For anyone out there who is suffering any hardships, minor or completely fucked, I put together some pieces of literature, music, and media you might enjoy. I hope you find some comfort in them.
Books:
-The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
-When Zachary Beaver Came to Town by Kimberly Lewis Holt
-The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
-Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millan
-Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff for Teens by Richard Carlson
-The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse by Charlie Mackery
-Going Bovine by Libba Bray
Graphic Novels:
-Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgol
-Lost at Sea by Brian Lee O’Malley
-Friends with Boys by Faith Erin Hicks
-The Only Living Boy by David Ghallager
YouTube Videos:
-Kurt Cobain on Identity Blank on Blank by Blank on Blank
-If by Rudyard Kipling - Read by Sir Michael Caine by Upgrade your Mindset
-The Gift by The Gift
-Overcomer by Hannah Grace
-An old mans advice. By Bernard Albertson
-This Actually Happens A Lot by Tom Low
-Dating: Do’s and Dont’s (1949) by Old TV Time
-Bertrand Russel - Message to Future Generations by PhilosophieKanal
Movies:
-The Kings of Summer (2013)
The Breakfast Club (1984)
-Good Will Hunting (1997)
-Pay It Forward (2000)
-Treasure Planet (2002)
-Super 8 (2011)
-Scott Pilgrim vs The World (2010)
-Stand By Me (1986)
-Ad Astra (2019)
Songs:
-Move Along by the All American Rejects
-Hey Jude by The Beatles
-Divenire by Ludovico Einaudi
-Three Little Birds by Bob Marley
-Don’t You Worry Child by Swedish House Mafia
-Here I go Again by Whitesnake
-Second Chance by Shinedown
-Refuge by Tom Petty
-I’m Still Here by John Rhzeznik
-Smells like Teen Spirit by Nirvana
-The Middle by Jimmy Eat World
-Nothing Else Matters by Metallica
-What I’ve Done by Linkin Park
-21 Guns by Green Day
-Beautiful Day by U2
-Baba O Riley by The Who
-Behind Blue Eyes by The Who
-Don’t be So Hard on Yourself by Jess Glynn
-Drive by Incubus

I want to start this post by saying that I almost bought an R1 at launch. The only reason I held off was because by the time I had heard of it, Rabbit had sold out of the first batch or preorders and figured if that was the case I might as well wait and see what the early adopters thought. I really want the R1 to be what was promised, but it will never reach that point with the current leadership's priorities, especially if that leadership solely consists of Jesse Lyu.
Jesse Lyu is really good at raising hype, securing funding, and then leaving. He's a con artist at worst or a un-invested entrepreneur at best. Before he started Rabbit or GAMA he created a tech startup in China called Raven which he at a later point sold to Baidu. On YCombinator*, Raven is described as a "a startup which focus on artificial intelligent, big data and the next generation operating system." It's pretty hard to find much information of substance regarding the company, but I found two products that were made in collaboration with Teenage Engineering: the Baidu Raven R and the Baidu Raven H.** Both were marketed as smart home devices like an Amazon Alexa or a HomePod but uniquely featured a dot matrix display and in the case of the R, six axis of movement. As far as I'm aware however, only the H ever shipped (the Raven website is raventech.cn but I couldn't get it to ever load. If someone else can access and learns otherwise please let me know). This means that before at least two of the three products he announced shipped, Jesse left the company. He got his money and got out.
*YCombinator notes that the founder is Cheng Lu who is Jesse who also posted about it on a personal YouTube account.
**Baidu mentioned a Raven Q in this blog post, but I'm not sure that it ever shipped and when it was announced it was still under development. It's also worth noting that the most recent information I could find about it was from 2017-2018 that still said it was under development.
At a later point, he announced GAMA, a crypto project utilizing Unreal Engine. What GAMA was supposed to be is a convoluted mess, but what's important about GAMA is that Jesse created the minimum viable product, got his money, and left. In order to lessen discussions of GAMA being a rug pull scam, they 'open sourced' the software which used Lyra, a sample game that they did very little to add to or change. If you want to read more about GAMA, here is a really detailed look into what it was promised to be, what it actually was, and what happened to it.
Most recently, Jesse announced the Rabbit R1. A promising handheld AI companion device intended to be separate from your smartphone unlike the competing Humane AI Pin, another failure whose founders are now looking to sell the company. From the marketing and demos, the R1 seems like a dream come true, but just like GAMA, the Rabbit R1 over-promised and under-delivered. The handheld can and has easily been ported to Android phones eliminating the fee for the hardware component and the LAM that was promised might not exist at all, and if it does, it's not on the R1. The R1 uses hardcoded playwright scripts to navigate websites meaning that as soon as anything varies from the exact steps they've programmed it to follow, it will break. This has been discussed before on this very same subreddit by multiple people. It's only a matter of time until Jesse has made all the money he wants and he dumps this project too, which is really sad. Even though LAM works conceptually, it probably wouldn't work in concept but I have no problem with people trying as long as they're being honest about what's going on. Jesse hasn't done this. He's made so many promises and failed to deliver almost all of them including promises that lie at the core of what makes this device so appealing.
If Jesse has been so unreliable in the past, how has he gotten away with it? I think the main answer is false credibility. There are many examples of Jesse trying to make himself seem credible throughout his career history. In the case of the R1, there's a whole section on their website devoted to their 'research' complete with references, charts, and videos supposedly 'proving' the LAM is real and works. The first batch was likely intentionally small so he could say they had sold out of their first batch and brag about pre-order numbers, which did at least partially legitimately explode. GAMA used its supposed millions in funding to add credence to its claims that it could change the world, and the Baidu Raven products (and the R1 for that matter) were designed by Teenage Engineering, which while a controversial brand due to its pricing, is known for creating products with some of the finest industrial design and its unique product lineup that is used by huge musicians with few comparable options in terms of workflow and portability.
People need to stop supporting Jesse's companies so more people aren't harmed in the future. While in Raven's case it's not a huge deal because it seems to have actually worked and it was backed by a large company that likely wouldn't risk releasing a half-baked product, especially not in the US (DigitalTrends claimed it would be available in the US which to my knowledge never happened) where the reception to Chinese-based technology startups is already shaky, the other two companies have done a lot of harm. Many people have gone bankrupt or lost vast amounts of money such as retirement funds or life savings on crypto scams similar to GAMA in the past and the R1 is marketed in such a way that it seems like a premium technology product, but is priced very competitively so that even in the case that there weren't any people who wouldn't normally have bought the R1 but splurged due to the low price and high promises bought it and lost money they could've used otherwise to live more comfortably, those who got it received a product plagued by the lies of its creator.
This post wasn't intended to offend or insult people who did buy the R1 or were involved with any of Jesse's previous companies, but to attempt to explain some of Jesse's predatory practices and persuade people not to support him in the future. If it came across otherwise, I apologize.

