#and the fact that 'valuable' can be applicable to any of them

[silhouettecrow]

365 Days of Writing Prompts: Day 353

Adjective: Valuable

Noun: Virus

Definitions for those who need/want them:

Valuable: worth a great deal of money; extremely useful or important

Virus: an infective agent that typically consists of a nucleic acid molecule in a protein coat, is too small to be seen by light microscopy, and is able to multiply only within the living cells of a host; an infection or disease caused by a virus; a harmful or corrupting influence; a piece of code that is capable of copying itself and typically has a detrimental effect, such as corrupting the system or destroying data

[s-soulwriter]

Research Tips for Writing Your Book

Are you diving into the exciting world of writing and researching for your book project? Here's what you need to know to make your research journey a success:

Define Your Purpose: Before diving into research, have a clear understanding of your book's purpose and goals. Know the themes you want to explore and the message you wish to convey. This will give your research a focused direction.

Create a Research Plan: Outline the specific areas you need to research, set milestones, and establish deadlines. A well-structured research plan keeps you on track and helps you manage your time efficiently.

Use Multiple Sources: Diversify your sources. Books, academic papers, interviews, and digital resources each offer unique perspectives and insights. This diversity enriches your understanding and adds depth to your writing.

Organize Your Notes: Keep your research notes well-organized. Consider using digital tools like note-taking apps or physical notebooks with labeled sections for different topics. Efficient organization will save you time and effort later.

Fact-Check: Ensure the accuracy of your research. Verify any details that are crucial to your story or argument. Misinformation can erode your credibility and disrupt the reader's immersion.

Cite Sources Properly: Keep meticulous records of your sources and be diligent about citations. Use a recognized citation style (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago) to give credit to the authors and avoid plagiarism.

Interview Experts: Reach out to experts or people with firsthand knowledge relevant to your topic. Interviews can provide you with valuable insights, real-life experiences, and unique anecdotes to enhance your book.

Visit Relevant Places: If your book is set in a particular location, consider visiting it if possible. Experiencing the environment firsthand can help you capture its atmosphere, culture, and nuances more authentically.

Take Breaks: Research can be mentally taxing. Don't forget to take breaks to recharge and maintain a fresh perspective. Stepping away from your work can also lead to new insights and ideas.

Stay Open-Minded: Be open to unexpected discoveries during your research. Sometimes, the most profound insights come from unrelated sources or tangential information that you stumble upon while researching.

Keep a Journal: Maintain a research journal where you can jot down notes, ideas, and thoughts as they occur. This journal can serve as a valuable resource when you're writing your book.

Join Writing Communities: Connect with other writers in person or online. They can offer guidance, share their experiences, and provide emotional support when you face challenges during the research and writing process.

Revise and Refine: Don't think of research as a one-time activity. Continuously revisit and refine your research as your book evolves. New ideas or directions may emerge, and you may need to adjust your research accordingly.

Respect Copyright Laws: Understand the copyright laws applicable to your research. Ensure you have the rights to use specific materials, especially if you plan to incorporate them into your book. Obtaining permissions or licensing may be necessary.

Balance Research and Writing: While research is crucial, there comes a point where you must transition from research to writing. Avoid getting stuck in a perpetual research phase. Once you have enough information to start, begin writing and integrate research as needed in your work.

Remember that your research phase is an integral part of the creative process. It's where the foundation of your book is built, and it can be a fascinating journey in itself.But keep in mind, as you're writing your first draft, you can never know everything, never research everything. A second opinion is always good, and for that, you can ask friends, family, or even me on this blog.

[comicaurora]

Are you willing to make a long personal post about how Math should be presented in an educational environment or in general conversation trying to convince the other participants about its daily usage. How it can advance a person’s problem-solving skills and approach in life.

I’m really good in Mathematics. I’ve given help for my classmates and friends about Math when they are having trouble or ask for it. But I have never been convinced of its importance outside of the classroom, outside of the test papers that gives me the variables to substitute in the given equation of that test of the day.

How can Math and it’s many properties relate back to everyday life in a casual manner?

Hm. Well, as someone who hasn't had to solve an antiderivative in years, my perspective on this is that the most important and widely-applicable skill math can teach you is the stuff behind the math - mostly the muscle-memory you get from proofs.

Math is, at its core, puzzles and logic and pattern-recognition. You learn a set of tools, you practice those tools on a set of simple problems until you get a feel for them, you are presented with a bigger problem, you recall which tools best applied to problems that are shaped like this, you break the problem down using your tools and eventually reduce it to something you know how to solve.

The fact of the matter is, the tools that are specific to branches of math don't really have much widespread use outside pure mathematics, and unless you go out of your way to keep using them you're likely to lose track of them. Studying math is not going to turn you into a super-calculator-wizard who can bounce stuff off the walls at perfect angles and do six-figure arithmetic in seconds, and I think some people feel overwhelmed at the assumption that that's what's expected of them if they learn math, and some other people feel cheated when they learn that that's absolutely not going to happen, because most writers don't know math and when they tell stories with math in them their best guess is it makes you a wizard.

I think the most advanced math I've used lately was trigonometry, and that was just because I was curious about how fast my plane was traveling relative to the sun's apparent movement at my latitude. We were flying back to the US from Iceland and we'd taken off at sunset, and we had been in that sunset for at least an hour by the time I got curious how the math worked out and started estimating our latitude, the circumference of the slice of the earth at that latitude, and correspondingly how fast we were flying vs how fast it was spinning to complete a full rotation in 24 hours. But even if the math involved didn't tap into any of the higher-level stuff I'd learned post-trig, those years doing proofs and figuring out which tools applied to which geometry meant that I could use the tools and my training applying those tools to calculate what I wanted to know, and confirm that our plane was actually outflying the sun when we were at iceland latitude, but as we curved south the sun's apparent relative movement (aka the rotational speed of that latitude of the earth) slowly accelerated until we were falling behind, landing right as the sun finally set. The math involved was high school level, but if I'd been given that problem in high school it would've taken more work and more stress to figure out how the tools I had needed to be applied to the problem I was facing. The years of practice I had tackling much more complicated proofs made the diagnostic process much faster.

I saw someone once analogize studying math to lifting weights. Where am I going to use this in real life? How often will I really be faced with two dumbbells that need to be lifted in three sets of twenty? Where am I going to apply the skill of holding a heavy thing straight out to one side of my body?

You don't lift weights because lifting weights is such a valuable and widely-applicable skillset, you do it because lifting weights makes you better at lifting everything.

You don't study math because math is going to fill your daily life with concepts that you need to prove true for 1 and for n+1 given true for n, or complex solids that you need to sum an approximate volume for, or a surplus of sunset plane flights that demand you calculate a bunch of cosines. You study math because it is the skillset of making things make sense. It trains you to break a huge, incomprehensible problem down into a series of small problems you already know how to solve. It lets you reach true and correct conclusions by starting from facts and transforming them through operations that preserve truth, and correspondingly that if you reach a false conclusion from these methods, then either the methods are flawed or the initial assumption is not as true as you believed. It teaches you to put two and two together and be confident, once you've double-checked your work, that you can say four.

