#so now i think i will add a caveat that generally if i see it it’s something i won’t click on and assume i won’t like

[howtofightwrite]

Just a casual question: What lightsaber style do you prefer out of one-handed, two-handed, double-bladed or dual wielding?

We’ll leave out the Lightsaber Forms from the EU, because they are inconsistently defined between sources.

No, no, no. You ask me what my favorite lightsaber is, you get the answer whether you want it or not. The answer may surprise you. It’s (probably) considered the second dumbest lightsaber weapon ever invented in the extended universe with the exception of the lightsaber nunchaku.

Are you ready? Do you have your guesses?

The Lightwhip.

The chosen weapon of Dark Ladies of the Sith and the Nightsisters of Dathomir back when the Sisters weren’t all dark side practitioners and rode rancors.

(This is my favorite. For reference, Starke’s favorite is single blade Form IV: Ataru. He’s boring.)

Now, I agree with the general fandom that the lightwhip is a dumb, impractical weapon that’s more likely to dismember its wielder than it is their opponent. Only someone with a high level of skill, prescience, and telekinesis could make effective use of a lightwhip’s dismemberment murder frenzy without killing themselves. Fortunately, that’s exactly the base level of skills most Force sensitives possess. Probably most important, the lightwhip is the exact sort of dumb we see with real weapons in the real world. This includes the more wild examples like the urumi, the chain whip, and the three-section staff. And, it should be said, I have watched living black belts concuss themselves with the three-section staff while trying to figure out how to use it. All for the Rule of Cool. So, while I accept its impracticality, I refuse the argument that the lightwhip being any more unrealistic in use or invention than the rest of the lightsaber weapon family. Does it have a high skill floor? Absolutely. Is it a safe weapon compared to the rest of its very dangerous family? Absolutely not. Would a student potentially dismember or murder themselves learning to use it? Yes, and that’s why it’s fun. (I’ll add a small caveat that the average student could also dismember themselves with a normal lightsaber, so this isn’t just a danger posed by the lightwhip.)

The lightwhip is a weapon of the Dark Side. Its battle style would be (and should be) wild, chaotic, and nigh uncontrollable. There’s no way to use it safely and it belongs in the hands of a wielder who is straight up thrilled to cut down both their allies and enemies in equal measure. This is the weapon of a murderous lunatic in black leather, and gets even more wild when it switches to a Cat o’ Nine to bring on nine weaving laser tendrils instead of just one. The lightwhip is the sexy Catwoman reference that transcends its genre when we really start to think about how intimidating it’d be to see that thing on the battlefield in the hands of a novice and, especially, an expert.

The standard use for a whip in the real world is as a support tool for your primary weapon, such as a rapier. The whip doesn’t do much damage on its own, leaving only small, painful cuts and lacerations so it transitions into a means of harassment. The advantage of the whip is that it attacks at odd, circular angles which are difficult (if not impossible) to block and will curve into a strike around the opposing weapon. The rippling movement makes it difficult to see and even more difficult to predict. If kept in constant motion, this difficulty triples because the disparate movements blend together.

Now, take this setup and add the lightshow. Instead of a weapon that does light lacerations, we have a weapon that deals massive burns if it doesn’t straight up dismember. It will cut through everything and everyone. Conventional fighting styles fall apart against it. More importantly, because it is a burning plasma ribbon, it doesn’t need to follow the standard rules of physics. The lightwhip is beautiful in its raw, chaotic brutality, it’s high risk, high reward nature, and I love the way it hard counters the standard philosophy of lightsaber combat with a literal curveball. Any opponent who faces it is forced into new, creative approaches for their very survival.

Lastly, I love what the lightwhip says about its wielder as an expression of their vicious, ferocious, highly aggressive personality. This weapon requires commitment and dedication. It’s absolutely fair to say the person who wields a lightwhip has a fanatical, if not suicidal, bent. After all, they’d willingly risk death to master it. They love destruction. They don’t care about outside consequences or property destruction. They go it alone.

I’ll admit the lightwhip’s true potential is too violent for most of Star Wars and, like most Star Wars weapons, it very much lives on the Rule of Cool. One of the sadder aspects with the lightwhip is that, while I love the weapon and its potential, any discussion of it gets mired in sexism. Every appearance of the lightwhip comes with the sexy NSFW Dark Side Dominatrix bent and leads to the lightwhip not being given the consideration it’s potential deserves.

My favorite saber is Darth Maul’s saber staff from The Phantom Menace, because versatility allows for use of both one and two. My favorite lightsaber form (which should now surprise no one) is Form VII: Vaapad.

All that said, I do enjoy a good Dark Side Dominatrix as much as I enjoy a moody and hooded Dark Side Goth. And I genuinely love dumb and, seemingly, impractical weapons when the reward justifies their risk. If there’s a general writing advice takeaway here, always consider the practicality of an impractical but cool weapon, address i’s rewards as well as its risks, and pair it with a suitable personality. The lightwhip is not a weapon that belongs in the hands of a Jedi or, really, any individual who possesses any degree of restraint. It’s for a character who merrily expresses raw, raging power at every opportunity and willing to risk destroying themselves along with everyone else for victory.

There’s a weird angle with the Star Wars EU where they tried to establish the lightwhip as weaker than the lightsaber (*cough* woman’s weapon *cough*) with less cutting power even when it doesn’t use a physical cord, which makes absolutely no sense. The lightsaber is the more versatile weapon, while the lightwhip is more specialized and circumstantial. Which fits with the patterns of real world weapons technology.

This a long circle round to saying that the weapons we choose for our characters act as personality tells. Which is why it’s important to give a lot of thought and consideration to any weapon’s historic use and purpose before attaching it. Weapons communicate more than we might expect, both via their situational viability and associated cultural myths. It’s important to choose whether you’ll address this, especially if you’re not planning to intentionally communicate that message or make those personality traits part of the character’s identity. Weapons are tools and, like with all tools, different tools attract different personalities. In fiction, we the authors often decide this from an external perspective. Once a choice has been made, always give yourself a chance to think about it from a character’s internal perspective. Why did Character X choose this weapon? Why do they want to use it? What does this weapon do for them that another weapon doesn’t? Or, what makes that other weapon less attractive?

You might find yourself with an answer or story beat you hadn’t previously considered.

Food for thought.

-Michi

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[drdemonprince]

Just chiming in to agree that that person is not a selfish bitch. I'm also really put off by moralistic performances of emotion, and I know in my case it's because it was part of a pattern of abusive behaviour that my mother did.

Anytime you expressed to her that there was a problem with her behaviour, she seemed to genuinely believe that if she put enough effort into weeping and crying on her children's shoulders, and verbally denigrating herself for being an inherently bad an immoral person, and stressing so much that she developed physical illnesses from it, then she could follow that up by asking for forgiveness - as if it would be cruel for us to continue her suffering by denying her that forgiveness. Except that to her, "forgiveness" meant "it's all swept under the rug, I have Atoned By Suffering Guilt, so now it doesn't matter and I can keep doing it again." (I really wonder how much the religious background of her parents' generation came into the formation of this worldview.) And at the same time, she refuses to read news that's "too upsetting" and never engages with literature or media about dark themes "because there's enough of that in real life."

It might be cynical of me to read this pattern into the way people talk online about genocide. But I keep seeing parallels. My perspective is that a) if you're not regulating your emotions well enough to function, then you have less capacity to offer practical help; and b) people who are actually trying to survive genocide want unnecessary human suffering to END, so you're not aligning yourself with that hope by engaging in rumination etc that compounds suffering with not practical benefit to anyone.

But also, watching my mother's behaviour has led me to add perspective c) that a lot of people (in Christian cultures?) haven't developed enough understanding of the complexity of the world and how to relate to it, and genuinely believe that an overblown emotionally affected reaction, followed by helplessness and thereby inaction, is the only possible way for them to respond when they're confronted with upsetting information that demands action from them. Being raised to think in a black-and-white "good vs evil" dichotomy, and thinking about people as "either morally good or morally bad" rather than thinking about people as neutral and behaviours as either ethically helpful or harmful... it doesn't give them a conceptual framework to integrate upsetting information and then carry on getting things done, it's like their moral anxiety gets them stuck and that keeps the emotions escalating.

I see people discussing this pattern in the context of religious trauma, and in the context of the cultural construct of "whiteness" - the discovery of something morally bad has to be followed by an extreme emotional reaction that basically amounts to protesting your own innocence and helplessness to deny responsibility for your direct behaviours (in my mother's case) or complicity in a corrupt system (in the case of overwhelmed average people learning about genocide).

Maybe I'm rambling more than I'm analysing here, but the comparison stands out a lot to me and it's troubling to watch.

yo anon no this is gold, thank you for sharing. This is remarkably astute.

I will add the quick caveat that hyperempathic people who are debilitated by their sensitivity exist, of course, and have very real struggles and none of this is intended to denigrate them. In practice, their behavior can have the impact of silencing criticism or distracting from the issue at hand but being wired that way certainly does not doom a person to behaving in a counterproductive, manipulative manner.

This critique is more about performative over the top empathy as a tactic (conscious or not) of offloading responsibility, and as a pseudo-religious ideology that makes predominately white western cultures particularly ill-equipped to deal with the consequences of their global plundering. almost certainly by design. Most moral teachings that we encounter in the west promote this tactic and ideology, and it gets very deeply ingrained in most us if we don't devote a ton of attention to uprooting it.

thanks for this great response.