I wasn't around when this was ongoing before I started watching it I'm currently rewatching her old roleplay videos mostly mystreet to see how I'll feel about it now especially since I been feeling Nostalgic now I know what kc's voice sounds like especially when you wa5ch her new videos but I don't know why but the beginning of season 2 I'm not hearing kc I'm hearing aphmau from kc's lips I'm guessing that she probably didn't find a VA of kc yet maybe or she was sick during this time? Am I the only one? Cause I thought maybe it was me hearing things but it's the second episode and I still hear just aphmau from her lips especially at the scene where lucinda asks kc if she wants to do a Hulo dance (( not sure how to spell it)) and with a cracked voice she Saud sure and um like "yeah thats Jess not moeka" because there Voices are different idk am I overthinking things or has it been that long that now I'm thinking too much about it? Xd

• I'm Jesse, from the hell that is 🇮🇱
• I'm into music a lot (Aphex Twin, The Beatles, Joy Division, Nick Drake, Radiohead (yes i don't shower))
• I also enjoy talking about basic philosophy, learning about random stuff, and I play video games sometimes, so you can add me on Steam.
• uhh that's it vcs fine, I'd prefer discord if you have it because I love sending voice msgs, and ty for reading

Hey fantasyfootball! We are Aaron St. Denis, Jesse Moeller, Jeremy Shulman and SC Romero, fantasy degenerates and co-founders of the Fantasy Football Universe. As a new brand launched in January 2024, we publish written and video content daily across all our channels.
The FFU aims to bring a variety of fantasy football insights to the table, from redraft and dynasty to devy and IDP, we do our best to cover it all. We will also be running a variety of leagues on Sleeper this season and beyond, so if you want to join our tribe, stay informed or test your skills against the FFU team, follow our work and announcements here:
Twitter (X): https://x.com/TheFFUniverse
YouTube: bit.ly/3Sjq0Yq
TikTok: TheFFUniverse
Spotify: bit.ly/3Soi5cI
Apple Pod: apple.co/3vXNBFs
A bit more about us:
Aaron (u/ffmadscientist)- Originally a hockey analyst being from Canada, I now specialize in IDP and streaming DSTs and Kickers. 2nd overall IDP ranker in the 2023 FantasyPros Accuracy Competition.
Jesse (u/JMoeller2020): I've been a Seahawks fan for life and started playing fantasy football in 1999 in 6th grade. I've been hooked ever since. That's a solid 25 years of playing the game I love. My bread and butter is dynasty football, including roster construction and game theory. My motto: "I don't hate players, I hate ADP's"
Jeremy (u/ff_rebel) - I focus on dynasty and redraft, having played fantasy for 20+ years – yes, I’m that old. I’m a writer by trade and have created content for a few fantasy sites over the last three years. I currently live in Amsterdam and still manage to follow the game I love. What is sleep?
SC (u/FFUniverse) - C2C, Devy, & IDP are my go to, but I dabble in all forms of fantasy football. I started writing last year with RPO_Football with a focus on IDP start/sit.
We’ll be back on Thursday to answer any of your questions posted here. You’re on the clock, Reddit. Ask Me(Us) Anything!

My apologies if this goes agaisnt Rule 6! I'm hoping this post comes off as a suggestion for the DID focused future video (or videos) :0c
I'm not sure how in depth or how deep Dr.K and HG are planning on going into DID, but if he would like to interview someone who has had DID (been through therapy and fused with their alters) I would like to suggest Jess from Multiplicity and Me!
Having gone through the ups and downs of therapy to the point of remission is a very heartwarming experaince and shows the tenacity of those who have survived trauma regardless of its size, degree and severity. It feels like there's hope beyond the dark tunnel at the beginning but it's very comforting and inspiring to meet and join those who have made it to the end!

Early advocates such as physicist Steven E. Jones, architect Richard Gage, software engineer Jim Hoffman, and theologian David Ray Griffin, proposed that the sole aircraft impacts and resulting fires could not have weakened the buildings sufficiently to initiate the catastrophic collapse, and that the buildings would have neither collapsed completely nor at the speeds that they did without additional energy involved to weaken their structures.^\2])
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the magazine Popular Mechanics examined and rejected these theories. Specialists in structural mechanics and structural engineering accept the model of a fire-induced, gravity-driven collapse of the World Trade Center buildings, an explanation that does not involve the use of explosives.^\3])^\4])^\5]) NIST "found no corroborating evidence for alternative hypotheses suggesting that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition using explosives planted prior to Sept. 11, 2001."^\6]) Professors Zdeněk Bažant of Northwestern University,^\7]) Thomas Eagar, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology^\4]) and James Quintiere of the University of Maryland,^\8]) have also dismissed the controlled-demolition conspiracy theory.
In 2006, Jones suggested that thermite or super-thermite may have been used by government insiders with access to such materials and to the buildings themselves, to demolish the buildings.^\9])^\10])^\11])^\12]) In April 2009, Jones, Dane Niels H. Harrit and seven other authors published a paper in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, causing the editor, Prof. Marie-Paule Pileni, to resign as she accused the publisher of printing it without her knowledge;^\13])^\14]) this article was titled 'Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe', and stated that they had found evidence of nano-thermite in samples of the dust that was produced during the collapse of the World Trade Center towers.^\15]) NIST responded that there was no "clear chain of custody" to prove that the four samples of dust came from the WTC site. Jones invited NIST to conduct its own studies using its own known "chain of custody" dust, but NIST did not investigate.^\16])

History[edit]