This is stuff I use all the time in both my video research and my freeform writing. Building out a slow picture of how a story was told or changed over time involves finding the context it was created in, and reverse-engineering what parts of that context could have produced what standout portions of the story - what authorial or cultural bias results in this standout story element. Worldbuilding where I take two wildly disparate parts of the world, put them together and see what web of implications springs out of combining them, following the threads to new and interesting concepts that follow from what I've already established. Building a character arc by breaking down exactly what events are happening to them and what transformation each component will apply to the underlying character. If I want the story to go in a certain direction, what transformations do I need to apply to make that happen while still preserving truth? If I'm faced with a seemingly insurmountable problem, what methods can I use to break it down into bite-sized pieces?

This isn't something I think about most of the time. It's just how my brain works at this point, and I can't promise it'd work for anyone else. But thanks to all my years of hard work and training, my brain has been buff enough to solve every problem I've tangled with since graduation, and that feels pretty good.

[scientia-rex]

Medicine is a numbers game. I use probability all the time. If you don't understand probability, you'll look at someone with chest pain and have no fucking clue how likely it is that you're looking at a heart attack. You may not even know what the other top contenders are. GERD is common. Anxiety. An angry rib muscle. Lots of options. Most of the time, most chest pain won't be a heart attack, but sometime it'll be something worse--an aortic dissection that's rupturing will kill you even faster than most heart attacks.

I see so many patients who come in with a symptom that the Internet, whether Google or influencers, has told them is associated with this one thing. It's often the thyroid. And yeah! A fucked-up thyroid can cause all kinds of symptoms. But here's the deal: if I check your thyroid and it looks normal, it's probably not your thyroid that's causing the symptoms. It could be something else we understand. It is very often something we don't understand. But the fact that I can tell you modern medicine doesn't understand some process doesn't mean your naturopath or chiropractor or Certified Hormone Expert Influencer does understand it because they have this different way of looking at the body. Look, long, long before I wanted to be a doctor, I wanted to be an herbalist. I'm queer, I'm a woman(ish), I am neurodivergent, I am not The Man. I'm not beholden to the system; the system doesn't care for me and wishes I would sit down and shut up, most days. And I have a background in research science and statistics. I used to have a rubber stamp that said "Denied" and one that said "Approved" and I'd hit piles of paper for research applications at an R-1 university, in triplicate, with my stamps, because I understood research well enough to get a Human Subjects Division job evaluating it. If a naturopathic approach to thyroid worked well, I would be doing it. I'm a utilitarian. I don't give a rat's ass about the theoretical underpinnings of modern medical practice, I want things to work. Ideally I would like to know why they work, too, but hey, we can't always have it all.

So the dozens of patients I get every month who are looking elsewhere for answers, looking to people who don't actually know any better but are good at pretending they do, who pay money for elaborate supplement regimens or unvalidated genetic tests or (my personal least favorite) "memory-improving games," I have to be calm and professional and diplomatic about what I say. I can't say, "That's quack shit." I can't say, "Your favorite influencer is a liar and an idiot." Not just because I'd get lower patient satisfaction scores, but because patients wouldn't believe me, and they would reactively like me less and the other guy more. (You're calling me stupid? You're saying I wasted money? If I believe you're just a shill for Big Pharma, that hurts less.)

It takes years, even decades, to understand how to put together the probability maps. Chest pain in a patient under 40? Highly unlikely to be a myocardial infarction, but not totally impossible, especially if they've been doing cocaine. In a patient over 60? Much more likely. Is the pain crushing? Is it sub-sternal? How long has it been going on? Is it constant, or intermittent? Does the patient smoke? What other health conditions does the patient have? These are all deeply important questions, and I remember feeling overwhelmed by things like this all the time in medical school. It's taken so long to build my knowledge, and my background in research is only tangentially valuable most of the time.

Please don't believe authority just because it looks good. Don't trust people because you want to trust them. Learn about the scientific process, learn how the sausage gets made, and then you'll be in an infinitely better position to know whether this is a "wow! science!!!" or a "wow! science bullshit!" moment.

[transmutationisms]

I'm curious if you've come across any examples of what you would consider effective communication or collective organizing around Covid? I know of a few groups who I think are doing good work to get people access to masks and rapid tests, making connections to broader issues such as lack of sick leave, barriers to healthcare etc, but they're also relying on things like questionable wastewater data extrapolation to make their points. I don't really know what to do about the latter issue, since we've just had access to all data taken away from us by the government. (I know it's not an effective tool for collective action, but tbh I also struggle with the idea that all alarmism is bad, because I am high risk and I am scared!)

well 1st of all to be clear, i think wastewater data are valuable and i do look at them. what i don't do is make wildly overconfident guesses from those data about exactly how many people are infected, how many sick people are standing in any given room, how many people will eventually qualify for a long covid dx, etc. i think wastewater data are a rough proxy but still an important one, and generally more useful at the local level (where they can be cross-referenced with factors like vaccine uptake, circulating variants, and municipal public health policy) than at national or regional levels (where the necessary amount of aggregation makes it difficult to tease out much useful information about any one town or city).

2nd, i don't know what country you live in but i do look in on CDC's covid dashboard, which includes data on hospitalisations, emergency department visits, deaths, vaccine uptake, test positivity rates, &c. if this is applicable to you i strongly encourage always reading the footnotes as these statistics vary in accuracy (in particular, test positivity rate is very unreliable at this point). i consider a lot of these numbers useful primarily as indicators of comparative risk: eg, i assume hospitalisation numbers have been inaccurate lowballs for the entirety of the pandemic; however, it is still useful imo to see whether that number is trending in a particular direction, and how it compares over time. again, local results are sometimes more helpful as well. i also glance in on the census bureau's household pulse survey results, which come out numerous times throughout the year and include questions about duration of covid symptoms, ability to function, and vaccine uptake. these numbers skew in the opposite direction to many of CDC's, because the phrasing of the covid questions is intended to be broad, and does not attempt to distinguish between the sort of long covid that entails a 6 or 12 month recovery period, vs the sort of long covid that turns out to be me/cfs or other chronic long-term post-viral complications. again, i still think these numbers are useful for viewing trends over time; no data will ever be completely 100% without flaw, and i'm not holding out for that. what does frustrate me, though, is people (with any and all ideological axes to grind!) interpreting any of these numbers as though they are in fact perfect flawless representations of reality, with no further caveats or critical analysis needed. that's what i'm pushing back on, whether it comes from the "pulse survey says long covid prevalence is decreasing, so fuck it!" crowd or the "biobot says last week was a micro-surge so we're all going to die!" crowd.

as far as local orgs or groups doing actual action, like distributing masks or vaccine clinics, i don't put so much stock in what they say on instagram or whatever because frankly i think it matters very little. the masks and vaccines and air filters and so forth are useful in themselves; that work is valuable. if someone's positioning themselves primarily as a communicator then yes, i'm going to scrutinise their communication methods more. if it's an action org i'm honestly less concerned, unless there is egregiously unreliable information being propagated or they're communicating in the sort of stigmatising manner that many peak Posters have adopted (people who got sick are stupid / immoral / deserve it, etc).

i'd also just like to make it clear that like... i live with someone who is at high risk, i accordingly treat my own covid precautions as though i am also at high risk, and i wouldn't want covid regardless... like, please understand that when i talk about this i'm not coming at it from a perspective of someone who's unaware of the need for caution! my concern is, again, that caution and risk discussion are not synonymous with "making frightened guesses and asserting them with 100% confidence" or "selectively attributing truth to data because they agree with me, regardless of the actual methodology and any problems therein". i understand that when people are behaving recklessly and being encouraged to do so by state and medical authorities, it is tempting to look at that situation and think that communicating the seriousness of the virus is worth risking a little bit of inaccuracy if it protects people. however, i do not think that strategy actually pays off in the long or short term as far as changing people's behaviour (if it did, wouldn't it have by now?) and i think it is playing with fire to encourage this manner of interpreting and disseminating scientific information as though it is a kind of ideological buffet requiring no further verification or investigation beyond a cherry-picked deference to the stated objectivity and ideals of The Scientific Method.

