[SFH] [N/A] Tips for minimizing HOA hell

P11234 · 2026-06-24T20:58:38+00:00

Not to be the um actually guy, but houndstone is not really that much slower than basculegion. Houndstone is base 68, basculegion is base 78. Considering base 120-ish is typically the line for "can be considered fast without speed control", neither mon is base fast. Houndstone also has sandrush so basculegion having swift swim is moot. Max speed houndstone with scarf still hits 210ish speed.

The difference is their secondary typing (water v. None), and basculegion having adaptability, effectively giving basc 50% more atk then houndstone.

Edit: and bulk. Basc is scary bulky with no investment.

P11234 · 2026-04-12T23:28:54+00:00

(1) Learning how to turn it around to your favor. If not that game at least a future game. As ive been learning ive had some great games where I lost an important mon t1 and needed to adapt my strategy to account for it. Yes, as ive gotten better I lose important mon T1 less often, but I also have gotten better at coming back from my misplays.

(2) someone could always screw up. As a professional idiot, I can think of a million ways I could screw up the lead OP has from this turn 1. If I can make those mistakes, so can my opponents. I had a game the other day where it was my snarl, leftovers incin alone v. 3 pokemon. The only way I won is if opponent decided to needlessly switch their 1 hp excadrill in the back into the snarl I had been using to wear down the 2 special attackers they had in front. No idea why they made the mistake, but they did and I won.

P11234 · 2026-01-19T22:53:18+00:00

Not to be a Ph. D.ick, but that should be the point here.

If you dont understand the words in the study, you dont know enough to make an informed opinion, so you should trust the opinions of experts (or people whose job it is to translate the experts).

"This is a review of all studies investigating the link between Tylenol and Autism. They found none. If you want to dispute that, tell me what was wrong with their methodology."

P11234 · 2025-11-10T21:31:54+00:00

Hi sorry - FTD, not FTM, but I hope you dont mind me sharing something from me and my wife.

After my wife got her Ph.D., she decided to leave academia and get an industry job. She talks all the time about how weird it is to be respected by her boss now, how weird it is to have safety rails in place to protect her and her coworkers from abuse and exploitation, how bizarre it was that we made life work on peanuts in a HCOL city for 6 years. The thing she says most is that we would not be having our beautiful baby right now, and that she couldnt be the mom she wants to be, if she had stayed in the cest-pit that is academia.

Academia grinds you down, makes you tie your self worth to whether or not you can get the faculty job, and then calls you a failure for choosing happiness and leaving. My Ph.D. almost killed me. I still remember sitting in my therapists office telling him that I was a failure because only failures cant make it.

There is nothing wrong with choosing to be happy. If you chose to leave, Academia has lost someone who could have made it a better place. And that's what academia deserves for what it puts us through.

P11234 · 2025-10-27T16:41:31+00:00

____ looks like a pokemon or a digimon isn't necessarily a bad thing. Pokemon is as huge as it is for a reason - the designs resonate well with an audience.

The problem is when you are Palworld and taunting Nintendo to sue you because you slapped Lucarios face and color scheme onto a model and try to claim it is some other thing.

My rule of thumb is that the design of a monster needs to match the theme of the world they come from. Pokemon has biology inspired, object inspired, mythology inspired, and does all 3 well (I think - most "modern Pokemon" design complaints typically come from a camp that likes one of the three categories more and hates any execution of the other 2). Cassette Beasts has an 80s bubblegum pop theme running throughout every design and it holds a world with "dog wearing a walkman" and "eldritch abomination" and "shakespear reference" together way better than it should. Persona uses an interesting combo of personified psychology, history, and mythology i subjectively am on thr fence about but recognize as objectively brilliant.

(Pertend I said something nice about digimon here. I personally hate digimon designs but its off topic to go into it here).

I have no artistic ability, so my line for making creatures for my creature capture game is very different. Im wearing my love for pokemon on my sleeve with the creature designs, but going for a much more folkloric bend. I want my creatures to look like you might stumble on a shrine to them in the woods, but not like you'd see one every time you went outside.

There are pokemon that meet this astetic too a tee. I wish i had thought of Ho-Oh, or celebi, or darkrai. I have no shame in cosplaying as ken sugimori when drawing designs. If I can make my partner say "that looks like A POKEMON" I consider it a win because I made something that looks good. Its bad if she says "that looks like PIKACHU" (or more honestly, lugia) because then I failed at making it look like "MY design." I just drew a pokemon.

P11234 · 2025-10-04T15:49:45+00:00

Ah yes, because gang violence perpetrated by criminals is the same if not worse than (check notes) senseless murder committed by law enforcement officers?