[otogariado]

i am always skeptical of media where the monstrous creatures of evil are painted as irredeemable and truly inhuman because they aren't capable of thinking and feeling like humans—it's easy for it to fall into so many -isms, notably ableism and racism. it's like the age old argument against robots except make it fantasy, and to have it painted in such a cut and dry way sets off alarm bells.

but i think the way frieren (the show) handles its demons and the concept of them only being able to mimic human speech and other parts of human culture and not understand it is actually good. in that, intrinsically, frieren (the show) is about human connection. they put a lot of emphasis on human understanding as well as compassion. and i think it's fundamental that frieren (the character) is presented the way she is—an elf who is also inhuman, but is so very human in her sentience anyway. she doesn't perceive a lot of things similarly to humans because of the gap between her morality and the morality of humans, but still she is able to shift her perspective the more she interacts with people and the world around her and the more she opens up to it. when your main character is presented as an "outsider looking in" and is going through an arc of self-(re)discovery, it changes the game when you introduce demons.

at first i was heavily against demons being painted in such a frank way. it's been a while since i watched that arc when it was released, but since then i think the concept of the clones in the dungeon during the second exam in the exam arc adds more insight to it. the clones don't have actual minds, but try to perfectly recreate them instead. and now i understand and accept it. you can mimic and recreate a person from the ground up so perfectly, but it comes with the caveat of no matter how perfect your mimicry is, if it's all logic and algorithms then that's just not human. even if a person is very logical and rational in their way of thinking, people are imperfect. there's always factors that influence how we think and feel (even if we're someone who doesn't 'feel' as much as other people), "noise" that would count as human error. and that's something the demons never account for. as people have put it, how terrifying is it to recreate something without fundamentally understanding it.

and now it's very interesting how timely this theme is in frieren with regards to discussions about the (mis)use of AI and topics like AI art. it's a whole other discussion entirely, but it's really fascinating timing that these discussions kind of align. i don't believe AI is inherently "evil" (and i don't like how most people talk about it like it's a boogeyman) because ultimately it is supposed to be a tool and it depends on those who program it and wield it. but i firmly believe that AI is not meant to replace humans, because it just can't. it's meant to augment our lives for improvement but never completely replace anyone. AI art in particular can almost be related to frieren directly: AI art is generated through an algorithm. yes, AI follow decision-making algorithms and that's how it learns and comes up with outputs. but ultimately these decisions could never come close to the thought process a real human could have. an AI can mimic a pattern it sees from a certain artist, but it can never recreate the artistic vision that the original artist had that lead to that very specific decision. and people are inconsistent; it's only natural to us humans. the downfall of AI is that since it is decision-based, it has to follow a certain set of rules, and that in of itself already hinders it from ever coming close to humans. because humans are constantly changing, and people can react to an event they're re-experiencing differently than they did originally. i used to hate onions as a kid and now i love eating them. do you think demons have a concept of that in the universe of frieren?

[songoftrillium]

You seem uniquely qualified to answer this question, how do you feel about Fera?

I think they're dumb personally (I just don't like shape shifters being non-mammalian predators) but like the narrative purpose they serve of showing how pigheaded and misguided the garou are

How about you?

I'll open this up by noting that 'dumb' is a slur referring to people with a speech impediment, and I'd like to discourage its usage.

To answer regarding the fera however:

I love the changing breeds, with some caveats. When I began Storytelling, I had to set boundaries with players because there are some incredibly good fera out there, but also ones that can straight up break the game or are extremely incompatible with the Garou or chronicle. This isn't an issue when running an exclusively all-fera game, but it's not common that I or other STs typically run an all-fera game. The second point on compatibility is where one should audit a changing breed for use in their game:

Does this changing breed demographically make sense to be here?

Does their presence serve a narrative purpose?

Do their mechanics mesh well with Garou? Can they be made to mesh well?

Do they have the agency to cooperate with the Garou and vice versa?

If the answer to all four questions is 'yes,' then the fera can absolutely work, and work well in your setting (with caveats.) W:tE features many fera such as the Balam, which on the surface wouldn't fit in the Pacific Northwest. However, there are many large Latine populations that can be found here, both in terms of those living close to cities permanently and migrant workers. Where things concern those populations, then it makes total sense for there to be the occasional two-heart among them alongside their culture, Kin and Killi alike.

For reasons like the above, you're gonna find several Fera in Werewolf: the Essentials from the get-go, forming part of the Dawn Tribes representing all of the Indigenous shapeshifters that persisted in the Americas since the Impergium:

Balam

Corax

Gurahl

Mokolé

Nuwisha

Pumonca

Qualmi

There are some game elements I'm not fond of that are changing. For simplicity, cases of fera are gonna be represented as singular entities. There's just one kind of Gurahl, one kind of Mokolé, and the Bastet are represented singularly now. They are basically placed hierarchically as extensions of Dawn Tribe culture, in which they see each other as all spirit cousins under Gaia. Historical precedent has forced them to work with each other for the first time since the War of Rage and find themselves better protected by each other than on their own. This goes as far as to alter the game language, adopting the term 'Killi' from the Bastet book to refer to (all shapeshifters), rather than merely 'Fera', which speaks of the changing breeds as an entity separate from (or less than) the Garou.

I did away with the second War of Rage because it narratively makes very little sense (and the elements that can be considered critical can just be rolled into the first.) The handling of gifts is more generalized now through implementing spirit affinities, and grouping gifts under the spirits that teach them. This significantly reduces page count (no more than 9 different kinds of Hare's Leap.) Renown tracks are being made more fluid on the character sheet so you can play any changing breed on the same sheet, and other small world changes can be made that create a narratively compelling reason for multiple Killi to exist in the game.

In short, they can work, but it takes nuance to do well. And I encourage just that; write your chronicles with nuance. The Changing breeds, if used smartly, can add a ton of narrative color to a Chronicle and are worth exploring, particularly when representing cultural diversity in a setting.

[dementedspeedster]

Alright here's my thoughts on a way Thad could have essentially a 'redemption arc' Post-FMA and post death. (Actually in retrospect Post-Rogues Revenge to be specific. I just lump that with FMA. Though I don't accept what happened with Josh Mardon).

This post started as a response/add-on to @radioactive-earthshine's post here, so a bit of its phrasing is in conversation with that post. Though i have done some editing since my first draft of this post.

Please excuse my rambling as I love thinking of Thad from a perspective of post-FMA and post-death and having come back to life for a second chance.

***

Notes:

General Note (before or after you read this post): I guess my big caveat with this idea is that at least some people have to be willing to give Thad a BIG chance and let him try to prove himself in order for it to really work. People gotta be cool with

*1 - Why post Thad's death? - I see Thad's death as a catalyst for him to change or be open to some change because death is such a huge consequence of his actions, but also because 1. Since he's a speedster he's not dead in the traditional way thanks to the Speed Force essentially housing speedsters. And 2. It also gives hm time away from other people and the influence of the Thawnes in order for him to think. He can look at his life and reexamine his own thoughts, feelings, decisions, and essentially his entire life and for once reflect on his own without having to confront someone else, prove himself, or defend his choices in that moment. He can just reflect. Though that won't fix everything. Instead, it is an impetus for Thad to change. (Also just from a comic/visual medium perspective I think it would be cool to delve more into the speedsters who are 'stuck' in the Speed Force. But that's a conversation for another day.)

***

By looking at Thad’s actions post Mercury Falling as being due solely to him and his feelings and desires such as a sense of bitterness, a desire to prove himself, and as a way validate his own existence such as through killing Bart, I can see Thad (preferably post his death)*1 realizing that his previous actions were never going to lead to his own validation. Thad killing Bart while it might have felt good in the moment, ultimately meant nothing and was a bittersweet endeavor because after that moment he loses all purpose and drive with his victory over Bart. He realizes that he was just falling to his own bitterness and the teachings of violence and hatred from the only life he knew.

With the realization that his past actions weren't right, that they didn't truly bring him happiness or validation, he can progress from where he was before. He would no longer be reliant on his hatred toward Bart to propel his life, but instead he would live for himself and live his own life for the first time. He would be free.

Now, just this concept where Thad no longer shackled to his hatred toward Bart in itself could lead to so many different scenarios and paths for Thad as he builds a life for himself (and I could go into that), but specifically in relation to a 'redemption arc' it would lead more specifically toward the tribulations that come with self-discovery and building a life for himself now that he is alive again. Now, I say this specifically with a social perspective in mind with regard to this bit. Because Thad post death would be trying to build a life for himself while people/heroes/most of the Flash Family consider him a villain and still hold his past actions, like killing Bart, against him. It's gonna be hard for him to go through this 'redemption arc' and there are gonna be consequences for Thad's past through how people treat him, but despite that he's still going to try. It's a scenario of self-betterment, but also I think unconsciously he's also trying to make up for what he's done by being a better person than he was.

Setting-wise this arc would be set in the Twin Cities are. Either Keystone City or Central City, so he can't help, but run into members of the Flash Family. But these potential/chance meetings with other Flash Members allows him to make connections; good, bad, and just neutral depending on who it is in the Flash Family he meets and if they're familiar with him.

***

Regarding the topic of redemption when applied to Thad/how he would personally handle the process of redemption/changing:

I think redemption for Thad would be half him fighting his own 'inertia,' his resistance to change. Part of Thad would still be so ingrained in the idea that he is "bad," a villain, and a Thawne (even though he's abandoned the family in every way except name) because that is what he has known for so long and because that is what people are telling him definitively when they see that he's alive again. Thad believes these sorts of things about himself and is also unwilling to let go of his past because it is all he has ever know, so he is fighting the fact that he actually is changing as a person. And this would be further reflected in his actions. He would be consciously putting distance between himself and the Flash family, he would be punishing himself for his previous actions, and SAYING that he has not changed despite how actions would show that he has. Thad's stubborn, but I also think that he would be scared of change as well, and at this part of his life would very much be his own namesake, Inertia.