[space-spring]

Re: this post I reblogged earlier, back in like 2020 I was thinking a ton about healing magic in fe3h for reasons I can't remember, and I ended up writing a canon-ish "textbook" like the kind of text you would find in-game in the Garreg Mach/Abyss libraries. Disclaimer that I'm not actually sure this is 100% lore accurate—I remember doing some research at the time I wrote it and I just now did a quick fact check, but it's been a hot second since I actually played the game so some of it might be a little off

Applications of Faith: An Analysis of Healing White Magic

Lecture II, A Healer's Limits

In the previous lecture, the benefits and basis of healing by faith were explored. While these serve as an excellent introduction to the topic of healing in white magic, it is perhaps more important for one to understand the limitations of the field. As a healer, understanding the measure of your abilities is an integral part of triage and emergency scenarios (for further examples and information, please refer to Lecture III, Ethics in Healing).

— Samuel von Hevring

-

Limitation 1: The potency of one’s white magic is directly related to one’s magical stamina.

For the ease of the reader, magical stamina is defined in this lecture as one’s relative ability to cast spells, just as one's physical stamina is related to their ability to accomplish feats of strength or endurance. It is the first and most vital limitation of white magic, and it is important to recognize and work to improve one’s magical stamina as much as possible.

Building up a healthy level of stamina in regards to casting is pivotal to increasing the number of spells that can be cast within a certain amount of time. However, magical stamina is also the defining factor responsible for the potency of any spells you may cast. A more experienced healer will find that their spells are able to heal broken bones in the time it takes an apprentice to mend a scraped knee.

For more information on magical stamina and the related biological processes specific to faith magic, please refer to Lecture V, Magic and Physicality. Another valuable resource is Verity von Essar's renowned "Crests and Other Magical Systems", though it favors reason magic in subject.

-

Limitation 2: A spell can only be cast as often as a healer's magical stamina allows.

As discussed above, this rule is heavily dependent upon magical stamina, and will be almost exclusively relevant to lower-level mages. However, that hardly means experienced white magic users should ignore it completely. It can occasionally be an obstacle to even the most talented priests, usually in the context of military affairs, natural disasters, or in other situations where a great number of people are injured over a short amount of time.

You will often not realize the extent of your cast limit until you hit it. This situation is frightening for most healers. Andrey von Hevring once described it as “seeing a drowning man in the water and reaching out your hand … only to suddenly realize you’d long since lost your whole arm.”

In these situations, remaining calm is pivotal. If you have other healing spells available, utilize them. If not, you will have no choice but to wait until your magical stamina returns. Many mages are tempted to continue forcing themselves—after all, a delayed healing can lead to permanent scarring or death. This will do nothing but waste your time and already depleted strength. Accept this limitation, and return to your work only when you are fully rested and able to do so.

-

Limitation 3: Healers can only learn spells they are predisposed to.

While the reasons behind this are currently unknown, mages are unable to learn more than a certain set of white magic spells. Nearly anyone can learn to Heal, but when it comes to Restore or Physic, you may find that you struggle to learn one or the other. This is true not only for healing spells, but also for other white magic such as Warp, Rescue, and Silence. Some theorize that the predisposition for certain spells is based on one’s hereditary lines, while others maintain that it is a matter of natural temperament.

-

Limitation 4: The range of white magic is absolute.

For many village healers, range will not be a significant issue in your day-to-day practice, and as such, many priests are unaware of their own limits in this regard. However, there are occasionally situations in which a patient will be trapped somewhere that the physician cannot reach, or will be injured seriously enough that a Physic or other long range spell is necessary to provide immediate life-saving care. In moments such as these, understanding your white magic’s range can be the difference between life and death.

Range cannot be increased on short notice. There are no artificial means of extending range save a single Hero’s Relic, known as the Staff of Thyrsus (for more information, refer to Lecture IX: Tools of the Trade). Certain specialized clerics, after years of practicing their trade, sometimes find that their range has extended some small amount. This is believed to be a result of increased magical stamina (see Limitation 1).

-

Limitation 5: White magic cannot heal disease or natural-born infirmities.

While white magic is extremely useful in mending wounds and recouping lost blood, it does little to combat even the most common of illnesses. Tradition explains this by way of the Goddess—since disease is inflicted by her, she is naturally disinclined to provide man with the supernatural power to combat it. This stands in contrast to wounds, which are inflicted by man and are therefore, in the Goddess’s mercy, allowed to be healed by them as well.

Recent studies by Marie Helena Conrad of the Kingdom's School of Sorcery indicate that healing can even exacerbate illness, especially in cases where infection or contagious disease are concerned. Many devout followers of the Goddess, including Marie Helena Conrad, have anecdotally reported that this occurs more often when the infection has already taken root in the blood, and indicates that there is little hope of recovery.

It should be noted that this limitation excludes illnesses caused by certain poisons and toxins—while it seems a technicality, poison-related illness can usually be healed by a well-cast Restore.

-

Limitation 6: One cannot heal oneself.

With some few exceptions, healers cannot heal themselves (it should be noted that the use of Nosferatu is not considered a healing spell in this series due to its highly dubious ethical status). This limitation of self-healing can become a serious issue in the smaller communities of Fodlan, where healers are few and far between. If a town’s healer is injured, there is little other recourse but to send as quickly as possible for the next town’s healer. This is often described as being one of the most unexpected limitations of healing with white magic, and has been the direct and tragic cause of many upstanding healers’ deaths.

-

Limitation 7: Healing must be performed at a reasonable speed.

The time it takes to heal with white magic is noted to be one of the most dangerous and frustrating limits of this field. Healing small injuries (such as a scraped knee or bruised jaw) will take little more than several seconds for most practiced healers, but more serious cuts can take up to thirty minutes to fully close. During this time, the patient will be in danger of losing more blood than the healing is replacing, so in such cases, it is recommended that several healers be brought in to assist with the process.

Other examples of injuries notably affected by this limitation are frostbite and burns. While small burns and areas of damaged skin can be treated relatively quickly, larger ones are more difficult to work with due to the skin’s temperature. While the healing will repair damaged skin, it will not normalize the skin’s temperature, and as such, the process may be considerably lengthened if the heat or cold has seeped into deeper levels of the skin. Healing in these cases can be an extremely long and painful process, and it is highly recommended that the healer find some way to control the patient's temperature while healing.

For more information on healing over greater periods of time, please refer to Lecture XIII, Long-Term Injuries.

