#mostly notes to self

[mindfogandsleep]

Reminder that healthy people don't feel pain daily

Healthy people don't go to bed in agony from doing minor daily tasks

Reminder that you're not faking because you managed to do more than usual today.

You're not faking it if you can do more than another person with the same illness.

You're not faking it if your symptoms are less one day.

You didn't make it all up if you have a period where your symptoms are more manageable.

[crispsandkerosene]

Other sims 2 shader notes & experiment before I go to bed:

The StandardMaterial's parameters are listed in the Maxis Material Shader with the high instance "7AA57810".

The "BindsForLighting" function in "6E4B7F3B" sets multipliers(?) for the final results of diffuse, specular and emissive lighting. I tried changing the value for "finalShaderEmissive" to a colour ("(1, 0, 1)") and it worked. My goal was to try and see if it could be masked somehow, but it doesn't seem able to receive a texture reference.

The one that assembles the base texture, lighting, envcube and the like is "46BA93B1". It's the one I edited to apply the specular mask to the envcube.

I also tried and failed to renumber the sampler in which it puts the specularMask. Then I realized the samplers have to be declared beforehand. Have yet to try that.

[setnet]

Plenty of people have reflected that sewing patterns are designed for an average that doesn't really fit anyone. It especially doesn't fit me. Ramblings below the cut on how I've been approaching sewing/adjusting clothes to my own proportions.

I have a narrow back paired with a large and forward-projecting bust. There are two, two and a half brands (freya, fantasie, sometimes panache) that make bras of the right shape and size to fit me & be comfortable without fucking up my back. I can buy ready to wear knit tops that fit me pretty decently, or oversized shirts, but tailored garments are generally designed with a B or at most a C cup in mind, not a G cup.

So by trial and error over the past 4+ years I have been approaching a top basic block that fits, which I can then adjust as needed for garments which actually fit. (following guidance from people like the closet historian). My current attempt is pretty close - I think I need a little more room in the back shoulder and a bit of a dart to keep the back armscye from gaping. Feeling pretty positive there.

Then on the bottom, the unusual body shape strikes again. My high hips are the same width or wider than my low hip, and my butt is low and small. In making (or adjusting) trousers I generally need to take up to an inch of length out of the back rise and up to 3/4'' out of the side height. But I've got a fairly long torso and waist to crotch measurement (and a bit of a belly) so need to keep (or sometimes add) height to the front rise.

This works fine for wide leg trousers, flared skirts, etc. But for fitted garments I'm increasingly turning to the age old approach of just adding padding. After all most of fashion design is about silhouette & it's a time-honoured tradition to add padding in order to get the silhouette you're aiming for.

Here I've found there are a lot of tutorials on Nigerian fashion youtube where it's just a normal thing to do. I hadn't been getting much joy out of trying to make a sloper that both a) fitted my lower body and b) achieved the shape I wanted. I'm thinking I may just make a petticoat with the padding attached that I can swap out under garments as needed. It's pretty freeing actually.

[inimitablereel]

Pi-Hole debug log

I'm thinking about writing up a nice guide so let me know if that would be useful to anyone but in the meantime, some notes about difficulties I ran into setting up a pi-hole

First off, I do want to say that this is actually pretty technically complicated? Like it's been floating around tumblr for a while, lots of people have done it, you can too, but when OP on that viral post said they took 2 hours and don't know anything, I think they mean they don't know anything in the same way I do (I have a whole degree in computers I have used a terminal before, but I hadn't used a raspberry pi before)

Rest below the cut

Gathering Materials Good news: there's lots of viable options for a raspberry pi that works with pihole! The minimal requirements are really very minimal. You need some computer that you're willing to devote to blocking your internet. (Theoretically you could do this on a computer also used for different stuff but that would suck and make you have no ram.) In practice, unless you've got a spare working laptop floating around for some reason, you are going to want that to be a raspberry pi. Bad news: now you have to make decisions. The "official" pihole kit has been sold out for ages, so that's not an option. I said fuck it and bought kit for the raspberry pi 4 off of one of the licensed distributors linked from raspberrypi.com (because it had all the requirements) but that was ~$100 with shipping and there ARE cheaper options. It looks like the raspberry pi zero barely hits the RAM requirements and is $15 at a licensed distributor so that's likely as low as you can go. And if you're not just buying a kit you'll need at a minimum a power supply, a microsd card (the pihole requirement is 4GB but everything I was seeing was way bigger anyways), and a way to read a microsd card (either a USB microsd reader or if your laptop already has an sd card reader you'll need one of those microsd to normal sd card converters which idk where you get but a USB microsd reader is very cheap). You don't need but may want an hdmi cable that will connect to the pi