***

Briefly regarding what his actions would look like at this time as he finds himself and his own life:

I say in this scenario he would overall straddle a sort of anti-hero line though his actions skew toward more heroic, though not to the same degree as heroes. It's not out of a desire to do right for others, but it would be selective in a way and drawing from what he cares about. Like, sure, if he's in the area he will save someone who is in danger, but more specifically I think he would be real conscious of how younger metas are treated, so no one ends up being used like he was in his youth, that they can have a childhood he didn't have, so he would speak up in those kinds of scenarios. Regarding labels: Thad still would probably still stubbornly label himself a villain because of his unwillingness to consciously/overtly change himself as I previously mentioned, but also because of the perspective directed toward him by heroes. Though people can call him whatever they like, but he's still going to do what he think is best.

***

Forgiveness

I agree that forgiveness would be very difficult, but I also think that it would be possible for him to interact with the Flash Family albeit selectively. I think that people like Max and Barry would be the most willing to give Thad a chance and willing to understand that he was used, manipulated, and essentially a child soldier, but also willing to give him a chance and see that he is not the same person he was before if they ran into him again.

Max and Barry are my top contenders for giving Thad a chance because respectively Max understands Thad to a degree. He's experienced who he was a child and the thought he gave to being a hero and potential he had. I don't think he would try to force Thad to become a hero again, but would meet him with some understanding though it might need to be earned somewhat after knowing about Bart's death. I think Max would have to see a bit of a change in Thad for him to fully try to connect with Thad again. It would take a bit of work.

As for Barry, I think he would in general be more open to giving Thad a chance simply if Thad expressed it. I think, in part, it is due to how disconnect Barry sort is from a lot of major events that have happened to his family and in particular Bart. He would be taking Thad more at a face value because he doesn't know Thad or his past. He probably wouldn't know how Thad kidnapped Iris in his youth, and he might not know that Thad is the one who killed Bart (that would probably depend on what he's been informed of by the rest of the family).

Overall, this scenario regardless of who would be willing to give Thad a chance would mostly cause some discord internally for the Flash Family, as they all would have different perspectives of Thad, but also probably regarding perspectives of 'redemption,' whether people can change, and specifically whether Thad can change or if he even deserves a chance.

Ultimately, though what this all would culminate to is either Thad very very VERY slowly becoming sort of a part of the Flash-family or sorta absorbed within the Flash-family circle in the sense that some of the members are willing to give him a chance. (I think there's a touch of hilarity and awkwardness just at the thought of someone like Barry inviting Thad to a holiday dinner. I also think it's also a good way exploring family and the complexities of family and family dynamics when you add someone like Thad to the mix. Kinda like a relative you're not fond of or the black sheep of the family who has history. There's just so many themes that open up when you add Thad to the mix.) It's very much a black sheep scenario. Or that his 'redemption' allows for him to slowly make up for his past. People can feel however they want to feel toward him, they can distrust him still or think it's an act, but the fact he's make strides for himself and as a person slowly becomes undeniable in this scenario as time goes on.

I also think both "outcomes" would allow him to have future appearances and interact with members of the Flash Family as he goes through the process of trying to prove himself/make up for his past.

And that is basically how I would write Thad in a 'redemption' arc. It's not a traditional redemption, but instead it's more focused upon consequences, actively working toward being a better person that you were before, and focused more upon the development than the outcome.

If you have any questions feel free to ask and I'll try my best to answer.

[kyouka-supremacy]

(person whose tags you reblogged on that ask about the anime here lol) I think what a lot of Bones defenders don't seem to realize is that this isn't just a case of us whining because we don't get what we want, like us complaining about like "they didn't draw this panel Exactly How It is In The Manga, how dare they!!!", we're not being nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking; these kinds of supposedly minor complaints probably wouldn't bother me in another show, because no adaptation is perfect and there will always be differences in how the panels are adapted, but in specifically BSD it bothers me because of the bigger picture, which is the fact that all of these tiny blunders are a direct result of them not understanding what kind of series BSD is and the tone and feelings each scene in the manga is meant to convey -- they see it as a shounen and adapt it as such, like you said. It's not about these moments in of themselves that are the problem, but because there's SO MANY of them, and they all add up, and they speak to the aforementioned much larger problem. I also just think that's kind of ignorant to just act like a season(s) with a downgrade in art quality, so many reused frames and animations, and disturbingly long static frames sometimes is in any way acceptable as a finished product??? This isn't about me and what I want, this is about the fact that they CLEARLY suffered to get this out and that is NOT OKAY. THERE ARE SO MANY GLARING PRODUCTION ISSUES (have been since season 3) AND THAT IS NOT OKAY. Not for the people who were forced to work on it, not for BSD as a story, and not for Asagiri and Harukawa! And not for the fans either, of course, but I emphasize the first three the most. It's just pure laziness and greed on the part of the Bones higher-ups who wanted it to be like this, and that will never be acceptable, for anyone. The quality of the anime has been significantly better the last few episodes (literally the instant Akutagawa kicked the bucket...) — by which I mean, they're doing the bare minimum for an adaptation, which is better than they usually do! — but I sure couldn't tell you why...! It's left me ecstatic, happy, and excited to watch lately, which is such a relief from constant sadness, outrage, and feeling insulted, but that still doesn't change the fact that it should have been this good THIS WHOLE TIME, and that there's absolutely NO REASON other episodes had to be sacrificed for the better ones: they should have been given enough time to do all of it justice (again, as much justice as Bones can ever do with BSD lol, but still. Season 2 is still so dear to me for a reason, and it's not just because of the nostalgia I have from watching it in 2016). Sorry for rambling more about this in your inbox asldjgflds, but tl;dr I just feel like our complaining comes across as bitching about scenes not being a perfect 1-to-1 panel recreation to a lot of people, when it's so much more than that — it's about BSD as a whole not getting the treatment it really, truly deserves, and how heartbreaking that is to see. It is heartbreaking to me to see how much Asagiri apparently loves the anime, from what he said at Anime Expo, when his story deserves so, so much better than he seemingly is even aware of. And I will always give Bones due credit when they've earned it, like I have the last few weeks, so I'm not even always constantly ragging on them, but even that praise comes with the caveat of "there's no explanation for why the quality is suddenly better now, or why it's so inconsistent in general, and I shouldn't even have to praise it so much, because this level of quality should be a given."

Yeah I agree that Bones has repeatedly demostred a very faulty understanding of the manga tone and even of the themes it carries on– even though there's also a chance that the shift in tone was intentional. They saw that undemanding shonen sold better than seinen (which may now seem easy to disprove, but the same probably wasn't as evident back in 2015 when the bsd anime was announced), so they made the marketing choice to declinate bsd so that it could cater to a shonen audience too, and stuck with that decision. That would make sense although in the end, as you said, it resulted in a series that feels deeply disconnected in tone and themes to its original, all while the narrated events stay the same.

I do wholeheartedly agree that if you need so many reused frames and to resort to static frames that drag on for several dozens of seconds, then your season simply isn't ready for release. C'mon, seriously, an original op and ending are the bare MINIMUM. The only reason why they didn't postpone the season release is greed. Not to mention (very much needed to mention), it's harmful for the animators twice: on one hand, because it necessarily puts them under a lot of stress and overworking conditions in order to churn out an entire season in such a short timespan; but I also feel like we shouldn't overlook the other aspect that is just... How extremely saddening and disheartening it is to not be able to dedicate the time you'd want to your art product, and seeing it published in a way that looks rushed and unfinished. I think it's important to acknowledge the frustration animators are likely to experience when that happens, especially because most times it's people who love their job of artist and of course work hard so that the result is the best it can be. But yeah the thing is: it's important - no matter how unpleasant - to say, it's not okay, because otherwise a low quality product is only going to become the norm.

I agree there was a noticeable quality improvement in the last three episodes (4-6), and I may be wrong, but I think it's reasonable to believe it's because the first three episodes had to be prepared in advance in order to be ready for the pre-screening that took place on the 8th of July in Japan. That may explain why the later episodes have been so much better compared to the first three: they simply had more time to work on them, and it's possible they're keeping working on the episodes even as they're airing. But I do agree... It's very saddening to see. Like of course, I agree, I *AM* happy the last episodes have been good (the last one was especially enjoyable!), but there really is that big ache given by thinking about what the Fukuchi vs. sskk fight could have been if only it was given the time and care it deserved. Sigh. It was just a very unfortunate coincidence for everyone, because, bias aside, it was really a pivotal moment in the whole manga... I mean. C'mon. Atsushi is the protagonist, but is yet again not treated as one because of, once again, marketing choices. It's a bit saddening. With season 4, I was dreading for when the season would have ended; with season 5 I regretfully must admit that I found myself again and again just hoping it would end already. Because even now that the animation has improved significantly, I can't stop thinking of what episode three should have been - what it had the right to be, as no less important than any other episode -, and I feel like my enjoyment of the season is just ruined.

One last note, and I know it's not what you meant when referring to panel-by-panel adaptations, and feel free to consider this my own pet peeve, but. Studios should be able to notice when they're working with the most iconic panel of the entire manga and should treat it accordingly. I'm cool and chill but what they did to the chapter 88 Akutagawa panel is unforgivable and I will resent them forever because of it.