-

Limitation 8: White magic cannot bring back the dead.

This, perhaps, goes without saying, but for the sake of completion this list will include it. White magic can sometimes close the wounds on a recent corpse, but it cannot return the soul that has departed. The point of death, however, is sometimes debated. In general, it is agreed among respected scholars that healing can benefit the injured up to five minutes after their last breath or last heartbeat.

It should be warned that life and death are the Goddess’ domain—healers should not desire to meddle in it.

[woefully-undercaffeinated]

What to do when something illegal happens at work

When your boss does something illegal at work, it's common to freeze up because you're not sure what to do. Here are a few tips for how to handle those situations during and after:

While it is happening:

Keep yourself safe. In the moment, your first priority is always to keep yourself and others from physical harm and out of danger as much as possible. If any other advice I give you conflicts with that, your safety takes priority.

Make sure you know where you are. If you think your safety might be at risk, getting your bearings can be critically important. Take note of potential exit routes, hazards, the flow of traffic (both vehicle and foot traffic), cameras, and any safe areas you know of. Later, knowledge of your exact location may be very important in reconstructing events.

Check the time. Knowing exactly when something happened, and how long it took, will be extremely valuable.

Look around for witnesses, and try to bring some over if possible. Witnesses will both reduce the likelihood of more outrageous behavior and help you to take action afterwards. Do your best to remember who was there.

Say "please let me finish" every time you're interrupted, and count the number of times it happened. Bullies love to interrupt people at the first sign of disagreement, and then later they'll claim that nobody disagreed with them when instead nobody could get in a word edgewise. Saying "please let me finish" calls out the fact that they were interrupting, and a count of the times you were interrupted will help you protect yourself from being misinterpreted later.

Avoid agreeing to anything or signing anything if possible. You have the right to review any document that you're asked to sign, which usually includes taking the document and having it examined by an attorney. If you're being threatened with serious consequences if you don't sign immediately, write "signed under duress". If they're asking for a verbal agreement, try to get them to accept a "let me think about it/check my to-do list/etc" rather than a hard "yes". Even if the thing you'd be agreeing to is something you're okay with, it's still important not to agree to things when you don't feel like you're allowed to say "no"; in stressful situations, our judgment can be seriously compromised, and allowing yourself to be bullied into saying "yes" will set a bad precedent for further interactions.

After it's over, as soon as you're in a safe place:

Complete the WTWFU checklist

Send a follow-up email summarizing your understanding of what was communicated. It can be as simple as "just to ensure we understood each other, what I got was that you were telling me/us that [we'll be disciplined if we discuss our wages/contacting a union is a fireable offense/our pay will be docked if anyone submits a complaint to OSHA/etc], is that correct?". If there is information that protects you, such as a health condition or pregnancy you need accommodation for or a prior agreement that is being violated, include it in your email even if the company already knows. CC HR and any coworkers who were present and BCC your personal email*. Forward any responses to your personal email as well*.

Rescind any agreements you made. Either in the same email as step #2 or in a separate email, depending on what you think is appropriate, say "I didn't feel like I could safely say 'no' in that situation, so I'd like to rescind my earlier agreement until I've had some time to reconsider." If it's something you think you'd have otherwise agreed to, try to offer a time frame for an actual decision. CC HR and BCC your personal email*.

Collect any evidence you can, and make note of any evidence that exists but isn't accessible to you. This includes emails about the issue, any photos that were already taken or that you can safely and legally take,

If something illegal was done or hinted at, contact the applicable regulatory agency as soon as possible with all of the information above.

Consider arranging a consult with an employment law attorney -- consults aren't the same as retainers, they're considerably cheaper (or sometimes free, depending on your income and the possibility of a lawsuit) and can either turn into ongoing representation or just be a one-time service.

* Don't include information that you have a legitimate duty to safeguard, such as customer data, protected health information, or non-public market-affecting information. This does not include any information pertaining to working conditions, your compensation, regulatory compliance, or workplace safety -- the company isn't allowed to demand that you keep those a secret. Either try to get the point across without including the specific information that's being safeguarded, or censor it by replacing it with two underscores per replacement with generic descreptors as necessary (i.e. 'I have safety concerns about the release of our secret robotics project on January 10' becomes 'I have safety concerns about the release of our __[project]__ on __[date]__').

[dailycharacteroption]

Loremaster (Pathfinder Second Edition Archetype)

(art by Hassly on DeviantArt)

Ah yes, the Loremaster, the very poster child of “Scientia Potentia Est”, or “Knowledge is Power”. We’ve covered the first edition prestige class of that name before on the blog, and now it’s come back in Second Edition as an archetype as many 1E prestige classes did.

However, while loremasters retain the base premise of “Specializing in knowledge”, this archetype is a bit different from it’s forebear, dropping entirely the whole “secrets of body and mind” thing where they could buff different aspects of themselves permanently by studying the masters in that field, as well as getting rid of the metamagical and spellcasting requirements which made the prestige class have a high barrier to entry in the first place.

What it retains is various ways to improve their ability to recall information and put it to use, including some minor information-gathering skills as well.

While I’ll miss things like wizard loremasters gaining toughness for free to bolster their tiny HP pools and such, I do like the idea of loremasters being associated with any smart character, not just mages, so let’s take a look at the archetype and what it does!

The base dedication of the archetype grants training in loremaster lore, allowing them to recall information on any topic, though improving it is a bit harder than other skills. Furthermore, the loremaster also gains access to certain techniques associated with the enigma bardic muse, even if they are not a bard.

With a little magic, many loremasters can improve their recollection, making it easier to have the right knowledge on hand.

Some also learn some basic magic for communicating information, bolstering allies with guidance, sending whispered messages, and leaving magical marks.

Many also learn to apply their loremaster arts to deciphering text, making sense of codes and dense bodies of work.

Sometimes an obscure area of expertise is beyond their knowledge at first, but by studying up on it quickly, they can briefly gain a basic understanding for whatever purposes they need.

Many are so knowledgeable that they don’t have to struggle to remember some basic things.

Later on, those that mastered basic magics can learn greater ones, allowing them to understand unfamiliar languages, link their minds telepathically, or conceal information on a page magically.

Recollection is quick and fast for many loremasters, recalling information almost reflexively.

The most powerful can think at a lightning pace, recalling a lot of useful information at once to analyze a situation and formulate a plan.

This archetype can seem underwhelming at first, but it’s actually pretty powerful, allowing you to use one skill for all your knowledge rolls (though you’ll still have roll the proper skills for any practical applications of said lores or knowledges. What’s more, the spells for gathering or conveying information are quite useful as well. This archetype is perfect for those that want to be super knowledge-focused without having to play an enigma bard (partially because it gets many of the same feats).

The fact this archetype doesn’t have the same strict requirements as the original is actually pretty valuable as it allows for a much more diverse range of characters beyond “especially nerdy spellcaster”. Consider the fighter loremaster who treats the art of the sword as just another skill in their repertoire, an expression of the body just as their other knowledges express the mind. Loremaster investigators, rogues, inventors, and alchemists, all putting their genius to work, and so on.

The party’s chase of a villain takes them to a flooded cave system with connections to elemental water. There, they find several ledalusca, water elementals capable of mimicking shapes. Though it initially seems like a waste of time, indulging their loremaster’s desire to document their abilities discover the icy elementals saw their quarry, and more importantly, the person he met with.