The controlled demolition conspiracy theories were first suggested in September 2001.^\1]) Eric Hufschmid's book, Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack, in which the controlled demolition theory is explicitly advocated, was published in September 2002.^\1]) David Ray Griffin and Steven E. Jones are the best known advocates of the theory.^\1]) Griffin's book The New Pearl Harbor, published in 2004,^\17]) has become a reference work for the 9/11 Truth movement.^\18]) In the same year, Griffin published the book The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, in which he argues that flaws in the commission's report amounts to a cover-up by government officials and says that the Bush administration was complicit in the 9/11 attacks.^\19])
Steven E. Jones has been another voice of the proponents of demolition theories.^\20]) In 2006, he published the paper "Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Completely Collapse?".^\9]) On September 7, 2006, Brigham Young University placed Jones on paid leave citing the "increasingly speculative and accusatory nature" of his statements, pending an official review of his actions. Six weeks later, Jones retired from the university.^\21])^\22])^\23])^\24])^\25]) The structural engineering faculty at the university issued a statement which said that they "do not support the hypotheses of Professor Jones".^\4])^\26])
In its final report, NIST stated that it "found no corroborating evidence for alternative hypotheses suggesting that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition using explosives planted prior to Sept. 11, 2001. NIST also did not find any evidence that missiles were fired at or hit the towers. Instead, photographs and videos from several angles clearly show that the collapse initiated at the fire and impact floors and that the collapse progressed from the initiating floors downward until the dust clouds obscured the view"^\27]) and posted a FAQ about related issues on its website in August 2006.^\6]) Allegations of controlled demolition have been found to be devoid of scientific merit by mainstream engineering scholarship.^\3])^\28]) The magazine Popular Mechanics also found the theories lacked scientific support in its special report "Debunking the 9/11 Myths".^\29])
Articles, letters and comments by controlled demolition advocates have been published in scientific and engineering journals. In April 2008, a letter titled "Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction," was published by Steven E. Jones, Frank Legge, Kevin Ryan, Anthony Szamboti and James Gourley in The Open Civil Engineering Journal.^\30]) A few months later, in July 2008, an article titled "Environmental anomalies at the World Trade Center: evidence for energetic materials," was published by Ryan, Gourley and Jones in the Environmentalist.^\31]) Later that same year, in October 2008, the Journal of Engineering Mechanics published a comment^\32]) by chemical engineer and attorney James R. Gourley, in which he describes what he considered fundamental errors in a 2007 paper on the mechanics of progressive collapse by Bažant and Verdure.^\33]) In the same issue, Bažant and Le rebutted Gourley's arguments, finding his criticisms scientifically incorrect.^\34]) They suggested future critics should "become acquainted with the relevant material from an appropriate textbook on structural mechanics" or risk "misleading and wrongly influencing the public with incorrect information."^\35])
In April 2009, Danish chemist Niels H. Harrit, of the University of Copenhagen, and eight other authors published a paper in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, titled, "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe." The paper concludes that chips consisting of unreacted and partially reacted super-thermite, or nano-thermite, appear to be present in samples of the dust.^\15])^\36]) The editor in chief of the publication subsequently resigned.^\9])^\10])^\15])^\37])
Internet websites and videos have contributed to the growth of the movement of individuals supporting the theory that planted explosives destroyed the World Trade Center. The website of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth cites the membership of over 2,400 architects and engineers.^\38]) The controlled demolition theory often includes allegations that U.S. government insiders planned and / or participated in the destruction of the WTC in order to justify the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.^\39]) The theory features prominently in popular entertainment type movies, such as Loose Change),^\40]) as well as documentaries such as 9/11: Blueprint for Truth, by San Francisco-area architect Richard Gage).^\41])
While mainstream press has a significant history of dismissing conspiracy theories (i.e., in 2006, the magazine New York) reported that a "new generation of conspiracy theorists is at work on a secret history of New York's most terrible day."^\42])), the theory has been supported by a number of popular actors, musicians and politicians, including Charlie Sheen,^\43])^\44]) Willie Nelson,^\45]) former Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura,^\46]) talkshow host Rosie O'Donnell,^\47]) and actors Ed Asner and Daniel Sunjata.

Solved, it was Clinton Kane - I don't want to watch the world end with someone else
I really don't have a lot to go on, but I use to listen to this 17-25 year old guy, thick build, maybe asian or filipino, that sang original songs (with music videos and everything) about unrequited love, breakups, etc. This would have been 2011-2020.
I used to liken him to Lewis Capaldi James Arthur, but the only song I vaguely remember was something about how the world was ending and he just wanted to spend it with her. Just been on my mind lately, idk.
Ruled out:

• David Choi
• Jeremy Passion
• Jason Chen
• Joseph Vincent
• AJ Rafael
• Keenan Te
• Justin Vasquez
• Jesse Barrera
• Sam Manugbat

Lonely Castle in the Mirror, by Mizuki Tsujimura
"Lonely Castle in the Mirror" is a genre-savvy portal fantasy about junior high students who get drawn into a mysterious castle when they're supposed to be in school. Kokoro had a terrible experience early in the school year that's made her terrified of facing her classmates, and develops some kind of (psychosomatic?) illness that prevents her from attending either the normal school or a special alternative school for students who need more support. Shortly after this, her bedroom mirror turns into a portal to the castle with six other students who are also not in school during the normal hours. The "Wolf Queen" in charge--an elementary school girl who enjoys allusions to "Little Red Riding Hood"--tells them all that there's a secret key in the castle that can grant one wish, and they have a year to find it and, potentially, use it. Also, if anyone is caught in the castle outside of the 9-5 school day timeframe, they'll all be eaten by a wolf.
So, these painfully shy students have the opportunity to make friends and have a non-terrifying experience with kids their own age, and they all enjoy bonding and playing video games and drinking tea together, and for the most part nobody cares about finding the key, because that would make the castle close and prematurely end their new friendship. For most of the book, the contrived quest stuff doesn't play into it. And then when it does, it kind of lampshades "oh yeah I have to do this on speedrun mode."
There are a lot of takes pointing out that books where "the magic goes away"/"everyone loses their memories"/"we just have to move on with our lives and pretend like the portal fantasy never happened" can be pretty messed up. In this book, however, I couldn't find myself relating to the characters because it felt like a perverse incentives situation. Yes, middle school is an emotionally volatile, turbulent, unpleasant environment full of many immature people. This is a pretty common experience, actually. Kokoro just can't handle it, and as a response, the infinitely patient teacher at the alternative school reassures her mother that she's battling really hard and it's not her fault, she just can't go to school, and then she gets to go through a portal into fantasy world with people who play video games and eat snacks all day...? I understand there's more to it than that, but something has to change about this situation because otherwise this really isn't the message you want to send. (Once we learn about the backgrounds and life situations of some of the other students, I can imagine how it was easier for people like Subaru and Aki to fall through the cracks, but it feels like, eg, Masamune and Ureshino's junior high situation should have had some kind of guidance counselor or adult in the room. The readers' guide in the back of the book describes Kokoro as a "futoko," and I understand this is more pervasive in Japan than elsewhere, but I have a hard time accepting that seventh graders staying home for months on end with no apparent homeschooling or tutoring gets such a shrug.)
The prose didn't really grab me, sometimes it felt awkward ("That day, Fuka apparently enjoyed the chocolates back home, for she faithfully reported to Kokoro that 'they were delicious.'") and there were a several parts with very. short. one. line. paragraphs.

Kokoro tried to convince herself that she hadn't been at home that day. Miori and the others had simply pounded on the door of an empty house, trampled over the patio, gone round and round over outside of the house. But nothing actually happened. Nothing at all. She never was about to be killed. And yet the next day, she said, "I have a stomachache." And she really did. It was no lie. And her mother chimed in: "You do look pale. Are you OK?" And that's when Kokoro stopped going to school.

A few paragraphs later:

Would she be able to protect herself?
The only place she could now go to freely from her bedroom was the castle.
If I'm in the castle, she started to think, then I'll be safe.
Only the castle beyond the mirror could offer her complete protection.