[taylortruther]

It is interesting to see how the art bro's that we usually consider sensitive and intelligent guys turned out to be extremely egoistic or emotionally stupid, pretentious... and the football player who we expected to be stupid and an asshole seems to atleast until now seems extremely emotionally intelligent and soft. I have my issues with guys who tower over me but Taylor's relationship with Travis has made me realize that we cannot and should not generalize.

hmmm forgive me, but i have to add some caveats here because otherwise some joe fans are gonna vague me fajdksl.

for one, i think joe was emotionally insightful in ways that taylor needed, but like all people he has flaws, and he had some issues that they simply couldn't work their way out of it. (or, well, they did: they broke up, which was the best solution.) travis definitely seems emotionally open but i'm sure he has his emotional flaws too, but hopefully he and taylor are more compatible and able to tackle them together.

all men have potential, in their own unique ways, to be emotionally constipated and sexist, just like they all have the ability (if they desire) to be emotionally insightful and supportive partners! regardless of job.

SO YEAH, generalizations can help but they can be very detrimental. you might be missing out on someone who really supports you if you judge based on their job or tweets they made in high school or something.

[viperwhispered]

30 days of twst challenge - day 23: Who do you most relate to?

I mean, I have kinda touched on this earlier in the fave post… But Jamil. No question.

And since this got long (oops), I'm gonna put this behind a readmore.

Now, I feel like I should add the caveat that I’m kinda straitlaced and certainly not as much of a schemer as Jamil is. On the other hand, I did actually have a normal childhood, so… Who knows where I would’ve ended up in his shoes.

But even just seeing the constant worrying and planning and prepping in the Scalding Sands event, which was my first proper introduction to him, was very relatable. I am a planner, through and through, thinking of what’s coming next. Sure, I’d like to think I’m slightly less neurotic, but you’ll have to ask someone else than me about how true that actually is.

And then there was the overblot, and just… Yeah. Like, I totally got it why the constant holding back would get to him. Personally, I would absolutely hate something like that, not being recognized and not being allowed to compete fully and show my all. (I mean yeah there’s more to it, especially with the jp version, but this angle is what resonated with me.)

Also on a less conscious level, for a few years now my husband has been dealing with a chronic illness that limits him quite a bit. A lot of the running of the household is left to me by necessity, as well as managing husband’s things too, and just worrying about him. And like, I can’t help but see the parallels here (which, in hindsight sure are very obvious, even if it took me a while to see them). And I definitely sometimes also dream of just going away just by myself, not having to worry about anyone else but myself.

Also like, with the snarky post-overblot Jamil, it is very much possible he is sometimes saying things similar to what I might be thinking, but choosing to hold back. Because I too sometimes find myself exasperated with people who just don’t get it or who are more chaos than order.

Just, I do generally prefer trying to be nice about it instead.

Also like, the way Jamil tends to think he has to be the one doing things, and believes he’ll be the one who can get it done? Yeah I can definitely see echoes of that in myself too. Both in a healthy self-confidence way and in an unhealthy “gotta keep everything in my hands” / get involved with everything way (definitely something I’m working on). Because for some reason there’s a part of me that thinks I could fix basically everything - or that I have to be the one doing so. Totally a sensible mindset and all.

Which could also lead to talking about hyper-independence, which, uhh, again a bit of a mood. Tho honestly I’m not sure how many good examples of the characters actually relying on others we have in this game anyway so… (Alright Diasomnia and the Shrouds and Vil & Rook seem to be more or less decent about this, at least.)

It’s just, there’s a lot reflected here, some things more clearly than others, but with Jamil its just really feels easy for me to get the whys of what he does. Like I can’t pretend I can truly put myself in his shoes, considering his particular brand of traumatic upbringing and the way it’s warped his way of seeing the world (those with the power and those without, aka masters and servants), but there is just a lot that resonates.

[did-i-do-this-write]

Experiment FAQ

What is the Experiment?

Originally, I designed this experiment to help myself out when I was having a hard time getting writing done just after getting a new job.  My lack of energy and feeling like I had no one to share my progress with started to get me down. 

So I came up with an idea: for every ask I received here on my writing blog, I would write at least 100 words before I answered it!  This method worked wonders for me because it gave me a caveat: if I wanted to interact with the community, I had to get some writing done.  It has since grown, and now over 30 other writeblrs are participating!

How Do I Participate?

It’s as simple as deciding that you want to start using this method, too!  I encourage you to let me know so I can add you to the participants list (linked below) and send a ‘checking in’ ask every once in a while, but that is not a requirement!

You can let me know via DM, reply, reblog, or through an ask! If you send me an ask, I will add you as soon as I get it, but I won't publicly answer until after I've written my 100 words XD

What are the Rules?

You get an ask, you write a hundred words, you answer it.  That’s it!  You can decide if you want to keep track of your progress, or answer the asks normally with no indication that you’re even participating.

Some have taken the idea and made it their own.  For instance, @sleepyowlwrites designates some time when the experiment applies, but otherwise is not always using this method.  @antique-symbolism asks that, if you want your ask to apply, you write “100” before or after, so they know!  And @himbos-hotline switched it from 100 words per ask to 15 minute sprints per ask!  All variations are valid and welcome, that’s why it’s called an “experiment,” it’s about finding what works for you!

What Should I Keep Track of and How?

It’s up to you!  I personally add which WIP I worked on, how many words I wrote for that ask, and how much I’ve written for the experiment as a whole.  I write it at the end of every ask after a divider image. It’s motivating for me to see the number slowly tick up at the end of every ask, but it’s a lot to keep track of!  Some only keep track of total, some only list how many the ask generated, and some don’t keep track at all!

If you're looking to use a tag on your blog to keep track of everything, you can use the collective tag "#the great motivation experiment" or you can make up your own!

What if I Don’t Think This Method Will Work for Me?

That’s totally understandable!  For some, this sort of thing can be overwhelming and the opposite of motivational. 

If you're curious but uncertain, you can always test it out and decide what to do based on your personal results. If it works, great! If not, you can message me privately and let me know you want to drop out. No sweat! I don't mind adding/subtracting your name to the list as many times as you'd like!

If you’re not interested in participating, but still want to be part of the community, you can always check out the participants list and send asks to motivate your fellow writers!  Everyone on it has signed up and agreed to be tagged!

What if Your FAQ Didn’t Answer My Question?

No worries.  I tried to cover the basics, but I am only human after all.  If you still have questions you can always drop into my inbox!  I’ll happily answer your question as soon as I add 100 words to my own word count :D in the meantime, here are some links that might help.

Helpful Links

#The Great Motivation Experiment

Original Post

Participants List

Ask Games (to get you started!)

Whether you decide to join us or not, I hope you’re able to reach all your writing goals!

Happy writing!

[movedraptor5913]

Let's talk a bit about Refraction Railway 2

I'm like a month late on this post, but time means nothing when the track loops infinitely (or at least until the next one comes out). I'm going to give a few thoughts and insights on bosses and mechanics that appear and try to scrape what useful info I can out of my 157-turn first clear. Note that this won't be super in-depth info, just some useful stuff.

Get to the point, how hard is it?

Well, I can't answer that accurately, as I meta-played my way through my first clear (Charge team hits hard). If we compare it to Mirror Dungeon 2 Hard, I'd say it waves around the difficulty of floor 3's fights. The challenge mostly comes from doing it quickly and with few options for healing. There aren't very many attacks I would consider to be "use EGO or die" like there are in later stages of MD2H, but there are some like that.

Overall, if you can consistently clear MD2H in a reasonable amount of time, you probably don't even need my advice to get a sub-200 run. Just take your Mirror Dungeon dream team and send it. If you can only get about halfway in MD2H, you can honestly still probably do this, albeit with some effort. The only caveat about team comp worth mentioning is that Tanks aren't very necessary. You mainly need to worry about winning clashes and hitting things very hard.

As for EGOs, it's a good idea to have some healing ones available like Fluid Sac, Pursuance or Lantern (Sinclair). Fluid Sac will always be the best option for this since it affects everyone and also restores SP. You'll also want some AoE EGOs, if possible, as they'll help trivialize some boss summons and hit multiple parts. Overall, EGOs are going to play a large role in lowering your turn count and keeping your DPS high, so bring a variety, if possible.

About looping

If you're like me, you expected the line to loop from start to finish every time. Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is you don't have to do the full rotation every time. The bad news is that you're going to see those first three bosses more often than you'd like. Each loop adds more stops until you reach Cycle 5, but you'll always start with the same three bosses. Before we get into them, let's talk about-

Choosing Buffs

Each loop, you'll get a selection of 2 buffs: one for you and one for the enemies. The buffs you choose might not seem huge at first, but you start to feel them as time goes on. Ally buffs you pick will be unavailable for the next loop, but you can pick them again the loop afterwards. Enemy buffs are chosen once each until loop 5. You also get a free revive at the end of Cycle 4, in case one of your units drops dead before you enter the final fight.

For Ally buffs, you'll want to work around your playstyle. Have a lot of a sin affinity or damage type on your field team? Pick buffs that correspond to those. Mileage with effect buffs may vary, as some bosses have caps on how high the count can go for certain effects. I'd strongly suggest not going for the one-off heals if you can avoid it, as you're getting that heal at the cost of DPS in a mode that encourages DPS. If you take a hit you don't think you can recover from via passives/EGO in a fight, there's a retry button built in now. A case can be made for picking Heal All on the stop before Terminus, but that's only if you think you need a full heal before the final boss.

For Enemy buffs, my order is Opportunistic, Inhaling, Accelerating, Thirsting, Hardening. Opportunistic is basically free. There's rarely a point where you don't want to deal HP damage to the enemy. Accelerating and Inhaling are both mildly annoying but can ultimately be relatively harmless. Thirsting and Hardening sit better at the end since Thirsting drains your resources faster and Hardening makes the fights longer. What order you pick them exactly should depend on what you're most confident won't have a high impact on your turn count, but generally, this is what you're going to pick.