After receiving a cipher they cannot possibly solve, the party’s scholarly patron has become obsessed to the point of attracting the attention of the puzzle’s creator, a fiend of madness and fixation. If not caught, the corruption will turn their greatest ally into their most dangerous enemy.

Though he is of rakshasa blood, the beastbrood Nephilim Laconus has no time for whatever dark urges he inherited from his ancestor or how others perceive him. Instead, he spends most of his time researching history to make sense of one particular inherited memory which, if true, clashes with common knowledge about the Age of Godstriders.

[qqueenofhades]

can i ask you for some advice on how to reach out to a professor (at a university you don't attend) to ask about helping them out with their research? i'm not currently enrolled in college for a variety of financial/logistical reasons, but i really care about research and i really want to gain the skill of doing good research. i like to think i'm good at writing and critical thinking, and i'm eager to both learn and contribute.

i know i'm going to have to cold email professors and show that i've read their papers and find their research interesting, especially since i don't have much on a resume. i've read conflicting advice on how to email people -- some sources say to keep it as short and easy to read as possible, and others say to provide in-depth analysis and possibly constructive criticism of the research they've done to show you're committed. i really don't think i'm in a place to provide constructive criticism on what professional researchers are doing, LOL, but it might help to provide some commentary to show i understand it.

so my questions are, how much is too much, and how little is (probably) too little? i'm thinking of aiming for the equivalent of ~two paragraphs per email. also, are there any reliable indications of how well a professor treats the volunteers or employees/grad students who work for them? (and whether they could use extra help?)

thank you so much for reading!! i hope you have a wonderful day, and i love your blog ❤️

I admire your initiative and your desire to improve your research skills, which is why I'll have to gently say that I'm not sure this is the best way to go about it. There are a few reasons for that, namingly that first and foremost, professors are very busy and overworked people. They don't have time to do all the things they actually need to do and/or are actually paid for, and having to take extra time to summarize their research and/or organize it for an outsider who doesn't attend their university is, I'm afraid, probably going to be a pretty hard sell for most if not all of them. There's also the fact that if they do have the kind of research where it's useful to have a student assistant, there is no reason for them to give that spot to you and not one of their own students at the university, who are already actively enrolled, paying for their time, and contributing to their job and institution's research goals and projects. Not to mention that there are university confidentiality agreements, work-study arrangements, and all the rest, which would all preclude a professor just hiring a random non-student assistant off the street. Speaking from my current spot in university/department administration, I can say that it would definitely be a non-starter for us for a number of reasons. We just had an issue with flagging a student who wasn't technically enrolled in our specific program within our constituent college, although she was enrolled in the university, so bringing in someone with no connection to the university at all wouldn't fly, alas.

If you're really interested in working with THIS particular professor for some reason and not just a name you picked off a department directory with a form email that you're sending to any likely-looking candidate, you'll have to explain why in considerable depth, what you're doing or what your project is for, why you think it would be valuable for you AND for them for them to collaborate, and why you're contacting them directly instead of say, central Human Resources or the Careers page for the college. There are sometimes spots for research fellows, part-time lab assistants, or other jobs with the kind of work you seem to be looking for, but that requires you to go through the formal application/interview process like any other job and isn't something for which you can just slip in the back door (a professor would, for one thing, not likely be willing to just take you on without you going through the regular selection process for these posts and being interviewed by the university's regular hiring people).

As noted, there are legal liability issues, restrictions on what kind of information they can share with people even within the university let alone outside it, and the fact that it's not their job to hire and screen potential assistants for a research project UNLESS they are running an active project as the Principal Investigator (PI) and explicitly looking for student volunteers/employees (which even then will likely be searched/filled from within the university first). A cold email out of nowhere asking if they have some work for you, Random Stranger, will, unfortunately, go straight into the junk folder. If they're feeling polite, they might respond by directing you to reach out to HR, but that's a stretch. If you are planning to attend this university in the future, you might lead with that, because then they'll have more incentive to discuss what kind of options are available and so forth, but yeah. It's just not something I would expect to have a very great success rate and I know that if I got that kind of email, I would discard it pretty much out of hand. (I did get an extremely weird email a few weeks ago from someone asking ME if I would help THEM with their research, wherein they never specified so much as the basic subject area, what university they were at, what the project was, how they would envision me helping, why they chose me to contact, etc. It was basically a cautionary tale in how not to ask an academic to collaborate, and yes, it went pretty much straight into the recycle bin without a reply.)

If you still think after hearing this that you have a legitimate option to contact and at least feel out the waters (after all, never say never, stranger things have happened, etc) then yeah, uh, don't go with the "absolute stranger the professor doesn't know from Adam makes an unsolicited critique of their work and then asks for a job." Academics are used to receiving constructive criticism and it obviously comes with the territory, but it also comes within structured forums and at expected times -- when you present a paper to your peers at a conference, submit to a journal, etc. Popping out of nowhere to give unsolicited academic crit is as rude as popping out of nowhere to give unsolicited crit on a fanfic or something else that you've posted outside of the specific expectation of receiving it, wherein some "I Just Wanna Help" obnoxious mansplainer (gender neutral) says a lot of "helpful" things that nobody asked them for and then seems shocked when this isn't well received. I don't know who gave you that particular little nugget of uh, wisdom, but as you think, it's not something that strikes me in any way as a good idea, and would probably piss the academic off in a way that would have them venting to their friends and colleagues, and might therefore do you more harm than good in a number of different ways.

If you want to independently improve your research skills and work within the structure of academia-adjacent realms, what I really recommend doing is volunteering at your local public library, history/science museum, or other similar institution. They're always eager for volunteers and/or part-time employees, they have a number of different tasks and skills that need doing, it's a great way to build professional and community connections and see how things are done behind the scenes, and it looks good on your CV when or if you do apply to college (and then have a much easier path toward working with professors in the way you want to do). So yeah, all told, that's strongly what I'd recommend -- good luck!

[asexual-society]

I needed another ace's opinion on this or I was gonna go crazy. I feel so alone.

My best friend is allo and recently started to go to therapy. His therapist told him something to incinuate that my advice about romantic relationships was less valuable/productive because "our brains work differently" because I'm ace and he isn't.

He's upset that I'm upset about it when I believe this is just benevolent aphobia. I see it the same way as someone telling a straight person not to take advice from a gay person. Am I just making a big deal out of nothing? Why is my opinion less important/applicable because I don't have the same experience as someone else?

I personally don't think an aro or ace person's advice on relationships is less valuable just because our brains work differently or our experiences are different, I mean, for most other topics, asking someone impartial for advice is completely normal, even if you take that person's advice with a pinch of salt because they don't have firsthand knowledge of the situation. I've had my opinions and advice belittled countless times and I know how hurtful it can be, and there are times when someone's opinion on a subject is totally useless because they're not informed about it, but this isn't like asking your friend who can't drive for advice how to parallel park or your American friend about British politics,, culturally and socially we are fed a LOT about relationships all the time for our whole lives, even without firsthand experience, we absorb a lot of information, and that's not even accounting for the things we have actively sought out, or the experiences of aspec people who have been in relationships.