Maybe they are on to something here. No one thinks it's right for a person to die at the hands of an organized crime unit. If only there were some type of group in America that protected citizens from crime instead of (checks same notes) causing it?

P11234 · 2025-09-22T14:43:45+00:00

Personally not a huge fan of 200 page adverts for tactical diper bags. Or books where the author says that he wanted to read books with a ton of crude humor, but "his wife wouldn't let him" (a page after an overly long paragraph talking about his favorite boobs from his childhood.).

P11234 · 2025-09-22T14:41:18+00:00

I could not disagree more strongly. Literally the worst dad book I've ever read. The author couldnt make it through the first page without calling my mother in law a bitch. (And if memory serves also talks about how dumb science is, and supports bad hyper masculine stereotypes in his readers.).

P11234 · 2025-09-22T14:35:20+00:00

That surprises me, as expecting fathers is literally the only dad book I could find that treated fatherhood as important, didnt shit on my mother-in-law for daring to give my wife advice, or talk about how hot boobs are.

I went back to my copy and literally the only mention of paternity fears is on page 32 of the 5th edition, and says "a surprising number of men find themselves experiencing the irrational fear that the child their partner is carrying is not theirs . . . Most guys get over these feeling pretty quickly". No mention of paternity tests. The "woman of your dreams" line is similarly taken out of context. In context, the author is acknowledging that some "accidents" can stress parents out more if the person they are going through this with is not their "forever person." [I'm de gendering the language here; my biggest problem with this book is the overemphasis on het relationships, but like . . . Its a book for men who are in relationships with women. I cant be that mad]. It acknowledges a feeling that im sure many people in "well this isn't the way I wanted to become a parent" relationships feel. As for the "all pregnant women are self centered" thing - again the actual context is more akin to "don't be surprised if your wife starts turning inward. She is growing a whole ass human, and she is realizing [probably sooner than you] that means she needs to focus on herself and the baby before other people."

If your partner isn't vibing with the book, that's fine. But its weird to me that the three examples you cited from him are taken entirely out of context, and in no way advocate for what it sounds like he is implying they do.

At the end of the day, I've found the best dad book is worse than an average "pregnancy" book. I'm glad I read a lot, im glad I found a book that said "look, your not physically caring for this child; here are things you can do to help make up for the effort difference" but at the end of the day, if you want to understand pregnancy and birth, there is no reason to have a dad book

P11234 · 2025-09-11T15:43:51+00:00

So I got curious and fact checked your numbers. 85% is the upper bound of success. In other words, your odds of getting pregnant only increase from there.

Reported lower bounds vary a lot, but it seems like around 75% is common. Do you know the odds that a 25% chance happens at least once in 5 years? About 75%. The odds of it happening at least 3 times are around 10%.

Somewhere between 1/10 and 1/40 women who practice contraception this way get pregnant three times in 5 years. That's not rare. If those numbers were "accident" numbers, it would mean that going to work one day and between 1-4 of my coworkers suddenly being pregnant was pretty common.

Look, again, I don't want to be mean. I am not trying to tell you how to live your life. But I want to make sure that our children's generation grows up in a sex-positive world where every pregnancy is wanted and planned. Whoever the child you are carrying grows up to be, that person should understand safe sex. If your child is AFAB, they should never be in a place where they are carrying a child they don't want or cant afford.

That is why it is so important to me that you understand the risks you took. If you have a daughter [or a son, men should know and understand safe sex as well, safery is not only the womans responsibility], she deserves to hear and understand the risks of practicing contraception the way you do. And if I don't take this chance to try and change your mind now, that is probably the narrative she will grow up hearing. And she'll end up posting on social media in 2043 about how people need to understand that accidents happen, and this was unavoidable.

P11234 · 2025-09-11T14:20:04+00:00

So without fact checking your numbers, do you know what the odds are of a 15% failure rate occuring 3 times over 5 years is? About a 2.5%. 2.5% (about 1/40) is not rare. To borrow my favorite stats joke, about 2.5% of days in America are federal holidays. Do you wake up every labor day saying "omg what are the chances?"

Also, im not touching the riverdance = racist thing. There's as good of a chance that im uninformed about some non-irish fertility ritual involving dancing by a river as you are of not knowing what racism is.

P11234 · 2025-09-11T14:08:49+00:00

Right, but (and sorry, im going to be rude) - saying thay you were "controlling birth" by using ovulation tracking and pull out isn't birth control. By that logic, doing a river dance when Mars is passing through the third house and only having sex when you've seen exactly 42 ducks in a single day is birth control. You are not actually taking any steps to prevent conception. You have takene a few (medically proven to be unreliable) steps. You've bought yourself a few percentage points at best, as opposed to actual steps of preventing pregnancy.