Setting Up and Using a Raspberry Pi You may notice for notes that aren't a guide (yet) this is going into Great Detail about the early parts of the setup. As someone who hadn't used a raspberry pi before, I found all the pihole guides I was looking at skipped the basics I needed and most of my setup time was trying to figure out what was going on with my raspberry pi, not actually doing the pi-hole thing. The raspberry pi getting started page actually had all the information I needed in conjunction with their pihole setup guide if I'd read it thoroughly enough but since I didn't a general overview: first you plug the sd card into your personal computer to image it; then once it's imaged you take it out and put it in your raspberry pi; then after it's blinked at you a bit you ssh to your raspberry pi while on the same wifi network you just set up in the imaging step. This is running your raspberry pi "headless" which means you don't need a monitor/hdmi cable but does make it harder to debug if you can't ssh. Also if you're on windows apparently you NEED to download a different terminal because windows command prompt for all that it's gotten better over time cannot connect to unix operating systems (which raspbian is).

AT&T hates internet configuration Now we're getting to the part that's specific to me. My internet is on AT&T, which has overall been pretty okay (and they've had great technicians for setup and repair), but AT&T fiber does not let you set your own DNS. The non-annoying backup is to make the pi-hole your DHCP server instead of your DNS server, which IS in every setup guide but is NOT very detailed. (Possibly if I wasn't on AT&T this whole paragraph would be complaining about the level of detail of guides about making your pi-hole your DNS.) To get DHCP working, I found a different, slightly outdated guide from someone else on AT&T fiber which was pretty useful but had some pitfalls because it is a bit out of date: https://otter-security.com/how-to/ht_post/28/

Key points for setting up a pihole as DHCP server:

Set up your pihole normally/following the raspberry pi guide for the prompts

You still need to allocate a static IP for your pihole. For AT&T, this is on the IP allocation of the Home Network tab of the advanced settings page. That static IP should be the same as whatever the IP the IPv4 one the pihole install configured.

Disable DHCP on the subnets & DHCP tab. THIS IS THE STEP THAT BREAKS YOUR INTERNET: without DHCP available only some sites will work. This will be fixed by enabling DHCP on the pi-hole

Disable IPv6 (more about this later)

Enable DHCP on the pi-hole admin page: this is just a checkbox under settings->DHCP. The router ip address should be the one listed on the back of your router/the one used to get to the advanced settings (probably already correct)

Let all devices connect to the pi-hole under Settings->DNS on the pi-hole admin page (this is the step that was outdated or possibly just different because it was wired on the guide)

Don't You Forget About Mesh More details about my particular internet setup: we extend our internet with a mesh network. This kept getting in my way as I was doing the setup because I treat them largely interchangeably but it's important to put the raspberry pi and your computer on the SAME internet to do a local ssh, where the mesh vs the router are different here. I wanted to put the raspberry pi ssh on the router not the mesh because my initial setup attempt did break the mesh, but I'm not sure that that matters? Also I don't think anything connected to the mesh is getting the pihole filtering right now? Possible fixes required are either changing the mesh DNS to the pi-hole IP or seeing if the mesh has DHCP enabled.

IPv6: Still Broken So in the DHCP setup step I disabled IPv6. I couldn't get my DHCP to be forced to the pi-hole on IPv6 and I'm not sure why. I did set up my pi-hole to be IPv6 enabled and try disabling just IPv6 DHCP on my router, but it didn't seem to be hitting the pihole. Reading a help thread on this has convinced me that my best option is to leave it disabled until such a time as I want to learn things about networking again (a class I liked but also worked very hard to get a B in)

Why is my computer sad?? So I've declared pihole "working" in that our internet isn't broken and it's blocking at least some ads from some computers... but my mac is now giving ominous no internet connection warnings.

This would be a Big Problem except that I definitely can in fact reach the internet just fine. I'm on the internet right now! I don't know why my mac is sad and I am struggling to google it because it's specifically a false warning and I'm only getting results about the real problem. My hazy guess is it's ipv6 related? I could test this by disabling pihole/re-enabling DHCP on my router while keeping ipv6 off... but not in the middle of the day on a Friday

Adguard vs Pi-Hole: A Mystery Pi-Hole is no longer new technology and in the ~12 hours that it's been set up here hasn't made a dramatic difference in my life, mostly because I already had adblockers on my laptop. You can add more blocked sites and I've been looking at finding more adlists, but one alternate option is instead of running pi-hole on your raspberry pi, you run a commercial network level adblocker called AdGuard Home. I haven't tried the AdGuard option but it might do more comprehensive blocking? On the downside, it's commercial, not open source, so I do worry about them switching to break your internet if you don't give them money...