Girl, I know your mental health isn't the greatest, but we're talking about the place where people threatened you with being eaten alive by a wolf. ??? Sorry, my suspension of belief does not extend this far.
There's also a random red herring with a neighbor student whose father has an interest in researching fairy tales, and like, maybe that "real world" location/characters are related in some way to the portal world? No, it's just a fortuitous coincidence that helps Kokoro have access to more Western fairy tale info.
The good news is, about halfway through the characters start developing some genre-savviness and realizing what they have in common, and towards the end, things pick up significantly in terms of how and why some of the arbitrary fairy-tale logic came about. So it definitely sticks the landing in that way.
Bingo: Prologue/Epilogue, Author of Color, Book Club
Promise of the Flame, by Sylvia Louise Engdahl
At the end of "Stewards of the Flame," to which this book is a sequel, our heroes Jesse, Carla, and Peter had hijacked a spaceship and jumped to an uninhabited planet to set up a colony where humans could develop psionic powers free from the medical bureaucracy of Undine. Jesse's hyperspace jump was rushed and not perfectly calculated, so in order to ensure their oxygen supply makes it all the way to planet Maclairn (named after their late founder), the Group had to confront their deepest fear and brave the stasis boxes that had been Chekhov-gunned several times in the last section. As the existence of the sequel implies, the protagonists and most of their comrades survive stasis. But while, in "Stewards," the hyperspace navigation "error"/imperfection sets up the Group's ultimate test, here it casts a long shadow as Jesse keeps wondering, "could we have picked a better landing site if I hadn't screwed it up?"
The early days on Maclairn are a struggle. The first part of the book is a recurring cycle of "should we do things this way or that way? Well, we came here to set up a society fully founded on mind powers, we pretty much have to commit to the bit or else what's the point." Repeat ad infinitum. Later, this broadens somewhat to "we have to have psi powers coexist with modern technology to fulfill Ian [Maclairn]'s dream, otherwise what's the point." There are clear parallels to (Engdahl's older trilogy) "Children of the Star"; that society represents the endpoint if they go down a path of giving up on modern technology--and the burdens of agrarian, high-population-growth societies fall disproportionately on women. If "Stewards" had motifs of baptism, this is more of an Exodus story, with the characters sulking about "why did you bring us out of Undine just to starve in the wilderness, at least there we had enough to eat." "My God, came Carla’s thought, we’re homesick! Homesick for Undine! I never admitted that to myself, it was so foolish, I’d wanted so much to leave . . . I guess I just pushed it down inside, into a place I didn’t dare go. . . ."
The consequences of the hyperspace jump being off are a minor tonal retcon/change in perspective on the events of the first book. A more significant one, to me, involves love triangle dynamics. In "Stewards," we learn that Carla and Peter both previously had spouses who died under the authoritarian Undine government. Fortunately, Jesse shows up just when Carla is ready to love again, and their relationship brings him into the Group and thus enables their escape from Undine. "Promise" adds that Peter has been silently pining for Carla all along, but needed Jesse's starship skills too much to say anything. We're told the Group's adult recruits skew slightly female, but that isn't represented among the main characters, and you're telling me that none of them are Peter's type? All three of them sigh and angst about "oh, we're such great friends, we can't let this love triangle come between us," and at times it feels like it's setting up for a polygamy plotline (they're all highly powerful telepaths, they can't keep secrets from each other!) And then it just...goes nowhere. As in the first book, I can accept that sex is probably great among telepaths; I can't buy that every single person has to have sex in order to fully level up their telepathic sensitivity!
The best parts of "Promise" involve the culture clashes between Jesse, who grew up on Earth; the rest of the adult Group members, from Undine; and the Maclairn-born generation. Undine's environment is so tightly regulated, they don't even have insects or lizards, so the planet's "collective unconsciousness" doesn't have a fear of creepy-crawlies; Jesse's initial revulsion risks "contaminating" the psyche until everyone faces their fear.

“Horror vids involving animal life aren’t permitted on colony worlds,” Peter told him. “Haven’t you ever wondered why starship libraries don’t contain any? Earth has always banned their export as a measure to protect extraterrestrial lifeforms. It’s one of the few government trade regulations I think is wise.” Of course, Jesse realized. The average Earth citizen’s reaction would have been to kill the crawlies—if possible, to exterminate them. That hadn’t occurred to anyone yesterday. And horror vids often portrayed even intelligent aliens as repulsive; what kind of precedent would that set if similar ones were ever encountered?
Traditionally, said the knowledgebase, small farmers had chopped chickens’ heads off with a hatchet. Wringing their necks was said to be more humane, but nobody wanted to experiment on live, squawking chickens despite the specific instructions provided. These warned that the hardest part, in the physical sense, would be catching a grown chicken in the first place—a fact soon borne out by experience, as chickens are not devoid of telepathic sensitivity and the pursuers were unconsciously broadcasting their intent to kill.
Kel, like many of the Group’s other children, had been slow in learning to talk. It had taken awhile before it dawned on the adults that this was because the kids’ telepathic bonds with their parents had been so strongly encouraged that they felt no need to communicate vocally. Speech could not be allowed to die out in a psi-based culture; it was essential not only to reading but to the framing and communication of complex ideas. Now, everyone realized that like the skills for volitional control of the body, telepathic conveyance of concepts, as distinguished from emotions, must wait until the kids were older.

On the other hand, the scope of "this is dangerous, but we must, to commit to the psionic bit" and "well, we've come through a lot of tough situations before, but this time really is the end...jk never mind we got out of it" got repetitive. There was one scene towards the end where it's like "okay, we're almost done, I can see how telepathy might be used to enable a permanent self-sacrifice...nope, we're still going, huh," and even though some of the resolutions were nice callbacks/tying up foreshadowing, it was still a lot.
Like in James P. Hogan's "Voyage to Yesteryear," the kids who were raised outside of Earth and Undine's prejudices are, overall, a great step forward for humankind, but there can be some values dissonance. In both cases, the desire for lots of population growth leads to a much lower age of consent than Earthlings are used to. Justified somewhat more in Maclairn's case; telepathy means almost everyone wouldn't fathom hurting each other and of course sex is consensual, as well as amazing. On the other hand, in both cases, there's no prison infrastructure; if someone is determined to be evil and is posing a grave threat to others, you just have to kill them. "Promise" gets a little more philosophical about the problem of evil--if it's not nature and it's not nurture, what causes it? Free will? Sure, but it seems as if some people are also evil from day one even if their DNA is just fine.
There are a couple shoutouts to Lord of the Rings and Star Trek that fit in nicely. I found "it's just like using the Force, you know, like in that old vid, Star Wars" to be more of a distraction. Similarly, Engdahl's commitment to showing her work ("in the twentieth century on Earth, you know, people experimented with remote viewing!") got to be a distraction. But the exploration of "okay, let's try a rain dance, even if it fails we're learning something and pushing knowledge forward" was a great use of the "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" trope, which is what I come to Engdahl for anyway.
Some people, like Peter, tend to believe in an afterlife; others, like Jesse, are more skeptical. Earth religions don't transfer well to other planets because the interstellar gap is too big for the collective unconsciousness to bridge. Despite this, characters use the word "God" (like in a telepathic context of "Carla . . . oh, God, Carla, answer me!") approximately 144 times. Do you have no one else's name to take in vain???
Criticisms aside, I do think that this is less heavy-handed than "Stewards" and at least as good a starting point!
Bingo: Dreams, Prologues/Epilogues, Self-Published, Survival. One prominent character acquires a physical disability midway through the story. Jesse and Peter's Criminal record on Undine is not very important (since the entire book is set on or around Maclairn), but it becomes more prominent in the last section.
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty
Once upon a time (1100s Indian Ocean) there was a notorious nakhudha (pirate captain) named Amina al-Sirafi. Ten years ago, she retired, and now she's a single mom with a bad knee and a leaky roof. However, a wealthy noblewoman who believes her granddaughter has been kidnapped by a Western European would-be sorcerer insists on having Amina rescue her, never mind Amina's own family responsibilities. So Amina has to put the band back together, staying one step ahead of the authorities while getting to the bottom of the mystery.
Amina and her crew are likable rogues. I found this easier to get into than Chakraborty's "City of Brass". That book focused more on a long-term conflict between two factions, neither of whom consistently seem like the "good guys"; maybe that's supposed to be sending a message about RL actually works, but I found it confusing at times. In contrast, the early sections of "Amina" are about tracking down individual allies, from a gay smuggler stuck in a prison in Aden, to a navigator and family man in Mogadishu, while researching the notorious Falco Palamenestra and speculating what he might be up to.
At first, Amina's Muslim identity comes through more in the ways characters talk, and some level of monster-fighting exorcism (like Catholicism in some horror movies), than actual practice. But gradually, we see more of how she's struggled to be a parent in her post-pirate life:

If the criminal past didn’t alert you, I have not always been a very good Muslim. Drinking and missing prayer were among my lesser sins, and if I tried to straighten myself up every year when Ramadan rolled around—a new life of piety easy to imagine while dazed with thirst and caught up in the communal joy of taraweeh—I typically lapsed into my usual behavior by the time the month of Shawwal had ended.
But then Marjana was born. And Asif was . . . lost. And if one of these events made me feel as though I had no right to ever call upon God again, the other filled with me a driving need I could not deny. So I keep my daily prayers, even if I feel unworthy the entire time.

To me, this rang true as a depiction of a complicated, realistic, person of faith.
This is a time and place that I knew very little about. For instance, one plotline involves the island of Socotra, an island off the coast of Somalia which is today part of Yemen. There are caves there with graffiti from sailors going back thousands of years, in Indian and Greek and Ethiopic scripts. This is a real place! I would not have been able to tell you anything about it before reading this book! So Chakraborty's vivid descriptions of places this, and of the diverse cultures and religious backgrounds of pirates who live and work alongside each other, is compelling. There's a danger in this as a reader, though, in that getting too caught up in the "worldbuilding" of the actual world can make it feel like its "foreignness" is what makes it speculative and fantastical, which is obviously inaccurate and beside the point. That's one reason why jumping in at the deep end with an honest-to-goodness sea monster in chapter one might have been a good choice, to remind us that there really are otherworldly things happening.
The themes of "rich people love to jerk poor people around" and "the male gaze sucks" are clear, but there's lots of quippy banter mixed in.

“That was you, was it not? The woman who poisoned the soldiers at the wali’s office, freed a crew of homicidal pirates, set a score of ships on fire, and fled the harbor in the middle of the night?” “I would never confirm such a thing and put you at risk of consorting with criminals. But it was two ships, not a score. I wouldn’t wish to encourage exaggeration.”
Sailing past its ancient breakwater—the stones said to have been set there by giants—you might feel as though you have entered a mythical port of magic from a sailor’s yarn. You would be sorely mistaken. Aden is where magic goes to be crushed by the muhtasib’s weights, and if wonder could be calculated, this city would require an ordinance taxing it.
“She knows you are a pirate?” “I am not a pirate,” Majed huffed. “I am a cartographer with a checkered past.” “Yes. A checkered past of piracy.”

The book contains a few chapters that are "in-universe documentation" or chronicles of the places and people in the main narrative. This is a trope I really enjoy at times. However, in this case, I didn't feel it added much, beyond underscoring the themes that "men feel threatened by powerful women, oh no."
The biggest issue for me was how all the diverse, sympathetic characters just kind of went along with developments that felt more reminiscent of 2020s Tumblr idiolect than 1100s Indian Ocean. How fortuitously convenient! (At least it got a Hugo nom.)
Smaller quibbles: the timeframe with Amina in her forties is appeSaling to the extent that it's a story about a working mother trying to follow her own dreams while also desperately missing her kid. But in order to make that work, the narrative sometimes withholds a lot of important information about the tragedies in Amina's past/her relationship with her child's father until it can be brought forward for dramatic effect, and it made me wonder what a story from the younger Amina's POV would look like without the artificial suspense problem.
More broadly, I felt like the second half's pace wasn't as crisp as the first--there's a dramatic near-death experience, then a bunch of fantastical creatures are introduced in quick succession as if to make up for the "worldbuilding via the actual world" stuff earlier, then we get a very contrived in-universe sequel hook, then we double back to a setting that had already been introduced. Whereas the first part was "we need to go to A to do B and then that gives us a clue that leads us to C."
Who wore it better?

“It is invalid!” I burst out. “Our nikah. It is not permissible for me to marry a non-Muslim.” Raksh frowned. “Is that why the man had me say all those words about God and prophets?” He returned to studying the contract. “Trust me, dear wife, I can be a vast number of things.” “But—but you are not a believer.” “Of course I am. Best to know the competition, yes?”

Compare "Alif the Unseen" (which is one of my favorites and I suspect I probably was harsh on "City of Brass" by comparison):

"But I told him I couldn't marry him even if I wanted to, because I can't marry an unbeliever. And he laughed and said he'd been a believer, 'for a the better part of a thousand years,' I believe were the exact words." "What?" said Alif. "Vikram? Vikram the madman who bites people?" "He might be those things," said the convert hastily, "but did you ever know him to do or say anything really blasphemous?" "I guess not."