I understand that we might not fully understand how it feels to be allo and want relationships of whatever kind in the same way, but a lot of (not all, I'll grant you) ace and aro people know as much or more about aspects of sex and romance than your average allo purely on the basis of having had to learn about it ourselves, and I think we have incredibly valuable insights into relationships that are generally overlooked by people who take for granted that everyone feels the same way about sex and romance. Maybe my confidence is unearned, but I'm still here giving advice to strangers on the internet, and people keep asking for it, so someone must think my opinion is worthwhile, and if I can't give someone the advice or help a person needs, I'll just say that. The number of allo people who have terrible relationships and then give out terrible advice because of it is crazy, like. genuinely there's some actively dangerous advice being pedaled by allos, I think on average an ace or aro person acting in good faith can give advice of a similar quality to your average allo person's.

By the therapist's same logic you can't trust them with advice about how aspec people are, in fact you can't trust them to give advice about any mental or physical illness or disability they don't experience, which is obviously not how therapy works. Tbh, I'd argue that unless a therapist is aspec themselves or has been given decent training about aspec people, which generally speaking, they aren't (although there are some good ones), anything they have to say with regards to us is even less "valuable or productive" than what an aspec person thinks about relationships.

There will always be aspec people who give terrible advice, and trust me, I have heard some terminally online or just downright ignorant takes, but I've heard just as bad, if not worse from allo people, and acting like we're the problem sucks.

~ mod key

[friezaglasiencold]

What are your opinions of biotechnology? I know you don't particularly care for Cell, but tech like that could have its uses. Your own personal creatures in the Frieza Force, fit with whatever genes you wish to give them. There are also androids, who've proven time and time again to be formidable, and completely obedient if done correctly. The only issue I can think of is the budget, but I imagine that money is not a problem with you.

I can see plenty of possible applications, but all come with pitfalls. An android made to fulfill a certain task may not have the wherewithal to effectively problem-solve if a scenario changes... a creature bred for war might turn on its commanders... cyborg enhancements, the logical next step, are an entirely different bag of unpleasantries.

Then there's the matter of funding and organizing a new research division, acquiring the resources and labor to create the things, allotting valuable budget for the inevitability of backfire--not to mention the issues that arise with automated labor. Regardless of what my public appearance may suggest it *is* in my best interest to consider the morale of my underlings, and it would take a considerable blow were I to threaten their job security by introducing an entirely new, genetically superior workforce.

All that, plus the fact that I'm already working on the fringes of intergalactic law; I'd rather not be dragged into some irritating string of suits.

I think we're doing just fine as is, though it's something to be considered. If I can find a suitable middle ground, one that doesn't cause me any unnecessary angst, I might try to incorporate it, one way or the other.

[rotationalsymmetry]

Ayyy.

So I got a little into the tags on this one. And it's wild. (Transphobia discourse ahead including brief mentions of sexual violence, physical violence, and police and prisons. feel free to scroll past if you don't want to see it.) (btw I'm talking trans fem and trans masc a lot and I realize some non-binary people don't think either term is really applicable to them and...I think that's legit I just don't know what to say about it. Apart from yeah exorsexism is also its own thing. Sorry.)

Here look. Do trans women and trans femmes have some pretty epic issues that are much more a thing they face than a thing that trans mascs face? Of course. If I walk down the street in a short haircut and a binder, I'm not going to be especially worried that a cop will decide to harass me because they think I'm a sex worker. I'm not at especially high risk of a lover murdering me because he's so freaked out at the idea of maybe being a little bit gay because the woman he fucked turned out to not have been born in a body the doctors recognized as female. If I get arrested, well, a lack of hearing about transmasc prison horror stories does not mean they don't exist, but I have heard transfem prison horror stories and they are horrific.

Plus the extra layer of some feminists (terfs) being utterly convinced that trans women are a unique and terrifying threat to feminism and should not be allowed in women's spaces or to even, like...work for feminist organizations? Anyways. It's a whole thing.

And I've known about at least some of this stuff for as long as I've known about any trans issues. And it's horrifying and very much worth talking about and doing stuff about. And it also as far as I can tell does get talked about extensively when people talk about trans issues at all. Which I mean. They often don't.

At the same time, I have also seen a sort of overcorrection, more from cis people than trans people I think, to go "well ok clearly we have to draw the line somewhere, if feminism can include trans fems we have to exclude someone so I guess that means feminism does not apply to trans mascs."

Which is ludicrous.

Misogyny affects trans fems. Street harassment and job discrimination and a million other feminist issues affect trans women. (In fact, trans fems often offer a uniquely valuable perspective on these things, as they can compare how people treat them at different stages of how other people see them.) Misogyny affects trans fems, again not surprisingly because is there any group of women that misogyny does not affect, so feminism should include trans fems.

And misogyny affects trans mascs. Abortion access and contraception access affects us. The restrictions placed on girls affect us, since most of us didn't transition at age two. Clothes without pockets often affect us. Sexual harassment and sexual assault and unfortunately in some cases corrective rape affect us. And here look, I pretty much look like a cis woman who doesn't shave her body hair, but trans masc who look like guys have this really unpleasant problem where often they still need "women's health care", Pap smears and whatnot, because "women" need a lot of health care, while looking like guys, where the worst scenario is getting refused care and the next worst one is getting care but being misgendered the entire time and the best case scenario of getting appropriate care and not being misgendered and also not being slammed by dysphoria or the psychological residue of past health care experiences too hard, is hard to find. Ok?

If misogyny affects trans mascs, and again it does, then trans mascs belong in feminism, ie the struggle against misogyny.

If misogyny affects trans mascs in a way that intersects with transphobia -- if trans mascs get special experiences that are much more common for them than for either cis women or trans fems or cis men -- then there should be a word for that. And in theory you could talk about transmisogyny to cover both, because hey intersection of transphobia and misogyny what else are you going to call it, but a lot of people are deeply convinced that transmisogyny means specifically the oppression that trans fems expeiences so it's almost less effort to just coin a new term than to fight over what transmisogyny should mean. So. Here we are.

It's really wild that any of this is controversial. Let alone that people will get so intensely angry about it.

[ensorcellingdevilries]

Researching:

Research is key to being successful in anything. Natural born skill can be a plus but it means nothing without the knowledge to back it up. Knowing your lunar cycles, simple mechanisms of magick, and correspondences can greatly help you. You can always build on what you know, and that is as it should be. You can read a thousand occult books and still never know if they work if you don't put them into practice. Research also means experiencing and recording your own work. Seeing if you succeed or fail, testing yourself and your knowledge in real world application.

Good knowledge to have before any working is...

- who are you working with? Deity, demons, daemons, other spirits...

-correspondences? Herbs, stones, colors, candles, directions, etc...

-what you want to perform? Ritual, spell, working, prayer

-What physical effort must you put in? Going out looking for a job, putting yourself somewhere you can meet a date, etc... (Magick does not work without physical effort)

Magick is stronger for you when you do it yourself. Do not fall for the false preachings of another to buy their rituals and they will do the magick for you. Then they charge you extra fees to “boost the magick” or “remove the curse” they put on you. This also goes for anyone claiming to be a “Master of…” as the people who think of themselves as only masters and never students inhibit their own spirituality and growth. If you follow them you will also be limited to their narrow minded views.These people abuse the craft and are only using it and you for personal gain. These people should be avoided if possible.