[identitty-dickruption]

choosing to allocate spoons to hanging out and having a good time at the cost of perfectly completing all your work is not a failing it is in fact an act of survival. “too sick to work = too sick to play” is in fact ableist bullshit that you don’t have to buy into. and the fact that leisure time is treated like a privilege is a fucking travesty

[fox-guardian]

"maybe if i dress more boring i'll get gendered correctly by strangers" that's the devil talking

[stil-lindigo]

the vulture.

a comic about cycles.

--

creative notes:

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all my other comics

store

[lucabyte]

even dogs pass the mirror test

[recoverr]

shoutout to all the kids with good people as bad parents. the parents who were sympathetic, honest and kind to everyone until you were the next in line. the parents who loved the entire family except you. the parents who preached about acceptance, warmth and kindness, but never offered it to you. the parents who were understanding to friends, cousins or siblings, but not to their own children. the cognitive dissonance is surreal, but i promise it is not a reflection of your own worth. you deserve more.

[tea-cat-arts]

Shen Yuan getting transported into pidw isn't "the system punishing him for being a lazy internet hater," but instead representative of "step 1 of the creative process: getting so mad at something you decide to go write your own fucking book" in this essay I will

[courtmartialme]

woag .. otp

[lollytea]

Ngl I think I hate performative girlbossification of female characters more than I hate people not including said female characters in their fan content. Actually I don't care at all if they're indifferent to her. Who gives a fuck. Like I'd respect it more if they're like "ngl I just don't give a shit about her" with their whole chest, rather than being like "OMG I LOVE HER SO MUCH!!!! She's perfect, she's best girl, she kicks ass [never talks about her ever and only includes her as a prop to examine the male characters they DO like]" just because they're scared of getting called misogynistic. Like if you know in your heart that this character means nothing to you and you know you're not gonna do her justice, might as well just leave her out. But attempts to shoehorn her in, using your 2015-feminist style characterization is so weak, man.

[quantumfeat72]

Imagine after the loops end in assassiffrin assfrin au the party accompanies him on his redemption quest and keep having to protect him from people trying to get revenge on him.

Then Vaugarde turns on the Saviors for harboring the one half responsible for the curse.

They demand to know why and the family says "how is he supposed to atone for what they've done if they're dead?"

And then imagine Siffrin spends a lot of time learning more Wish Craft and finds a way to go back in time to stop himself from helping the king in the first place.

Buuuut of course he has a crisis because that means he'll lose his family as they are now but also he kinda did kill a bunch of people and mess up an entire country sooOoooOOoo

But theennn Isa or Odile catches wind of what Sif is trying to do and the fam manages to secretly tweak his wish so their memories are transported back with them too.

and idk they go back looking like loop or another star creature and hunt themself down to stop them from meeting/helping the king. The fam has to find him before he spirals too far.

its very late and my brain is going all over the place with this. Maybe he finds the king and is about to kill him but his past self walks in and is like uhhh and then they fight and stops him from killing their other self.

Loop is there too maybe idk and the king gets redemption too i guess?

Imagine.

ok so um. i got. a BIT carried away.

(chrono tag)

[hexxingcode]

woe, fish polycule be upon ye. i just thought the video game outcome was too interesting not to draw in some way... so you can have these bitches i guess. and the devious lamb. actually i have the design too.

stupid cult leader reference image ^

i like the golden fleece. i am not very good at using it but i like it

[r0sy-maple-m0th]

ever after academy

*ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

(note; you dont need to have watched ever after high to understand this, its not going to be an exact clone of eah, just inspired! as long as you know grimms fairytales, you should be able to understand this stuff. i do highly reccommend the show if you havent seen it though :>)

R E B E L S

Lenore — Daughter of the Evil Queen, Lenore accidentally finds herself as some sort of leader to the Rebels after publicly denying her horrid destiny to poison the one she's not meant to love.

Duke — Son of the Dark Fairy, Duke doesn't care much for his destiny, choosing to ignore it entirely as he much prefers to use his talents for entertainment.

