine out by a grouping I am calling Plan - Progress - Ponder as they are separate activities that take place at different times.

For Plan, for example, I need a monthly view for the appointments and a weekly planning view. I also need space for ad hoc backlogging.

For Progress, each day needs to accommodate a daily plan (in a weekly view) and daily tracking. Whilst I put commonplacing in this group, it won't fit in any journal I have been looking at alongside personal journaling. Since it is something I normally do for learning, it might fit better in here?

For Ponder I need a day per page for personal journaling.

9) Add any practical requirements. If you stick a lot of stuff in the journal, what kind of binding would you need? If you like to write with fountain pen, what kind of paper do you need? What size matches what content?

I have learnt from experience that I prefer A5, but that is too big for an everyday carry which would probably make it too big for my Plan journal. I need all journals to work with my fountain pens and have a preference for tomoe river paper. My personal journal at least will get chonky from me sticking things in it and needs to survive that.

10) Pick your journals! Choose from the ones you researched and fell in love with before you went through this exercise (I know you did, we all did). Or look for new ones if none of those fit.

I've evolved this a few times since I started. But as of publishing I will be using Traveller's Notebook Standard size booklets for Plan and Progress (you can find booklets in tomoe river paper from a couple of sellers) and an A5 Sterling Ink Common Planner for Ponder.