The First Stop - So That No One Will Cry

The name apparently stems from it beating you to death. Nobody can cry when they're dead.

The Talisman Doll is the first boss of the railway. This first encounter is probably one of the harder fights due only to a lack of resources. This fight will mark the first and most noteworthy instance of my personal mantra for low odds clashing: "They only need to lose one coin toss." When you clash with multiple coins against bad odds, try to ensure you can at least beat their lowest roll with just one coin.

The Doll will enter a block phase on turn 3, during which it becomes near untouchable. During the block phase, you can use sinners with Curse Talisman on them to attack the blocking parts to force larger stacks of Reattached Talismans on the doll. The event gives it 5 Reattached Talisman on success, so you can either give it 6 beforehand to inflict Bind or give it more than that to give it Attack Power Down. Breaking its arm reduces its Attack Power by 1.

The only scary part about this fight beyond getting your sanity up at the start is the three 17 +2 *5 hits it does on turn 4. It having 10+ Reattached Talismans reduces the coin power by 1, making it 17 +1 *5. Use either EGO or a sufficiently big normal hit to clash, because the Doll's multi-coin attacks hurt.

Steam Transport Machine

If you put a faucet on it, it'll be a time sink in more ways than one.

This dude is the first big sack of hit points you'll fight. It gains bonuses depending on the current total turn count of the run, gaining Protection and Attack Power Down on even turns and Fragile and Attack Power Up on odd turns. Later on, it gains a passive heal and extra skill slots.

Break its Steam Blaster to make it gain Fragile every time it gains Poise. You can't target the blaster once it breaks. Once its main body breaks, it gains Ineffective resistances to everything, and the fight slows to a crawl as your attacks do .25x damage. You'll want to dump as much damage as possible into it the same turn you break the body. Any attacks after that are going to be entirely dependent on Fragile to deal meaningful damage.

Alternatively, you can stack damaging debuffs on it, such as Burn, Bleed, Sinking or Rupture. Burn and Bleed have limits on their stacks against it and Sinking does half damage due to it being Gloom affinity, so Rupture works best of the bunch. Hex Nail can also be useful here if you're running a team with a lot of Envy or Pierce damage.

Drifting Fox

Whoever keeps giving that fox umbrellas, can you knock it off? It's getting angrier.

The Fox itself is pretty straightforward: clash the hits, punch the face. The only noteworthy part is the umbrella summon phase, where it Counters and gains Thorns (reflect 50% damage dealt). More umbrellas are summoned each cycle. The umbrellas power up the big scary hit that occurs the following turn (adding Clash Power +2 to a 16 +6 *1 attack), so kill them quickly.

Big AoE EGOs (Sunshower (Yi Sang) in particular) are useful here on later cycles, even if you accidentally hit the Fox's counter. If you're creative with your targeting, you can wipe out all the umbrellas in the same turn with a combination of AoEs and normal attacks while minimizing stray hits going to the Fox. While I don't know if it changes anything for sure, you can use faster units to take out surviving umbrellas before clashing with the big hit.

Cycle 1 - T Corp. Class 3 Collectors

Unsurprisingly, the only humans in the otherwise all-monster lineup feel a bit lackluster by comparison.

T Corp is the only fight with an enemy sanity gauge in the entire railway, but it only goes down with Sinking. Not much to write home about here in terms of difficulty. You know the drill.

If they end the turn with 6%-24% health, they'll be back up to 80% next turn, so try to knock them to around half on turn 1, then wipe them out on turn 2. On my first run, I fairly consistently killed them in 3 turns due to the healing mechanic until I got used to dealing with it. From Cycle 3 onwards, there's a second wave. It's just the same two dudes again, so 2 turn them again.

Cycle 2 - Faelantern

I have no joke. This is a DPS check and nothing else.

At the start of the fight and any turn when the Fairy is alive, some of your sinners will be charmed and unable to deal damage (the number of which increases with Cycle count). You can't clash with anything until the Fairy dies, so just hit it.

Deal enough damage to kill the Fairy in a turn, then nuke the tree. The Fairy revives the following turn unless the body is staggered. Rinse and repeat until the tree dies. Not the most interesting fight.

Shock Centipede

"Even in death, I stall."

Shock Centipede is a straightforward fight with its main gimmick being Self-Charge. It gains Self-Charge at the start of the fight, at Combat Start with most of its skills, and when it hits you if you have Charge. It having high Self-Charge means it gets more shield when it coils up and its big scary hit becomes bigger and scarier. When it uses High Voltage Discharge (the big hit), try to delay it to the end of the turn to prevent it from benefitting from the Self-Charge it gets at the start of combat from its other skills. When it coils up, hit it in the head to wear down its self-charge. Break its Head to remove its passive Protection and reduce the amount of shield it gets from Coil Up. If you fight it with an Envy-heavy team like I did, Hex Nail can be helpful here. Otherwise, you'll want to have someone who does good Gloom damage or inflicts Sinking to exploit its Gloom weakness.

When the Centipede dies, it doubles however much Self-Charge it had and become invincible. At this point, all you can do is win clashes to wear it out faster. In the best case, you can try to kill the Centipede during a Coil Up to skip this part.

Cycle 3 - Fairy Gentleman (Cycle 4 + Fairy-Long-Legs)

Take a breather, this one's on the house.

Nothing to talk about here, really. Break his arm and take the wine when it's available. Let him use his big scary hit to hit a Tipsy sinner for 0 damage and take the free stagger on him that follows. Just don't let the Tipsy sinner get targeted with multiple big hits, because only the first one will be 0 damage.

When Fairy-Long-Legs joins on Cycle 4, break his arm to lower his Attack Power. When he summons his clover, ignore it and deal with Fairy Gentleman and his gimmick first. FLL will stand there spamming Counter until the clover is destroyed. Just try not to let either of them heal off of you while the clover is alive. Alternatively, kill FLL before he gets the chance to summon the clover. The goal is to get one down before the other.

Cycle 4 - Wayward Passenger

Local Dead Space extra misunderstands "Make us whole", makes holes.

Break its blades to reduce its damage and limit its ability to charge. Be mindful of its Counter and manage who you want to eat the hit from it, because hits are going to hurt this far into the run.

After turn 2, it will disappear and leave behind portals. Break these within 2 turns. If you need to decide which ones to prioritize, focus on the green and blue portals, as they buff Passenger's health and coin power respectively if left alone. After the portals go away, it reemerges and can be hit again. It'll disappear again after being exposed for a turn, but breaking all the rifts forces it to expose itself early. The Passenger's big scary hit is High-Speed Rip Space, which powers up the more rifts you fail to close. You'll only have to deal with it when the Passenger is <30% HP, so it's not unmanageable.

Terminus - Sign of Roses

No matter what happens, at least it'll be over fast.

Sign of Roses gets more health but deals less damage the more cycles you wait to fight it. On turn 2, the Sign summons 7 Roses. This is where you'll want to spam AoE EGOs to kill them quickly, as each flower does a fixed 25% HP in damage to whatever sinner is attached to it by the color of their skill 1. You'll want to kill red Roses with a relatively weak hit, as the damage that kills it will be dealt back to the attacker.

The event that repeats throughout the fight has three outcomes: Refuse to dye the flowers to reduce the damage taken and damage dealt by 10%, Accept to either increase damage dealt and damage taken from the color used to pass the check by 10% or, on a failed check, have nothing happen. If you're going for speed, there's no reason to not Accept every time and just nuke its flesh once the threat of the Roses is managed.

End of the Line

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I'm definitely going to have to challenge the Railway again to see one of two things: Can I do it with a lower turn count, or can I do it with a more specialized team? My first clear was a Charge team and that's the current meta (W Corp Don/Ryoshu and Rabbit Heathcliff are the epitome of "hit it very hard"). I'm currently in the process of building a Sinking team, but I might wait until the 10/11 patch to actually use it since Sunshower Heathcliff is getting his Protection changed. A Rupture team would also be fun to try, but I'd need more resources to get that team uptied.

My only complaint is that solo/<7 unit fights are dead since you can't gain skill slots in RR2, so we can't meme on the bosses as hard anymore. Imagine the madness that could have ensued now that Sinclair can heal himself with Lantern corrosion. (As I write this, I found this clip of Yi Sang soloing the doll. Solo boss memeing isn't quite dead yet, it seems.) Otherwise, I think Refraction Railway 2 is pretty alright. It's a bit of a time investment and it's still the gameplay you're likely used to at this point, but it's something different to do.

[landgraabbed]

hi! i was wondering if you had game recs for someone that has only played sims and stardew on pc! im the person and i want to start playing more stuff but i dont want to start with something too difficult i hope that makes sense 🐣 thank you and i hope you enjoy your weekend

hi nonners!! sure thing! a huge chunk of my childhood gaming was harvest moon and sims so let's see! my gaming tastes are very unified yet all over the place so don't take this as gospel and something you will For Sure enjoy! feel free to follow up if any game/genre piques your interest!

if you never did so, i would recommend giving the sims handheld games (namely, sims bustin' out, urbz, and sims 2 on the gba/ds). they're still in the universe of the sims so you take care of your lil sim/urb but they're adventure games where you're given tasks and progress through the story. the writing is silly but good, and the characters are fun, though the games may feel grindy at times. feel free to hit me up if you'd like, i can hook you up with them!

in the farming sim/resource manager sim, i can recommend you the harvest moon games, now story of seasons. story of seasons: a wonderful life just came out on the switch, and i think other platforms, and it is a remake of the iconic a wonderful life. just keep in mind that it might feel like a step down from just how much content is in stardew valley! there's also the rune factory series, my time at portia (and the upcoming my time at sandrock), ooblets, graveyard keeper, calico, and animal crossing. oh!! and kynseed. kynseed is lovely and it looks gorgeous and it is a life sim where you play as successive generations, with lots of fae elements. it can get a bit grindy but i've greatly enjoyed my time with it.