Pluto — Son of the Chesire Cat, Pluto often finds himself falling into the background and going unnoticed. That is, until his roommate casts him aside and he stumbles upon a place he can finally be himself without worry; his home with the Rebels.

Eulalie — Daughter of the Mad Hatter, Eulalie is often looked down upon and treated as if she were a child simply because of her unique understanding of the world. She hopes that her new friends, the Rebels, will be able to understand her better.

Berenice — Daughter of Little Red Riding Hood, Berenice would consider herself to be pretty outspoken, refusing to let anyones status get in the way of what they deserve to hear. ((i wasn't going to add notes here, i feel like it kills the immersion, BUT I GENUINELY HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO WRITE FOR HER INTRO. i feel like i know nothing about her jfshjf))

R O Y B E L

Morella — Daughter of Goldilocks, Morella is often pulled between groups. Shes incredibily loyal to all of her friends, but her not-quite-royal not-quite-rebel lineage leads her to questioning with who she truly belongs.

R O Y A L S

Annabel Lee — Daughter of Snow White, Annabel Lee, being the future queen means that eyes are always on her, and so she must constantly maintain her perfect porcelain persona. Its for this reason that she finds herself naturally adopting the role of leader for the Royals.

Prospero — Son of Prince Charming, Prospero is the most eligible bachelor in all of Ever After Academy-- much to his chagrin. To avoid the unwanted attention without disregarding his destiny, he agrees to a mutually beneficial fake-relationship with his best friend Annabel.

Ada — Daughter of the Swan Queen, Ada is rather discontent with her destiny, desiring to be more like the fairytale pioneers she'd grown up adoring. If there was any way for her to be percieved as more than she is, she'd do it in a heartbeat.

Montresor — Son of the Queen of Hearts, Montresor is not what most would consider a 'typical royal', his callous personality leading many to first believe him to be a rebel. The Wonderland students say he gets it from his mother.

Will — Son of Sleeping Beauty, Will knows he isn't what was intended for his destiny, and if hes being honest with himself, he doesn't even really want it. He'd much prefer to live his own life while one of his many sisters got to follow in their mothers footsteps instead.

EAH inspiration and explanations below the cut lmk your thoughts + if youd do anything differently! im still open to changing things if any better ideas come up :>

*ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

gender is a social construct, dont mind the fact everyone but prospero is based on a girl 😭😭there wasnt a whole lot of male characters to pick from, and the ones that were there didn't suit anyone ;p

ALSOO LAST QUICK NOTE! i know that some characters would definetely suit others best (ex. like montresor couldve easily been someone like faybelle or courtly, but i ended up picking lizzie instead), HOWEVER i really wanted their status as a royal/rebel to match the nevermore groups. so the misfits are all rebels, and the posh gang, i forget what they get called lol, are all royals even if logically montresor should be a rebel because he is a horrific human being!! oh and ofc morella is stuck in the middle, being both royal and rebel.

OKAY END OF TANGENT, heres my thought process;

Lenore — Raven Queen; i dont think i need to explain this one, it just felt right. plus she already has tons of raven imagery + even had a pet dragon named nevermore! it was too perfect lol

Duke — Faybelle Thorn; struggled a bit with him, but ended on faybelle since it suits him being a magician. hes definetely not as mean as her unless its warranted, we all know he has a mean streak, cough attempted to murder annabel, cough cough. but yeah, i think the misfit magician/fairy vibe works.

Pluto — Kitty Chesire; between the cat motif, gloomier color pallete, as well as the ability to disappear and go unnoticed, i thought this worked as a nice parallel!

Eulalie — Madeline Hatter; its the weird girl aura to be completely honest lmfao. eulalie definetely isnt as mad as maddie, but you cant tell me they wouldnt be best friends. and the color schemes arent a complete match, but i think maddies colors would look SO good on eula!

Berenice — Cerise Hood; honestly. this was mostly vibes, i think she'd look good with a red cape LOL. but it also works in the sense that shes kind of a tomboyish free spirit. lmk your thoughts on if she should be half wolf like cerise is, because i actually dunno if we should keep that in the au ;p

Morella — Blondie Locks; there were probably hundreds of better choices, but i was stumped. i needed someone that was both a royal and rebel, and the only options i could think of were blondie and poppy. between the two blondie was a better choice, morella doesnt have much of a rapunzel vibe.