Always Keep a Journal to document all you have learned through your research. Having a journal of theories, ideas and notes from others is a valuable tool. Be sure to leave some space around each section to write notes from yourself too. What you have done or what you want to do differently. Take not the words of man for fact or fiction, but take it as a grain of sand in the hourglass of your time on this path. What works for others may not work for you, and what works for you may not work for others. Just as this book is a guide so shall be all the writings of the world. Perception is the foundation of each individual's reality and so as it is perceived so shall it be.

The book in which YOUR Perceptions and Realities shall be written is called the “Book of Shadows”. This is where Your Truth shall be, This is your experiences, tests, and workings. It will be as individualized as yourself and no one will have exactly the same ideas.

“Be not as the River but as the stone, Let your beliefs be carved by your experiences, Trust not the flow of the others beliefs.”

[heretichromia]

A (mediocre) defense of Shining and Hoshiguma.

Narrow use cases in the advanced metagame don't equate to low power.

I think we sometimes forget the purpose of tier lists, and the kind of people who most need them. Especially in a game like Arknights, where "best in slot" is an extremely loaded question compared to most other games, it's hard to really properly convey unit power.

That isn't to say that tier lists aren't helpful. There is a significant difference between the power levels of characters like Młynar and Ebenholz, and people who don't want to (or don't have the game knowledge required to) read and compare kits and try to navigate the mess that is showcase videos (which are typically not good demonstrations of an operator's utility) get pretty good information from a website generally telling them "build Pozyomka if you want a good sniper" and "don't build Vigil if you want a good vanguard."

...But come the fuck on, man. I promise this isn't just a Gamepress rant. This is a community perception issue. Gamepress's tier list is just an illustrative example of how bad the community at large is at evaluating anything but the absolute top tier of obvious meta threat.

If you're not seeing the problem with the above, then consider this: what unit would actually be best for the kind of person who needs a tier list to build?

The tankiest non-limited operator in the game, perfectly serviceable for almost every map with good performance, who still sees routine usage in many high-difficulty maps and even the occasional Contingency Contract?

One of two units that are mediocre blockers, are significantly squishier, and have extremely few optimal use cases outside of dedicated Contingency Contract strategies that aren't realistically applicable to normal gameplay?

Why on earth is Hoshiguma ranked below Liskarm and Blemishine? Why is Hoshiguma in roughly the same tier as Croissant and Bubble? Why is Shining rated just above two units that are pretty much never used?

I feel like this is the sort of thing that happens when you let Reddit-brained "analysis" get to your head, and you forget how to evaluate units entirely. This isn't even the new player tier list! It's supposedly for endgame, trying to evaluate operators "for all game modes."

I hope they're not trying to include Contingency Contract in there, where Liskarm and especially Blemishine are in fact extremely valuable, because CC is a game mode where Cliffheart is considerably more impactful than Thorns. You just can't take into account CC in a tier list like this without having the list make no sense at all.

None of this means that these units aren't...dated, or that they don't have problems in the modern game. They are, and they do. But this is a pretty poor way of reflecting that. I could see an argument that neither of them belong in any sort of S-tier, even on Gamepress's dumb list where there's four separate grades above A+. But...if that's the case, then we still need to be honest about where the alternatives fall, because the problem with Shining and Hoshiguma isn't that they're bad at their jobs.

———

What are they good at?

If you understand their kits, just skip this section. That said, so many people don't. I see people talking about how Sussurro does Shining's job better than her all the time, which is true if you're only looking at raw healing numbers and not actual damage mitigation.

...Tanking. Specifically, physical tanking, though Hoshiguma's large HP pool means she's pretty decent at absorbing Arts damage too (just not as well as someone like Saria with built-in RES).

—

Hoshiguma has a big slab of DEF, the highest persistent value on any operator. She's good at standing there, taking damage, and reflecting damage back to enemies that hit her. That last bit is why she sees continued high-end usage today. While she can get almost 2,350 DEF with her S1 (the highest possible DEF in the game attainable by a single character, if I'm not mistaken), she's mostly used for her S2's reflect, where she can still get nearly 1,700 DEF (Mod-Y). That, combined with her 25% chance to just...completely ignore damage means she is a hilariously tanky unit compared to her competition.

If what you're looking for is someone who can stare down as much physical damage as possible and live to tell the tale, Hoshiguma is going to be one of your best options, if not your best.

—

Shining, meanwhile, is the best single-target ground unit healer in the game. While her effectiveness spikes when healing high-DEF targets like Saria, Hoshiguma, etc., she's simply good and effective in all scenarios where she's healing ground units taking a sufficient amount of physical damage. I've done...an embarrassing amount of math for this subject, so if any of this is wrong, I'll cry (but also please let me know).

Here's the conclusions:

With her Mod-X, Shining S2 will more or less always outpace the best-in-slot persistent healing (Lumen) in actual total mitigation, even on relatively low-DEF units.

On high-DEF units (Saria, Nian, Hoshiguma), Shining S2 can outpace Sussurro S2 in effective mitigation—on a persistent uptime skill.

Shining S2 loses a lot of value if Shining has to heal anyone but the main tank, because she could waste her shield on someone else. This can be effectively mitigated in most circumstances by proper unit placement, or drawing fire with fast-redeploys, Nightingale cages, etc., but it's something to keep in mind.

Shining S3 is completely incomparable to anything else in the game. Nothing comes remotely close when it comes to mitigating incoming physical damage.

Shining is far and away the best unit in her class at her job. Again, nobody comes remotely close.

———

But, yes, they do have one big issue.

...This is pretty obvious, but physical tanking isn't the premium role it used to be.

It is not useless, and for many players represents a much simpler strategy to dealing with several powerful enemies than the "canonical" strategies you'll find in video guides. It's also an almost universal utility. Surviving physical damage is something you have to do in almost every map, so bringing someone like Hoshiguma who's good at doing that is never bad. At worst, there's a small number of better options, like Saria, who can in many cases reduce Hoshiguma + Medic to a single unit, but...I don't really think we should be implying that a unit is barely better than a vanilla 4* because they're sometimes (and not always!) outshone by one of the most powerful operators in the game that not everyone is guaranteed to have.

...But I do have to emphasize that the role isn't premium anymore.

A sizable handful of modern bosses these days have ways of getting around walls. And they should. It'd be very boring if the best strategy to every encounter was to wall up and watch the enemy bash its head against your units until it dies. But between all the methods of crowd control, debuffs, teleporting, or simply walking through your operators that bosses are doing these days, you'll find that there's frequently better tools for the job than getting a really tanky guy.

Some frequently used options:

Bursting the motherfucker to high heaven before they can ever touch your operators or the blue box.

Straight-up immortality, a la Specter or Specter the Unchained.

Utilizing crowd control, be it through outright stuns, Suzuran slows, Gnosis freezes, various sources of bind (Gladiia, Rosa, etc.), or even shifting from Weedy on low-weight bosses.