(and i just started wylde flowers since i got it on sale this week, and i've been really enjoyed it so far, but can't provide a full recommendation since i've had so little time with it)

if you enjoy the decorating part of the sims, i can recommend you the tenants. it's a game where you play as a landlord, decorate houses, find renters, and most importantly do renovation jobs for clients.

if you're in the mood for something sandbox-y, other than animal crossing i think that no man's sky could scratch that itch (you can fully customize options such as resource availability, combat difficulty, etc) and, of course the legend of zelda breath of the wild (and i can only assume tears of the kingdom, but i haven't started that one yet)

if you're wanting to dip your toes into different genres, such as rpgs, i can recommend you the elder scrolls series (especially skyrim is more streamlined and thus, more beginner friendly) and dragon age. both series have difficulty settings you can change as you feel more or less comfortable. if you're interested in party-based, turn-based rpgs, you can't go wrong with the final fantasy series, golden sun, and octopath traveler (which is a recent favorite that i wholeheartedly love, with the caveat that if someone is looking for a large, overarching story it is not the game that will provide that)

edit to add story-based games. there are many but i won't cite what maybe most people would recommend bc i either haven't played it or dislike it. i really enjoyed oxenfree, not tonight, road 96, and most importantly of all, kentucky route zero. my sibling adores the dreamfall chapters series and i really enjoy watching them play it! and my wife (a much more casual player than me but whom i love watching play and has great taste) loved playing strange horticulture, the sexy brutale, eastshade, and coffee talk (episodes 1 and 2)

please keep in mind there's some overlap between categories! and i think that most games will be approachable to beginners. nobody was born knowing how to play games and i find that most games do a good job of bringing players up to speed.

sorry for the long reply!! gaming is just a bit of a big interest for me since it's my preferred medium and i'm a rambler haha. as i said, feel free to hmu again on or off anon!! and hope u too are having a great weekend

[sodomhipped]

'get to know your fic writer'? 👀👀 i have Questions: 12, 13, 15 & 71, please?

13. what’s a common writing tip that you almost always follow? a while ago, i was in a multi-year writer's block. while chatting with a friend, i mentioned my troubles and that i wanted to get back into writing. he said, "what's stopping you?" i struggled for an excuse, pointing out that i had very little free time and energy due to work. he said, "i get up every morning and write while i drink my coffee. if you really want to write, you'd be doing it."

at the time, i was pretty steamed about this! his wording grated at me, so i thought his answer was presumptuous. annoying, even. what did he know about my life? or my creative process?

but his words kept haunting me. and the writer's block wasn't improving, even after waiting six+ years.

finally, after simmering on these thoughts for a few months, i started tapping at stories again. then, i began to write--or at least try to write--every day. not all of it was good (in fact, a lot of it was quite bad). but it set me on a path to have some of the most fun and creative years i have ever had.

so now i write every day. or at least try to. and i recommend it to others. with a few caveats! don't put too much pressure on yourself. and if you're burnt out, give yourself space and time to heal. but if you're looking to write more or more consistently, dedicate a small, manageable period of time for thinking/writing/brainstorming/etc on a regular schedule. it can be so, so hard, but we have to intentionally make time for the things we love, including writing. even fifteen or twenty minutes a day really adds up.

15. How do you write smut scenes? Do you get very visual or detailed? How important is it to be realistic?

going into a smut scene, i typically have a few broad ideas of what i want to accomplish. there's usually some sort of character development i want to make apparent and then i'll have a handful of acts or physical descriptions i want to include. i toss it all into the draft and see how it comes out. usually, this means my smut isn't the most descriptive--i'm rarely the writer who will describe every detail of the action. but i hope it leaves the reader with strong impression of the ideas/sensations i wanted to express.

(as for the effectiveness of this approach... i cannot say)

71. When it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.?

i am a pretty obsessive planner. my typical approach is a general outline (which i fill in with dialogue or details that i don't want to forget). but i have to leave the outline flexible enough that my brain doesn't go "ah, done with that story!" it can be a difficult balance.

having robust notes also allows me to write out of order, which really helps my process. (though it does burden my beta more--bless them for rooting out all my continuity errors 😂).

so here's an example of what my documents usually look like (this is from my story for trigun big bang that is about half-finished and quasi-abandoned):

i write in markdown, so anything between ++pluses++ are unfinished sections and notes. these pop up in my sidebar so i can see all the things i have yet to fill in for any given chapter.

[writing meme here]

[mentalisttraceur-software]

I think it's a really good sign of growth and healing that I'm finding myself increasingly repulsed by the kind of portability extremism that once compelled me.

One of the biggest and worst examples was shell scripts. /bin/sh was the Bourne shell in UNIXv7 (prior to that, there was the Thompson shell, and thankfully I managed to keep my mind cancer from metastasizing further backwards in time to try to achieve compatibility with that shell too). After the Bourne shell, every /bin/sh on every system was a Bourne-like shell, and if you thought that meant you could just write something that worked, take a glance at:

GNU Autoconf's Portable Shell documentation.

Sven Mascheck's various pages.

Paul Jarc's "lintsh" notes.

Ubuntu's "dash"-as-/bin/sh guide.

and others which you can find from there.

Now, a healthy person simply rejects this problem space. But for years, I was obsessed with writing shell scripts which would work on all /bin/sh still in production. It started as a growing annoyance with so many programs depending on bash - I was otherwise happily using a system with a more minimal shell at the time, and the limitations of my beloved Nokia N900 as a pocket Linux device gave me some real reason to prefer "reducing bloat" back then. Of course if it mattered to me, my compassion generalized it to everyone else in the same boat (everyone real or imagined... and in this case, mostly imagined). Then one day in the first year of my career as a software developer I got into a small argument with a coworker about them mandating #!/bin/bash instead of #!/bin/sh in our shell scripts - after he asserted that it was unreasonable to expect developers to remember what is or isn't a bashism, my maladaptive narcissistic cope reflexively kicked into full gear and now I had something to prove.

I still remember bits of that evening after work. It's... kinda horrifying looking back on it, because I was aware of what was happening in my mind. I was aware that I was basically starting to involuntarily, compulsively terraform my own preferences and values about shell scripts, from the modest and real and practical "I just want scripts to run on my N900s (BusyBox ash implementation for /bin/sh), and maybe also my Debian boxes (dash for /bin/sh)" to some perverse "principled" stance with poorly-defined scope which was divorced from any specific concrete goals. I had seen this runaway snowballing of artificial nitpicky values happen in my mind before, and I recognized that what I was doing in my head was feeding it, that it was happening again or that I was making it happen again, and I felt some conflict with that, I could see how it was bad... but back then I didn't know how to do anything about it. I didn't know how to diffuse those wants back then. I could in some technical sense, have chosen to not do it, but I couldn't stop wanting to, and I couldn't stop rationalizing it.

So I became the kind of guy that basically had every caveat mentioned on the above pages memorized. I even went as far as having a Solaris 10 VM, some old Android phones, and a PDP emulator running UNIXv7, so that I could test things not mentioned or not elaborated on those pages. But since it's really costly to remember so much trivia, I only remembered the caveats themselves, not necessarily which shells/systems they applied to. I could tell you off the top of my head "well you see, on some shells, 'set -e' will not affect the code inside functions", but I couldn't tell you which shells - I just had the caveats grouped by

"only matters on systems that no one runs anymore",

"only matters in situations you/we will never need to be compatible with (like Solaris 10's /bin/sh)",

"only matters if you want portability on Windows ports of UNIX-y shell stuff",

"only matters if you want portability beyond just Linux", and

"only matters if you want portability beyond just 'bash'".

I also used to have a little template for shell portability disclaimers that I would add to my shell scripts, deleting/re-adding lines as-needed:

# This script is compatible with Bourne and POSIX shells. # EXCEPT for the following exceptions (last verified on YYYY-MM-DD): # Comments (Appeared in 1981, still not universal around 1987) # Functions (First appeared in SVR2 Bourne shells in 1984) # `mkfifo` (First appeared sometime circa 1984, possibly earlier; unsure) # `test -p` (First appeared in SVR1 Bourne shell in 1983). # `wait` exit status (Missing in Almquist shell until 4.4BSD in 1993) # `hash` builtin (First appeared in SVR2 Bourne shells in 1984) # `type` builtin (First appeared in SVR2 Bourne shells in 1984) # $() is used instead of `` (not supported by some ancient Bourne shells) # `shift` when no positional parameters (broke some old MIPS RISC/os shells) # ${VAR%glob} substitution (Solaris (<= 10) /bin/sh does not support it) ...

That version of me looked at my old esceval.sh with pride, as if it was important or worthwhile. It tries to use modern-ish POSIX shell features but falls back to portable shell if it must. Basically every single line has at least one detail that is a deliberate portability choice. Almost every degree of freedom has been optimized for portability (and then some performance optimization within that) - change almost anything and it's probably less portable.

I revisited "esceval" for the first time in years this past week, and I noticed something really nice. I no longer have enough appetite for this portabiliy stuff. I'm too acutely aware, down to my motivating emotions, that it's a waste of my life. I'm once again in touch with actual concrete use-cases and benefits that have high odds of coming up in my life. I've re-learned to value myself and my goals more than this portability shit.