Annabel Lee — Apple White; same thing as lenore, do i really gotta explain this one?😭 visually and storywise it just works so perfectly! theyre both the top of their class, both the leader of their respective groups, ANDD they both pretend to be straight. your honor i rest my case

Prospero — Daring Charming; so like. prospero is very much not daring-esque. like at all lmfao. and im aware of that! but it works in the sense that he'd be annabels 'prince' and a lot of people fawn over him (much to his disliking, aroace rep lets gooo).

Ada — Duchess Swan; this was one of the original ideas that sparked this whole au cause WOW THEYRE SIMILAR! both of them desire to be higher class than they really are, and are willing to change the way they behave to reflect that. ada probably wouldnt try to steal destinies in this au, but she definetely would get buddy-buddy with all of the more popular royals (which would be why she falls so hard for prospero)

Montresor — Lizzie Hearts; THIS ONE. THIS WAS TOUGH. im still not 100% sure if this was the right choice, but its a start! basically the thought process was lizzie is a royal who could still be perceived as cruel. add in the mommy issues (this queen of hearts would be a worse parent than lizzies) and firey red color scheme, it felt like the best choice for him. i did consider sparrow hood at one point but lowkey i dont think im ready for that combination LOL. which is fine cause i forgot sparrow was a rebel and that makes the whole idea fall apart, sigh

Will — Briar Beauty; this actually started as a joke since he sleeps through classes, but then it kind of grew on me lmao. it also works in the sense that theyre both unsatisfied with the life they lived/the life they need to live. originally he was going to be alistair wonderland, since theyre both kind of just normal guys, but i feel like theres less story potentional with that idea. so im sticking with briar unless someone convinces me otherwise ;p

[basket-of-radiants]

Why were you so disappointed by Rhythm of War?

This has been sitting in my askbox for years. I've taken several cracks at answering, only to get frustrated with the subject matter and burn myself out every time. I didn't like Rhythm of War. More than that, I didn't like it in a way that tainted my enjoyment of the entire series. And despite what it may seem, I don't actually enjoy discussing things which I don't like. I always want to talk from a place of good faith. Which is why now that my feelings towards the series are a little more positive, I think I can finally answer this.

I'm going to try to stay away from specific plotpoints and story beats for this post, because my goal isn't to nitpick (if for no other reason than it would take a week to write this post), I'm just looking to talk about my overall impressions. I think that might mean the only spoilers here will be structural? idk, if you haven't read Rhythm of War yourself then you should probably do that before looking for other people's opinions anyway. 

I liked Way of Kings when I first read it. I didn't love it at the time, but I liked it. Certainly enough to keep reading once I'd finished. One thing that made me a bit uncomfy, however, was the war against the Parshendi. They were this unknowable enemy which the book was not interested in knowing. An inhuman army. Their main purpose was to kill Kaladin's friends, or else be killed by Dalinar's armies. And yet the Parshendi, and the parshmen in the form of Shen, did show hints of personhood. And so it bothered me how Dalinar spoke so casually about how the Alethi had decimated their numbers, how the others used the war as a means to amass wealth and power. (It didn't bother me in a "this is a bad book" way but in a "these characters are bad people" way.)

One of my foibles as a reader is that when a book is very clearly treating one side of a conflict with more humanity, I tend to be a bit predisposed towards the other to account for that. And with the Alethi clearly being the invading party and superior military force, there was also some underdog favoritism. I didn't really like how the book treated the Parshendi. This is to say that going forward, the singers would be more important to me than any other through line.

So imagine my delight at reading Words of Radiance and meeting Eshonai, one of the Parshendi, who even gets her own point of view sections! They were no longer being treated as a faceless mass, we were getting to see things from their perspective as well. And it became plain to see the damage the Alethi had done to them. I couldn't really bring myself to root for Dalinar or really any of the humans against the listeners. I couldn't even bring myself to like most of these characters. I still enjoyed the book but once it became clear there wouldn't be a peaceful conclusion, let's just say that I wouldn't have wept for Dalinar and Adolin if Szeth had managed to off them. Like everyone in the book, I assumed that going forward all the parshmen would be turned into evil voidbringers in the everstorm and that the listeners were mostly dead. Except for Rlain, and Eshonai because I'd read or been told that book 4 would be Eshonai's book and thus had assumed she was fine. (Oathbringer spoilers, she was not fine.) So ultimately it was still a bit of a downer way to end the book. 