Bingo: Alliterative Title, Criminals, Dreams, Reference Materials, Readalong! It's planned to be First in a Series but the sequels aren't out yet. (Statistics from last year just came out and this was the most popular book across all 2023 bingo cards, with ~200 reads!)
Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik
When I read "Uprooted" and griped about the implausible romance and/or reactive plot, people's reactions were "try Spinning Silver, it's an improvement in some of those ways." And yeah, it is! I was aware that Spinning Silver was set in the same world as Uprooted, ~1700s Eastern Europe but with some fantasy elements, and that it was based on Rumplestiltskin.
But it's a lot more than a simple retelling. "Spinning Silver" teases out the individual trope elements of Rumplestiltskin--a mercenary father trying to get his daughter to marry up, the dead mother looming over the plot, a woman given the impossible task of making gold out of other elements, terrible bargains, aloof and unknowable beings from the fae world, the power of knowing someone's true name, the horror of a mother trading her child to inhuman creatures--and blows them all up, turning them inside-out, and creating something original.
It also does a lot with POV. For the first chunk, we have two young women from a small town who go back and forth telling the stories of their business dealings. But as the book goes on, we start jumping into more and more people's heads, and everyone's voice is very different. Sometimes this can be used for dramatic irony; we hear what character A thinks of their interaction with B, then we jump back and tell the same scene from B's POV and what was going through their head is very different than what A assumes. Once in a while, this makes the plot drag--there's a couple of scenes towards the end where we can't have any suspense about "oh no, will they find what they're looking for" because we've just seen the corresponding scene from another POV, and it would have been more effective to rearrange them--but overall, things are propelled forward much more intriguingly than "Uprooted."
Our POV characters are:

• Miryem, the daughter of the village moneylender. Miryem's family is Jewish, which means her father is one of the few people socially permitted to work as a moneylender--but he's more interested in currying favor with the neighbors than getting his debts repaid, so his family goes hungry. Miryem steps up, grows "cold" and "wintry," and takes on his job, to her parents' horror. But an offhand remark about "look, I can turn silver into gold" (metaphorically, because of, you know, capitalism) inadvertently catches the ear of the "Staryk," monstrous elven raiders who live in a parallel realm.
• Wanda, the daughter of an abusive alcoholic. Miryem is like "he can't pay off his debt because he's drunk everything away, I'll have them repay me by hiring Wanda to assist me with our work, I know this is cold and ruthless but I have to." Then when we see it from Wanda's POV she's like "you're giving me money to be out of the house and away from my father? And you'll even feed me? What an undeserved kindness!" Her reaction to "learning to manipulate numbers and do arithmetic is an amazing kind of magic!" felt cheesy and over-the-top, but the contrast between the literal phrasing of a royal decree and the way she "translates" it was more convincing.
• Irina, the daughter of the duke of Vysnia (Vilnius, Lithuania). Like Wanda, her mother is dead and her father is trying to arrange the most profitable marriage for her, never mind what she wants. When Miryem is compelled to turn magical Staryk silver into gold, she does so by having an acquaintance forge silver jewelry which the duke purchases--so when the gold takes on magical powers in the Staryk world, so does the silver with Irina, and brings her to the attention of a tsar. Despite her cold relationship with her father, she learns a lot from him and is a true politician, adept as anyone at cutting deals to keep her realm safe.
• Stepon, Wanda's younger brother. His narration is very simple and childlike (amazing cold open with "I like goats because I know what they will do.") It's possible he has some kind of sensory/mental health issues, or it's possible he's just eleven and overstimulated by unfamiliar crowds.
• Magreta, Irina's nurse/caretaker. She can be kind and supportive, but her casual antisemitism provides a contrast to how Miryem is treated by the villagers.
• Mirnatius, the tsar. For a while we mostly see him through Irina's POV ("this guy is so full of himself he requires a new outfit every day, that's no way to manage the economy"), but again, his narration provides a very different perspective on what's going on.

So I said the romance was better than "Uprooted," in that we didn't have the implausible "elderly magician berates young woman all the time but also they can't keep their hands off each other." In "Spinning Silver," both {Miryem and the Staryk king} and {Irina and Mirnatius} are paired off without much say-so on anybody's part, it's being manipulated by magic/higher-ups. So the timeframe of the book is mostly them all learning how to tolerate each other, and the romance is kind of left to your imagination in the future era.
The Staryk magic is kind of like...you can see their roads briefly if they make incursions in the human world, but as soon as they've disappeared, you start forgetting them and it really takes effort to remember. This means that if someone, like Miryem, disappears into the Staryk world, she's forgotten almost immediately except for little irregularities that don't seem right. These depictions were well-done. (Except that I was trying to remember if the Staryk were the same as the [jerk, mundane human] aristocrats in "Uprooted." They're not. I think I was half-remembering "Marek," the creepy prince, instead of "Staryk," the winter elves.)
There's a cool liminal space that sets up back-and-forth "communication" between the human and Staryk realms, and again, the multiple POVs are a good framework for this. On the other hand, there are some things, like, why do the Staryk want human gold, that are kind of chalked up to "magic idk" and not completely spelled out; for some of the confrontations at the end, again, it's better not to worry too much about hard magic systems and just go with the vibes. There's also an earlier plot that definitely plays the trope of "the less the audience knows about the plan, the more likely it is to succeed" trope straight.
Especially early on, it can be a very bleak "everyone sucks here" setting. Wanda and Stepon's father is horrific. Irina's father is mercenary and sets her up with Mirnatius, a dandy who abuses animals for fun. Nobody in the village respects Miryem's family, and when she tries to reclaim what she's due, her parents are horrified. The Staryk raid the village and carry off women and demand impossible tasks. There's a lot of "I have my wife to murder and Guilder to frame for it" coming from all sides. Even though the plot is moving forward, it's hard to feel like there's anything to root for.
But cracks of light shine through. Miryem's mother, and her mother, defy the "dead moms" trope, and are able to be loving parental figures to Wanda, Stepon, and their brother Sergey. Miryem's grandfather is wise and conscientious, warning her of the risks that some of her choices pose not only to their family but to the Vysnia Jewish community as a whole, but still recognizing she's mature enough to make her own choices. They even make use of a real-world Jewish blessing for the first blossoming of trees in the spring. Even when people are trying to be cold, sometimes they're just too human!
Bingo: Alliterative Title, Under the Surface (not for most of the plot, but there is a secret tunnel that gets use), Multi-POV (and how!)
The Infinite Arena (edited by Terry Carr)
Anthology of SF short stories about sports, stumbled upon while browsing a used bookstore. I like sports and the first one was based on "Casey at the Bat," so okay, sold.
It's from 1977, and the stories were originally published in the 40s-70s timeframe. The sex ratio among writers appears to be nine men, zero women, which is pretty "impressive" considering there are only seven stories. Three of them are installments from series that feature the same recurring character(s), so maybe that explains some of the...paucity? I don't want to say they're "flat" or "shallow" or anything, most of the contemporary "deep" stuff isn't to my taste either, but it feels like there's "no 'there' there" for several of these. In some cases, it's like, "we have to raise the stakes by involving gambling/someone's fate being on the line"; in others, it's looking for parallels between sports and other aspects of life (warfare? weird alien insects?) that provide the impetus for two plots to intertwine.
-Joy in Mudville (Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson)--very impressionable and earnest teddy-bear-like alien species imprints on humans, and immediately become obsessed with baseball. One of the aliens names himself Mighty Casey, but unfortunately, opponents can rattle him by reminding him of how "Casey at the Bat" turned out. Fortunately, what poetry can break, poetry can also fix...