So I'm going to delete the portability fallback from "esceval.sh". I'm done trying to figure out what the portability fallback looks like for the other esceval pieces that I still want to finish. Unless I'm being compensated better than I can get elsewhere, I'm never again going to lift a finger to support Solaris 10 /bin/sh, or Android phones lobotomized to the point of not having a "printf" command in their shell, or anything else that isn't at least POSIX-compatible shell. And even then I'd suggest implementing that by writing a backpiler from modern shell to older. Maybe I'll answer portability questions if I still remember the answer and can say it off the top of my head - I enjoy helping people after all.

And it goes deeper than that. I'm very done giving Bourne-style shells nearly as much time and effort as I've given them so far. They're good DSLs for redirecting file descriptors and sorta okay DSLs for invoking and managing processes, and that's about it. As an unfortunate practical matter, Bourne-style shell is one of the most widely deployed programming language families, so if the goal is "I want to be able to give this tiny CLI to a coworker so they can run it on their machine with minimal human hassle", it can be nice to have a #!/bin/sh implementation (but so is having a couple statically compiled executables for the common platforms and a cross-compiler ready for the rest, or a Python script, or [...]).

It'll take me some time to figure out exactly where that balance is, and to fully unlearn the various hangups and compulsions that I've built up which motivate writing a /bin/sh script instead of something else, but what I've been doing so far definitely ain't that balance, ain't even close, and now I finally have a strong-enough hunger for breaking free and moving in the direction of that healthier balance.

[sasster]

aelium ofc... 🍩☕️🙈🙉✏️☁️🌠💗

🍩 DONUT - favourite sweet treat?’

I think Aelium might just have a sweet tooth in general! If you catch him around the office he’s probably grazing on a handful of Starbursts here or some ginger snaps there.

I think since because the emoji that is used for this question is a donut I feel the need to tell you his favorite thing to get from a donut place and I am absolutely certain that it is a maple bar. He likes to have a maple bar.

☕️ HOT BEVERAGE - do they prefer hot or cold drinks? what is their favourite drink?

Again… I think as long as it’s sweet he really doesn’t care that much. With the caveat of… If he is having a maple bar I promise you that he is having it with black coffee.

He would insist to you that the black coffee brings out the sweetness of the maple bar and makes it even better!!

His favorite drink… Hmm… He likes creme based things perhaps. A cute little strawberry something.

Actually now that I’m thinking about it this man probably goes nuts for a good strawberry milkshake.

🙈 SEE-NO-EVIL - whats a side of your oc that they don't want to show other people?

Hm. I think Aelium has an anger that is so well hidden that even Treader and Thuein haven’t seen it. His anger is really ugly, and as I’m typing this I’m imagining an Aelium angry enough to like punch a mirror but he’s only punching it because he hates how much his anger makes him look like

Well, you know who he looks like in that state. Or who he would be comparing himself to.

I think his anger has only ever boiled over like maybe three times in his life. There are drabbles in my head cooking about this. Oh dear.

🙉 HEAR-NO-EVIL - what is the worse thing your oc could hear from someone?

“You’re just like him, aren’t you?”

But SPECIFICALLY it has to be from someone that was directly effected by the him in question.

It won’t work from just anyone.

✏️ PENCIL - is there a particular quote / lyric that you associate with them?

Yeah. Too many actually.

“I wrote a poem in the palm of my hand, To eliminate the chance of me forgetting where I’m at If you cant read this, you’re awake We can get through another day”

[Made It Out Alive - Seb Adams]

☁️ CLOUD - a soft headcanon

Aelium… Half asleep. DEFINITELY goes MRRRPPP if you like tap on him or startle him. Little ear twitch. Looks at you all squinty…

Mrrrp?

🌠 SHOOTING STAR - if they could make any wish with no repercussions, what wish would they make?

I think he would wish for a greater capacity to help people. He just doesn’t want to see people suffer, which I imagine is an awful thing when you’re on Alternia.

💗 GROWING HEART - if they have a crush, is it noticable? what changes when they're in love?

Uhm. I mean I guess it depends on the quadrant but it also doesn’t really matter at all? At least as far as how he treats the person goes, because he likes to treat people with the same compassion and love pretty much consistently.

I imagine like

Matesprit - Uh… I’m gonna be honest with you. I don’t have an answer for this one. I think he just stumbles into this quad the same way I feel about ashen lmao

Moirail - He becomes a little bit more touchy. Touch his fingers to the tops of your hands, pats your shoulder as he passes by, any excuse to just.. Feel you.

Kismesis - This one is kind of funny because I’m pretty sure he would like… Start to pinpoint the things that annoy you a bit and then like.. Make it his business to bring them up in casual conversation but not in a way to piss you off like explicitly.. But like… Just to watch your reaction. I don’t mean like things that would like MAJORLY piss you off but like

Okay for example I used to know someone who HATED when people typed “yea” instead of “yeah”. It used to make him soooo mad. FOR NO REASON?

Aelium flirting with someone in pitch that feels so strongly about something like that would just add it into their text based conversations just to see…

Because he likes to see… People come alive? You know??

He would find the frustration cute… FUCK

(I am not leaving ashen out because I don’t recognize it as a quadrant, I just feel like it’s one you stumble into as opposed to actively look to fill so it’s pretty seamless)

Emoji Asks

[turbles]

(I posted this on twitter back in early March but since that platform is going down the tubes rn I'm reposting here as well for archival purposes)

Some background here. 6 years ago I took up reading fanfic as a hobby. Very quickly I realized I'd need a way to mark which fics I'd already read or tried to read and dropped, so I wouldn't keep running across the same ones over and over and forgetting I'd already read them. So I started bookmarking EVERYTHING regardless of my actual opinion on it (I'll come back to this)

Anyway eventually I realized that, via the filtering options AO3 provides for your bookmarks, I had a pretty good way to collect pointless data about my reading habits and make some really pointless graphs. So when I reached exactly 2000 bookmarks I decided to do that. as a reward to myself.

data for the original 2000 was collected from whenever I started doing this, through March 6th 2023

Caveat: obviously the possibility of human error in this data is significant. I was never consistent on whether I should bookmark all individual fics in a series or just the series itself if I read the whole thing, for instance, and I've surely forgotten to bookmark plenty of things I did read over the years. this is just for fun though so I'm not sweating it.

thank god for how detailed ao3's tag system is tbh

Anyway here's a pie of all fandoms (with over 50 bookmarks):

For some temporal context of the above, I fucking counted every bookmark from the top 9 categories there and arrayed them by month-bookmarked so I could make this chart of growth rates:

Genshin impact will of course continue to grow because the game continually releases new stuff and characters. Numbers spiked in October coinciding with sumeru's release. we'll see if another spike happens once fontaine releases in a few weeks from now. interestingly to me, I started been playing genshin like 6 months before I started participating in the fandom because it took me that long to get accustomed to the uh.. genshin-ness of the characters and the story, enough to start making inroads towards actually caring about the characters.

looks like FE3H grew the fastest, but it will eventually plateau like yoi, dragon age, and ffxv before it. Still kinda going strong though,since there's just lots of people writing for this fandom, and helped by the fact that it has a really large cast.

This next chart will take a little background info. So to indicate to myself something about the quality of the fic, when bookmarking I would choose to "Rec" it or not. As I said previously, I am literally bookmarking everything I read whether I loved it or hated it or it caused me pain or whatever. My criteria for whether I Rec a fic or not has never been set in stone, but THE IDEA is that recced fics were ones I overall quite liked, felt were well written and would be willing to go back & reread or had something else that made them stand out from the crowd. A recced fic isn't necessarily one I would literally recommend to people to read, and non-recced could mean anything from it was good but had one part that bothered me, to I had just read a bunch of that author's other works and this one was weaker than their others, to it was horrendous and ruined my whole day, to it was just kinda boring.

HOWEVER I did add my own more curated tag, Greatest Hits, for the ones that I really loved, that stuck with me after reading it, that I regularly desire to go back and revisit. While I rarely ever adjust my recs, I have often added (even sometimes removed) the Greatest Hits tag from fics years after first reading them.

Anyway that means this chart could be said to express in a really general way my opinion on the general quality of the writing in a given fandom:

I found it interesting that AA has such a high proportion of recs. I think its overall lower number of total bookmarks works in its favor here, as I tend to dip toes into a new fandom by first looking at top-kudosed fics and then when I find authors I like, trawling their bookmarks for more and branching out that way. So I tend to find pretty good fics earlier in the process. the longer I'm looking through a more stagnated fandom, the less good fics I find, is I guess the logic here. So in the case of AA, I suppose I didn't get much deeper than skimming the cream of the crop before I moved on?

Comparing genshin and fe3h vs. dragon age and ffxv, which all have more similar total bookmarks, was interesting too, to explain why genshin/fe3h's ratio of recs is higher. Both genshin and fe3h have really large casts, and therefore lots of different characters and pairings to read about, so it's almost like each pairing is kind of its own pool of fics that I'm skimming the best ones out of. with DA and FFXV there's really only a couple ships I'm interested in, and their ratios are similar accordingly

because we all know. that the main draw for fanfic tends to be shipping. so here's the top 10 most bookmarked ships pie:

and because genshin and fe3h are sizable enough to warrant a further breakdown of ships for that fandom alone, here's some pies for that:

it makes me laugh that dimiclaude is statistically significant when really I was just trying it out and ultimately decided I really don't even care for that ship

And a growth rate chart for genshin impact ships specifically:

so funny story, as I was playing through the liyue story chapter I was NOT a fan of childe at all, in fact I passed up two of his reruns before reading on the wiki (almost immediately after his 2nd rerun ended) a key piece of his backstory that all of a sudden caused his whole characterization to fall perfectly into place in my mind and he shot up the list to being my top fav character in the game literally over the course of like ten minutes. and yeah that was november 2021 and as you can see that's when I started really reading genshin fics LOL

forecasts have haikaveh and cynonari continuing to trend up for a little while, though the next region and thus a whole new cast releases soon and could stymie those trends. zhongchi is a staple genshin ship and imo a bit more flexible content- and dynamic-wise than many of the other pairings here, so I predict it maintains a regular gentle incline even in the face of shinier newer pairings.