So imagine my delight at reading Oathbringer, where for the first time singers were being treated as people, full and real people, and where the human characters could no longer ignore or dismiss them. We met Khen and the others, common singers who were sympathetic and just wanted freedom from bondage. We see Venli grapple with the loss of her home. We see Leshwi and Moash connecting with and understanding one another. We learn of a history where singers were the original inhabitants of the planet. Parallel to this, Dalinar is having a truly excellent character arc about confronting one's past actions and acknowledging them to move forward and do better. I loved Oathbringer, for some years it was my favorite book, and I was excited as hell to see what came next. At the time, it seemed to me that there is a clear direction the story is going. Two books about needless war, and then a third where the main cast is forced to acknowledge the personhood of their enemies. This was so cool, all of my feelings from the previous installments were being validated, the characters were going to have to face what they've done in the past and outgrow their militaristic mindsets, I was so sure of that.

Imagine my disappointment when that does not even remotely resemble the direction the story went in Rhythm of War. RoW presented a clear, straightforward “us vs. them" narrative, where every character was totally fine with killing singers. Characters aligned with the singers were either flattened into wholly evil versions of themselves (Moash) or were expected to turn on their side in favor of the humans (Venli.) Because clearly there was no reason good people would be on the side that's all former slaves trying to stay free. Maybe there's some sort of accord or understanding between Navani and Raboniel that I might have found meaningful if the seeds of mutual understanding weren't already there in Oathbringer and then apparently ignored for a year by all the characters.

I have a lot of issues with how the listeners are handled in these books. (Here's some elaboration.) Following OB, I had thought that all my concerns were going to be addressed. Following RoW, I knew they never would be. 

Which is my main complaint, because that's the thread that matters most to me in this series.

I have a lot of other Things as well. Gonna just talk about a few big ones. 

One outsized source of disappointment that may seem a little petty, and which probably is, is that I felt mislead by the premise of the book. It had been announced that this book would center Venli and Eshonai, and I was unbelievably hyped for that. That did not really turn out to be the case. The purpose for their backstory chapters felt less about exploring them as people and contextualizing their arcs, and more about filling in gaps of world history. In the main plot, Venli was a POV character and she certainly played a role, but honestly not a very important one overall. To me she felt like a side character in her own book. I don't think it's controversial to say that the main character of RoW was Navani. A lot of people really like Navani and are happy about that. Unfortunately I'm not one of those people, and I found it all the more difficult to enjoy her when it felt like it was coming at the expense of some of my favorite characters. 

This particular gripe somewhat comes down to preference, obviously everyone prefers to read about characters they like more than those they don't, and it can go both ways. (For instance, on a craft/technical level RoW is probably the superior book to W&T, but I liked the latter a lot more because of my stupidly outsized attachment to Szeth and Nale.) But I do think there's something of a real criticism in how the book would rather focus on the feelings of a queen rather than those of a genocide survivor, and how the former's are given significantly more weight and import. It ties in with my main criticism, I think. 

And then there's how human/human racism had also been wholly cast aside as a plot point. Jasnah fixed slavery so that's resolved, and the only person who still cares about structural racism is the evil bad bad evil villain Moash/Vyre, who is now wholly irredeemable and who you're allowed to totally write off because he's sold his soul to Odium. I've already talked a lot about this. Other people have already talked about this, probably better than me. The writing was actually on the wall for me in OB, but again, RoW was when I fully accepted that this was never going to be addressed. 

There's something else that probably deserves its own discussion rather than being quickly tacked on at the end here, but here we are. This book changed how the series approaches war. 

In WoK, war was very clearly portrayed as a bad and inglorious thing. It was brutal, it was painful, those at the bottom died cruelly and unceremoniously and pointlessly while those at the top turned a profit. Every day was a new horror. The enemy were never evil, they were always just more people forced to go through the same thing. Through the next couple books, it felt to me that even if the characters had accepted war as necessary, there was still a tragedy to it. Conversely, in RoW (and W&T) war is basically a series of boss battles, in between which our protagonists can kill dozens of footsoldiers with barely a thought in the same way WoK had criticized.

Final note on all this, it sucks how we have no perspectives from the former-slaves-singers demographic. Those guys are really thrown under the bus, and seemingly get no self-determination now or ever. It was a glaring problem to me in RoW. Conscripted and enslaved humans and singers probably have just as much ground to form mutual understanding as a fused and a queen. (In fact they already had. In Oathbringer.)

In essence, RoW disappointed me because it left me with the distinct impression that none of the series's most important through lines (well, most important to me) were going to be resolved well. I liked W&T, but I haven't revised my opinion very much about the overall handling of these topics across the series. Maybe one of the reasons I was able to enjoy W&T so much more was because I no longer had such high expectations.