We have such expansive toolkits at our disposal nowadays that we don't need to rely on operators who are "just" good. Hoshiguma and Shining are very good operators at their jobs! Their jobs are just sometimes not the best fit for any scenario, and in many cases, the worse options will still suffice, while bringing something more to the table. If you can get by with Saria + Ptilopsis, why wouldn't you opt for the higher SP generation? If Mudrock works and you don't need a healer at all, why substitute one operator for two that do considerably less damage? This won't be true all the time, especially since enemy stats have been on a steady increase—even my level 90, Mod-Y, S1M3 Saria isn't enough sometimes. Still, tankiness is definitely something that, if it's in excess, just...goes to waste.

—

But...

...why are we evaluating operators under the assumption that everyone has every other operator at their disposal? Yes—if you have literally every operator in the game, and can use them proficiently, then you're likely only going to use Hoshiguma when you need her reflect. If you have Saria, then you're likely to use Hoshiguma only sometimes as opposed to almost every map.

I feel like we fall into this trap really often. If a unit isn't the absolute best in every circumstance or doesn't do something hilariously overpowered they're unplayably awful, on the same level as 4*s, and shouldn't be built. Yeah, of course, you shouldn't prioritize getting E2 Hoshiguma if you're sitting on E1 Thorns, Pozyomka, or some first-rate DPS unit, but you cannot look at Hoshiguma's numbers, then look me in the eye and tell me she's a marginal improvement at best over fucking Bubble.

It's a problem that's worse with lower rarity units, especially 5* units, as the current memetic thought is that 5*s are barely better than 4*s, despite that being demonstrably untrue in many circumstances. (Can I blame SUPAH for that?) That said, I wanted to focus on Hoshiguma and Shining here, because they're victims of the same thinking that are actually still optimal in some situations, with no one who does their job better than them.

[lionews]

“i know that BO markings are supposed to feel rare but it feels so limiting with the designs you can do. And it feels toxic? Like a lion cant sell unless its high with breed only traits. And the expectation to breed those traits. I mean i need money but it sucks finding studs and it sucks mentally.”

oh my god can you guys please for the love of god open your eyes to 95% of the lioden community?

first things, BO traits are not “toxic”. what the hell could you possibly mean by that

secondly, take a gander at the TC. the lion sales page specifically. what do you see there? that’s right, thousands and thousands of trades without the word “BO” in there at all. in fact, most of those lions don’t have any BO at all. and guess what? they can still sell. some of them are quite pretty. where did the idea come from that only heavy BO lions are selling? because it’s not true. unmutated cubs of mine that have nothing but proteles and halitosis marks still sell. and they’re not used for fodder either.

thirdly, to your point about missing the days when “it was just about breeding whatever you want”, those days haven’t gone anywhere. go to the members online page and click on some random dens. i guarantee that a vast majority of those players will have g6 primal kings with explore decors and a shit ton of applicators applied. and guess what? those are probably the happiest people on this site. they’re breeding for whatever the hell they want. YOU and YOUR MENTALITY are the only thing stopping you from breeding for whatever the hell you want.

fourthly, supply and demand. i don’t feel like i need to lecture anybody here about why rarer lions with rarer traits will be more valuable/in demand than lions with traits that can be applied.

if you want to reject BO, you gotta embrace the “cringe” of applicators.

god i hate the people who self-persecute because they don’t like BO breeding. just embrace that you’re applicator trash and leave the rest of us out of your pity party!

.

[colorfuldreamsmkg]

General App Review

Hello! We wanted to give a brief general app review giving some trends we noticed in the apps we rejected compared to what we personally look for in apps. Do take this with a grain of salt, however, as this heavily revolves around what THIS mod team looks for rather than what every mod team seeks out! However, some of these notes might be useful to take with you in the future, or even if you opt to try to apply for a Churin game again someday.

As an additional note, many of the things noted on this list aren’t things that inherently fail an app! We can and have accepted apps that have done these things before. If your app had any of these things in it, that doesn’t necessarily make it bad! We had MANY apps we loved that we couldn’t fit into the game for one reason or another.

That said, here’s the list!

Ease of Read - As mods, we often have to read 40+ apps in a short span of time when picking a roster! Therefore, we often end up favoring apps that are easier for us to read, rather than requiring us to read the same paragraph over and over while trying to understand what’s trying to be said. Remember: An application isn’t a published novel, nor is it a scientific journal. At times, straying away from flowery prose and jargon can help the reader. Additionally, extremely long paragraphs that span half a page by themselves or series of events that are confusing and lack points of connection are much harder for us to get through in a timely manner. Poetic tools and technical jargon are better suited to the prompts section than the backstory, as those give us an excellent view of how we can expect you to write posts within the game.

Prompt Character Voice - Speaking of prompts, we noticed a trend of muns turning in prompts that didn’t give us a good view of your character’s voice! At times, a personality section only tells us so much, so the prompts are also designed with the hope that we can learn about your character’s behavior and mannerisms in practice. We received quite a few prompts that spent more time discussing the surroundings and unflavored actions that didn’t give us a good view into your character’s mind. We’d really like to see that!

Backstory Focus - We also ran into an issue where some people spent more time talking about their character’s backstory characters rather than their OC themselves. We WANT to know about your character’s life! We want to know how THEY viewed the world. While learning about other characters and how they shaped your own is valuable, it’s important that we get to the meat of what your OC’s own experience is, as well.

Missing Information - For the most part, the short answers section is like a quick review. It’s for the mods to have easy access to quick information we can look at during the course of the game for things like motives and such. We’d rather not go into a short answers section and be surprised by a secret that is completely life-changing written in one sentence that could’ve been described in detail in the backstory. Those are the kinds of facts we want to know more about! Details on those kinds of things are valuable to us.

Research - It’s important to research technology and illnesses, mental or physical, you’re less familiar with when you want to apply them to a character’s backstory! It’s important to us that real-world illnesses are respectfully-presented, and that technology that exists in modern day works the way it should.

Compatibility with the Game Concept - This game is all about characters’ strong feelings towards music bringing an entire magical world to life based on THEIR FEELINGS towards the craft! Therefore, we really needed OCs that felt passionately about music in one way or another. Characters who only had one afterthought paragraph dedicated to music or only had throwaway lines here and there about it didn’t really work with what we needed. And the same goes for characters who didn’t really care about the music they were making, nor had the capability to come to care about it later. They just didn’t work for this game! There’s a good chance they’d work well for others, however.

Duos - This is no fault to duos as a concept, nor to those who applied them, but we quickly discovered that duos were INCREDIBLY difficult to sort into units in ways that made sense for the duos themselves and the rest of the cast. Unfortunately, duos didn’t really work as well as we thought they might in practice. We genuinely apologize for that, as it was an oversight on our part! As a general tip, when submitting a duo, we highly recommend you also submit a solo app as a back-up. Duos tend to be popular as a whole and there's a generally limited amount of them any given game can accept.

Overlap and Cast Diversity - This is another one that’s not really anyone’s fault, and there's only so much you can plan for. To make a healthy and fun game, mods need to pick out a cast with a wide variety of characters. There were characters we REALLY wanted to take, but simply couldn’t because we received too many apps that did this one thing, or too many that did the other. The best advice we can give to avoid this, even though it doesn't ALWAYS solve the problem, is to make sure your character isn't solely an archetype. While taking inspiration from a trope is just fine, be sure that the character has individuality and personality beyond it, as well.