The less stacked roster fandoms don't have as interesting breakdowns, but here they are just for curiosity:

and yeah that's all I made at the time! I only thought of it after but I'll be recording data on Ratings from now on as well. I'd also considered looking at things like average word count on recs or greatest hits fics, but absent of even more highly specific filtering tools that would probably fall under diminishing returns. maybe someday.

This was dumb but very engrossing and fun to make and I learned how to use google sheets out of it so we'll see if that ever comes in useful in my life

[whentherewerebicycles]

Hey, I hope you’re having a lovely day!

After seeing your mention of what you’re reading in the tags of a recent post, I’m wondering if you have any recommendations for books about parenting/pregnancy/motherhood, etc. My husband and I are probably going to start trying for a baby in the next couple years, and I want to get a head start on some reading. I think we have similar values and I’m not shy about reading dense texts, so I’d love to know what’s on your reading list!

yes i'm happy to make some recommendations... with the huge caveat that i'm not a parent yet, so i can't tell you whether the books i find most interesting as a reader will actually be at all useful for the messy complicated work of raising kids! i will also give another caveat which is: i think it is possible to work yourself into a panicked frenzy reading about different parenting styles and obsessing over the "right" or "best" way to parent. americans in particular seem to be obsessed with ~optimizing~ our children + our parenting to produce the Absolute Best, Smartest, Most Independent Children. what i like about these books is that they all state very clearly there are many, many paths to raising happy, healthy kids... and their goal isn't to shame or pressure readers into adopting a particular parenting style, but to expose them to a wide range of alternatives so that they don't feel like they're trapped in one rigid parenting style or values system.

my rule of thumb for myself in this process has basically been: if a book generates new things for me to worry or obsess over or feel guilty about as a prospective parent, it is NOT helpful and should be set aside & forgotten IMMEDIATELY. what i am looking for are books that 1) expand and enrich my understanding of the diverse possibilities available to me, and 2) affirm that it's okay to follow what feels right for me/my kid/my values even if it runs against the grain of what my culture tells me is "right" or "optimal." i also have found it really valuable to read a wide range of books since inevitably you encounter compelling books whose core tenets conflict in some way. for me that’s just another way of again reminding myself that there are many equally legitimate ways of raising children. so it’s not a matter of determining which style “wins” but of learning to appreciate different approaches and thinking critically about which approach is the best fit for my values, lifestyle, and long-term goals.

so here are my recs!

highly recommend:

hunt, gather, parent: what ancient cultures can teach us about the lost art of raising happy, helpful little humans. this is a really enjoyable & very readable intro to cross-cultural parenting styles! don't be too put off by the whole "Ancient Cultural Wisdom" branding. it's clear that at some late point in the process the publishers were like "this will sell better if we can market it as paleo parenting... can you add in a few gimmicky lines to make it work?" in reality it's actually just a very interesting, detailed look at non-Western, mostly indigenous parenting styles that are still actively practiced today and are not "lost" in any sense. it has the typical "other cultures observed through a white Western writer's lens" limitations but you get the sense that the author really cared about doing the research, building relationships with the families she profiles, and representing different cultural practices in a respectful, non-exoticizing way. not a perfect book but definitely an enjoyable and useful one, especially if you are looking for alternatives to american parenting norms.

the self-driven child: the science of giving your child more control over their lives. i want to go back and revisit this one now that i am thinking about american parenting paradigms with a bit more nuance... but i really liked this one and found its advice super useful for teaching older students, too. it does a good job of explaining how & why "snowplow" parenting makes kids more anxious, less resilient, and less confident in their ability to persevere through setbacks. it totally transformed my mentoring practice for the better, i think, and it gives lots of good, practical advice for helping kids of all ages develop a meaningful sense of autonomy.

how to talk so kids will listen (and listen so kids will talk). i read this one ages ago and can't remember specific insights from it off the top of my head... i'd have to go back to my notes. but i remember thinking it was a very sound book on facilitating better communication between parents and kids.

of woman born: motherhood as experience and institution. i read this one a couple years back so again it's hard to remember what exactly stood out to me... but i just like adrienne rich's essays and i felt like this was a good framework for thinking about what it means to be both a feminist and a mother. i don't think you need to read the whole thing to get the gist of it... there's one particular essay/chapter i see floating around a lot that i think must've been the kernel of this book, and you could probably just read that.

how not to die: the foods scientifically proven to prevent and reverse disease. this one has nothing to do with parenting haha but it's the single best book i've ever read about food/diet. it's transformed the way i grocery shop, prepare food, and think about nutrition, and will be a cornerstone of the way i teach my kid(s) about healthy eating. very not diet-culture-y in tone/style.

peak: the new science of expertise. again, not related to parenting, but super useful as a framework for understanding how we learn/grow/improve across our lifespans. this is like, a "power of growth-mindset" book that moves beyond the vague "anyone can do anything!" attitude of most poorly-applied growth mindset teaching to give you a very concrete, evidence-based understanding of how people develop complex skills and improve in their chosen fields. i include it here because i think it's a useful counterweight to the common assumption that talent is inborn & fixed, and so if people don't succeed at something (music, sports, art, etc.) right away it means they lack a natural 'gift' for it and should abandon the effort.

recommend with some caveats:

our babies, ourselves: how biology and culture shape the way we parent. this was a mixed bag for me but ultimately i'd recommend it if you’re into comparative cultural approaches to parenting. the beginning sections are slow going (VERY dense/academic in style and focus) but it picks up in the middle and i found the second half intriguing, especially the parts about cosleeping, breastfeeding frequency and duration, and the tradeoffs of the "distanced" style of parenting americans are expected to practice. i would've read 500 more pages about cultural differences in approaches to sleep, food, etc (she spends about two pages profiling the US, Japan, the !Kung-San, Mayan communities, and a handful of other countries but it's very brief). as a whole the book isn’t a page-turner by any stretch but it’s still pretty interesting.

bringing up bebe: one american mother discovers the wisdom of french parenting. the caveats: i didn't loooove the author's gender politics & i feel like some of her recommendations (like preparing meals with multiple small courses as a way of teaching children to enjoy many different types of foods) put an undue burden on the person responsible for preparing meals (usually the mother). it was interesting to read it alongside our babies, ourselves because she's VERY focused on american vs. french cultural differences in parenting, but doesn't seem to register that both are still variations on a very typically western parenting style (one that focuses on producing an independent, self-reliant child who is expected to follow a tightly regimented family schedule from a young age). so i think i will take her advice with a grain of salt! but i did find the book itself to be quite funny, breezy, and charming to read, with lots of useful advice especially on the subject of how to avoid internalizing the guilt/shame our culture heaps upon mothers of small children.

misconceptions: truth, lies, and the unexpected on the journey to motherhood. a super interesting look at how pregnancy, childbirth, and postnatal care became intensely medicalized & pathologized in the united states. i'm not sure how much of her findings are still relevant now -- the book was published in the 1990s, i think? but hoo boy it's a gripping and disturbing look at the ways in which the medical establishment has historically worked to limit women's understanding of the options available to them and to shame/guilt them into making choices that are more convenient for the attending doctor or better for the hospital's bottom line. the caveats are, again, not sure how much of this still applies to the current state of pre- and postnatal care... and also i think the writer tends to romanticize natural childbirth in ways that felt a little hmm to me (like, i'm not convinced that enduring excruciating pain is somehow a mystical and sacred part of womanhood or whatever lol which is what she sometimes edges close to suggesting).

do not recommend:

how to raise kind kids. i am all for kind kids but this book felt reaaally patriarchal Christian to me in a sneaky way... it left a really bad taste in my mouth.

how eskimos keep their babies warm. as the use of a questionable term for the inuit people in the title might suggest... this book does not handle cross-cultural parenting with much thoughtfulness or sensitivity. i still can't believe this got published.

wanting what's best: parenting, privilege, and building a just world. this was a DNF for me... idk in theory i'm all for this book but i read the first three chapters and was like wow if you need someone to tell you to pay your nanny a living wage, give them vacation time, and treat them like a human being, you might need an even more basic primer on how not to be an asshole. idk it just felt a bit "...do people need to be told this?" to me.

i read 'em and they were fine but not standouts:

how to stop losing your sh*t with your kids

loving your child is not enough: positive discipline that works

the whole-brain child

raising good humans: a mindful guide to breaking the cycle of reactive parenting

on my to-read list:

mothers and others: the evolutionary origins of mutual understanding

parenting without borders: surprising lessons parents around the world can teach us

small animals: parenting in the age of fear

the tech-wise family: everyday steps for putting technology in its proper place

the danish way of parenting: what the happiest people in the world know about raising confident, capable kids

cribsheet: a data-driven guide to better, more relaxed parenting from birth to preschool

there’s no such thing as bad weather: a scandinavian mom’s secrets for raising healthy, resilient, and confident kids