"You untentacled mammal! raged Ush Karuza. "You sslimeless conformation of bored flesh!" Alex had long ago discovered that mankind rarely reacts to insults couched in nonhuman terms. It did not offend him at all to be told that he was slimeless.

-Bullard Reflects (Malcolm Jameson)--Dazzle Dart is a sport played by bouncing light rays around with reflective gear and aiming for a goal at the opponents' end. Like American football, one team is designated on offense at a time, and the other is on defense, but you can "intercept" and score from on defense. In Dazzle Dart, this is worth bonus points. Except instead of normal goals and "turnover" goals being worth one and two points respectively, it's twenty-five and fifty. And you thought Quidditch was silly. (This is from 1941.)
-The Body Builders (Keith Laumer)--the best of the stories, in my opinion, in that it predicts both technological advancement and the social changes that will ensue in a clever way.

So it's a little artificial maybe--but what about the Orggies, riding around in custom-built cars that are nothing but substitute personalities, wearing padded shoulders, contact lenses, hearing aids, false teeth, cosmetics, elevator shoes, rugs to cover their bald domes? If you're going to wear false eyelashes, why not false eyes? Instead of a nose bob, why not bob the whole face? At least a fellow wearing a Servo is honest about it, which is more than you can say for an Orggie doll in a foam-rubber bra--not that Julie needed any help in that department.

-The Great Kladnar Race (Robert Silverberg and Randall Garrett)--bored humans on an alien planet try introducing something like horse races that they can bet on. However, the aliens' concepts of sports and competition and betting don't necessarily align with the humans'.
-Mr. Meek Plays Polo (Clifford D. Simak)--guy who has only seen one space polo game in his life somehow accidentally stumbles into being the "expert" space polo coach, oops. Also there are weird alien bugs that are great at computation (a little like "The Circle").
-Sunjammer (Arthur C. Clarke, whose name is spelled wrong on the front cover)--a solar flare interrupts a solar sailboat race. Felt timely given the storm of a few days ago! (I did not get to see the aurora, alas.)
-Run to Starlight (George R. R. Martin)--short and slow but extremely muscular aliens enter an American football league and crush everyone, metaphorically and literally. However, the aliens' concepts of sports and competition don't necessarily align with the humans'. Too bad he never wrote anything else ;)
Bingo: 5+ short stories.

Not really sure where Feather is in popularity these days, but with the announcement and sell-out of the Hatsune Miku Secret Lair, it seemed like she's gotten a bit of a return in attention.
For those of you unfamiliar, I'm talking about Feather, the Redeemed. As I'm not so narcissistic to make a video about this (jk content creators, love you!) I figured I'd at least make a reddit post to show off a little thought exercise of [[Feather, the Redeemed]] where I broke down all the different ways to build her and hone her into the various themes and sub-themes.
DISCLAIMER: I've only actually built one of these decks, but eventually plan to put them all together to keep my table sort-of guessing at which Feather has come to the table. If you have experience with any of these, please feel free to offer your thoughts!
The Basics: Feather is a spell-slinger commander capable of offering tremendous value with Boros pump-spells. She doesn't care which creature you target, as long as it's one of yours, and she exiles once the spell has resolved which allows for some really nice interactions with a few cards.
Feather can and should be built on a budget, at least initially. She doesn't need to be upgraded because she doesn't respond well to upgrades. I would go so far as to say that the only time you should put a card in a Feather deck that costs more than $5-$10usd is if you pulled it from a pack or bought it for another deck but have it laying around doing nothing. Seriously! Your first Feather deck shouldn't cost more than $50, and you can probably build a great Feather deck for $30usd. She's an amazing budget commander. Just note that she's also a bit of a known entity to experienced Commander players, so make sure you don't skimp on the protection and be prepared to re-cast her a few times.
Core Cards: Part of the reason I wanted to break these decks out is to see how often certain cards needed to be with Feather. I determined that Feather really is the only non-land card that's essential to her deck, such is the flexibility she provides as long as you package a decent support system for her. That being said there are a few cards that work well enough with her that you should at least pick those singles up if you plan on building her, with those being:

• Cantrip Spells: Normally "Draw a Card" is just a bonus. A way to replace a card in your hand. Few outside of the greenest Magic the Gathering players consider this card draw. With Feather, though, we're recurring our spells for free (barring our opponents interacting with them/Feather), so casting a [[Defiant Strike]] is basically spending one white mana to draw a card per turn cycle at a minimum. It gets out of hand when you add in some creatures I'll mention next, but needless to say you want 8-10 of these in a deck to really get the kind of card advantage that's rarely available to Boros.
• At Least 25 Instant Spells: I only broke this rule once in the decks below, but 30 Instant spells is the usual sweet spot with 25 being a strong minimum. Only run less if you have some serious permanents to play.
• "Mana Generators": [[Storm-Kiln Artist]], a <$1USD creature is easily the one card that should go in 99% of Feather decks. It's price is barely an obstacle, it just got a reprint, and the effect it creates is inordinately powerful when paired with our Angel and a handful of spells. It turns every turn into your turn (but wait! That's Communism!) and really gets out of hand if you cast an [[Ancestor's Aid]] or [[Sudden Breakthrough]]. If it's within your budget, [[Birgi, God of Storytelling]] and [[Urabrask // The Great Work]] are worth picking up, but they're both $10+ and only necessary for certain Red-centric deck archetypes (RED?! COMMUNISSMMMM!!!) Other options include the new Rodeo Pyromancers and Pain Distributor. Lastly, while not necessary in any Feather deck, Smothering Tithe is actually better than usual with her. Feather generates so much value off a single mana that your opponents will have to actually weigh whether or not they pay the 2.
• Zada and Mirrorwing: These two are also worth considering, although Mirrorwing at ~$3usd might be skipped for an extreme budget initial build. The copying of Instant's is so powerful and worthy of consideration in all but the most Voltron-centric Feather builds. Even then, they're still quite good as they can turn an Ephemerate into a board-wipe save.
• Graveyard Recursion: Having a back up plan in case Feather can't come out to play is pretty important. Sometimes you miss a land drop early, sometimes she eats one too many removals. Whatever the reason, you don't want to just sit on spells and wait for your fearless leader to arrive in order to play a game of Magic. That's where Mavinda comes in. I've found that Mav goes in just about every Feather deck I built. The only time you'll actually be exiling spells under Mav's condition is rare, just recur those early game plays for free with Mav and then Feather can exile them under her condition and you can load up your hand. Dreadhorde Arcanist, Sword of Once and Future, Radiant Scrollwielder and the last chapter of The Great Work all work for this function as well, so if you like resilience, consider these.

Holy guac, I haven't even talked about my decks yet. Thanks for making it this far!
BUDGET FEATHER
This is actually a deck I've been putting together for a friend of mine. I liked it so much that I made my own Feather before I even finished hers! I like "The Ring Tempts You" enough to suggest you might want to put a few such cards in beyond Fiery Inscription and Slip on the Ring. With budget Feather, you don't need to build any specific archetype (although most will absolutely fit) as she can make a melting pot work really well, so that's what I did here.
WinCon: However you can based on what's available to you.
Needs -

• Feather
• Cards from your bulk collection, mostly
• 1/3 Mana base should be Boros lands, ideally. Doesn't matter how tapped! However, if you're gonna spend money, buying some decent untapped Boros lands is where you should do it.

^{Notes: Six cards are tagged "Marked for Death" and will be replaced with the six cards in the sideboard. Sorry Jess, not giving you a Birgi.}
FEATHER, GENERAL?
This is my Feather. You can see the vestiges of the initial budget build in the mana rocks and mana base. Most high-value cards came from my collection that didn't otherwise have a home. As of this writing is has a Dockside Extortionist in it that's entirely unnecessary and will be replaced. You can always proxy but even that might be a waste of money. I don't know precisely what to call this, but it's sampling of various Feather archetypes rolled into one with a focus on resilience. Midrange? Goodstuff? It's a good Feather deck when you can't make up your mind and/or want the flexibility to shift between a Voltron kill, Burn kill or a go-wide kill. Though it does neither particularly well.
WinCon: Blend of Combat/Commandenon-combat Damage. Aria of Flame and Sentinel Tower being two prominent solutions.
Needs -

• Feather
• Recursion from Dreadhorde, Mavinda, Urabrask, Sword of Once and Future.
• Mana generators from Birgi, Storm-Kiln, Urabrask, Gold Span and Smothering Tithe
• Token generators from Monastary Mentor and Young Peezy.
• Instant's that build your board state through Tokens and Counters.
• Zada and Mirrorwing

^{Notes: Just about everything that isn't a Permanent can be recurred by Feather, although some cases are via jank. Pyroblast isn't so much there to actually counter something as much as it's there to increase storm count for Grapeshot, or trigger something like Gold Span Dragon.}
FEATHER, SUNFORGER EQUIP VOLTRON
A mean, lean, Feather equipment machine. Sunforger is often an auto-include with Feather, but I crafted this version to really play to the card's strengths while also providing it with a good support package.
WinCon: Commander Damage
Needs -

• Sunforger and ideally Magnetic Theft
• Reasonable recursion package
• Additional Equipment because why-not?
• Heavy focus on pump-spells instead of simply casting Instant's for jank value (though we still do that!)

^{Notes: Tutors? I don't normally like Tutoring-to-win but in this case having some extra reliability to help get Sunforger out will smoothen the deck's playability.}
FEATHER, TOKEN GO-WIDE
All about those tokens. This deck features a few more wide protection spells. You *could* run Teferi's Protection if you wanted. Could. Feather doesn't really recur it and overly relying on staples isn't that fun, but I'd absolutely excuse it in this archetype.
WinCon: Combat Damage
Needs -

• Token Generators! Akroan Crusader and Vanguard of Brimaz shine here alongside of the generally-good Peezy and Mentor.
• Board-wide pump and protection spells.
• Mirrorwing and Zada absolutely shine here. You may also want to consider Recruiter of the Guard and Imperial Recruiter as future upgrades to streamline things.

^{Notes: If you have a Phyrexian Altar, now is the time to run it!}
FEATHER, PING BURN
Guttersnipe is at home in just about any Feather deck, but this is the Feather deck built completely around his archetype of casting spells and burning your opponents. Surprisingly running a little light on the Instant's but primarily to make room for some heavy-hitting Sorceries and damage-enhancing Enchantments and Creatures.
WinCon: non-Combat Damage
Needs -

• Pingers of course. Guttersnipe, Fiery Inscription, Firebrand Archer, Electrostatic Field, etc. Things that punish your opponents just by you casting other things
• Enhancing the damage output!

^{Notes: Sunforger would probably work pretty well in this deck by itself, since we're running the lower Instant count and all.}
FEATHER, SPELLTRON
The other Voltron strategy. This Feather focusses more on Instant speed buffs to pump Feather, though Sunforger and some other Equipments still feature as a sub-theme per se. Young Peezy and Monastary Mentor make guest appearances since we'll be casting so many spells a back up army is nice to have. I guess you could say this is pretty close to general Feather as well. Hmmm.
WinCon: Commander Damage
Needs -

• As many Instant's (Instances?) as you can run, and Sorceries that focus on buffing your commander.
• Scroll of the Masters, while not necessary, works really good here.
• Seize the Day (though it also works with the Go-Wide and Equip Voltron Feathers, I just forgot to mention it)

^{Notes: Go crazy, have fun, do things.}
FEATHER, THE FLICKER
Janky Deck #1 One of the two jankier Feather deck archetypes. Feather flicker is one I'm on the fence on. Low Instant count is suspicious and relying on creatures to target for value makes this seem like a bit more of a fragile archetype for Feather, but it could be fun for the bold or daring. I definitely need to put it together and test it though, so heavy salt on this!
WinCon: Good question. Flicker decks usually just jazz-hands cards around.
Needs -

• Sneak Attack and Scroll of Fate are actually pretty good here to cheat out some big creatures. May need more big creatures, though.
• Not sure what else! Hopefully some insight from a Feather Flicker pilot could expand on this less-common version

FEATHER, SELF BURN (Deck 1) (Deck 2)
Janky Deck #2 (and #3) So this was an idea originally inspired after I pulled a copy of Phyrexian Vindicator and then was shelved until I found Moxfield user "Equivocat"'s version. That helped me a bit to trim the deck and prepare it for eventual play, but I'm still not sure on mine so I included his as well (Deck 2). The goal here is to ping your own stuff and/or redirect damage around the table to incinerate people. I focused more on making my permanents Indestructible to hit them with Lightning Bolt.
Needs -

• I'd be doing everyone an injustice talking about this. Too janky!

Anyways, I hope this helps someone with their own Feather deck (not that she needs *too* much help). tl;dr Feather is fun! Feel free to mix archetypes up, too!

I vaguely remember a video on YouTube about how you can use quest design for worldbuilding, in this example, the quest was helping a chef collect the ingredients for his upcoming banquet by collecting them from monsters. The party would then be tasked with helping them hunt these monsters and prepare the meals.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSwdDcrfvWZIeti6neJ3QaTAES6PnWv0n&si=-BialRfUTvmHWqGh
I'm kinda sure it was either Jessjackdaw or Kanekuo who made the YouTube video. I've looked at this playlist and JessJackDaw but cant find it. Perhaps it was taken offline?
If anybody remember let me know, as I'd like to watch the video again for an upcoming homebrew Im making.
Any help would be appreciated.

Hey, I'm Jesse. I like music, video games, basic philosophy, poetry, and shitty memes. If you're into any of these, or if you just want a random individual to talk to then hmu!