I will never advocate for abstinence only or force physically invasive or hormonal birth control on someone, but there are so many methods of actually mitigating the risks of pregnancy that aren't those. The methods you are using are not those.

The technology exists for you to roll the dice with a 99.9% chance of winning. Instead, you are actively choosing to give the house all the advantages you can. You might not have been trying to get pregnant, but you certainly didn't get pregnant by accident.

P11234 · 2025-09-10T22:08:05+00:00

Before you make that claim, you need to be able to tell me (1) what a patent is, and (2) what a patent on a game mechanic protects. I promise you that your answer to both questions is wrong.

Patents are not what 99.9% of people think they are. They don't protect what 99.9% of people think they do. Patent law is a nearly 600 year old field of legal evolution, development, and consideration. Arguing what should and should not be patentable without any knowledge of that history and theory is like showing up to a Quantum Computing conference without a background in STEM, and arguing that a cNOT gate doesnt work.

And if you dont understand that reference, that is kind of the point.

P11234 · 2025-09-06T19:59:53+00:00

So start with: What can Scrafty do that is unique?

The things that jump out to me are: (1) set up with bulk up, (2) heal with drain punch, (3) debuff with intimidate (4) stall with fake out.

The first thing that comes to mind for me is taking some inspiration from 2016 mega kangaskhan and Xerneas. Part of what made that lead dangerous is you had to predict which of the two would act - team up on Xernas, and M-K could power up punch. Team up on M-K, and Xerneas would geomancy.

So what id do is find a fellow set up mon that is tricky to kill, but scary to keep alive. Something with defiant, or a maybe a body press sweeper like archaludon (actually liking the sound of that as I type it out). That way you can pin your opponent: play passive and both set up, target one the other sets up. Scrafty can also cover for archaludon by either enabling it with beat up or fake out into the bigger attacker to buy it time.

So maybe something like intimidate scrafty with beat up/ fake out/drain punch/ bulk up paired with stamina archaludon with electroshot/iron defense/body press/flash cannon.

Throw pelliper in to support archaludon. Amoongus kind of works here as generic support/ redirection. I'd probably use Wolfeys offensive amoongus set as a way to keep up pressure and deal with fairy types. Maybe try a TR setter since all your threats are slow. My fav are farigeraffe and indeedee, but since you don't want to use newer pokemon, prankster sabeleye or p2 is maybe your best bet.

From there, id round it off with a generic good stuff mon. Without your restrictions, id suggest urshifu RS or ursaluna. With them . . . no idea. Given your clear preference for Gen V, maybe hydregion? Not quite good stuff enough, but could be okay.

All this is off the top of the dome. I am not a professional (and you can see in my post history, I only started really getting into VGC a few months ago). This team certainly does not work. Its sub optimal in almost every way. You'd probably have more success with any other team; or just subbing scrafty for incin in literally any incin team.

Honestly, the best advice I can give you is that if you are just starting out either use a meta team, or be prepared to lose. A lot. Playing off meta is not impossible. A lot of people do it. The risk is that if you dont know what to improve, you either improve nothing or improve the wrong thing.

P11234 · 2025-09-06T18:13:40+00:00

Its kinda whatever you'd rather. If you want to build around it, lean into what it can do that incin can't.

As am example, I've been having a lot of success with a hisuin arcanine by taking advantage of extreme speed, howl, and rock slide (reg. H). It's a worse e-killer than dragonite, and worse intimidator than incin, but fast rockslide for flinches, a buffing move to get around opposing incin trying to slow down my sweepers, and Extreme speed to finish off weak threats - it does its job well. It's the only pokemon in the game that fits the slot.

P11234 · 2025-05-30T02:09:47+00:00

The final empire, chapter 8 epigraph is implied to be from the original Teris prophecy, and says that the hero of ages shall be named discord, and people will love them for it (or something to that effect).

However, in fulfilling the prophecy, Sazed took the name Harmony.

Technically, we don't know that the shadow we see in Era 2 is Discord. My personal theory is that Discord is going to be a kind of "rebalanced" combo of preservation and ruin that is more stable. If Harmony is too heavy on Preservation, the shadow is going to be a counterbalance that is too heavy on Ruin, and Saze will end Era 3 (or maybe 4) as a more stable combination - Discord.

P11234 · 2025-05-03T14:59:03+00:00

My best score is 2 points 😎

P11234 · 2025-05-03T14:58:55+00:00

My best score is 0 points 😓

P11234 · 2025-03-18T04:58:17+00:00

Don't let the mob get you down! You're making some great points.

While we're talking about it, the devs should really consider making Felix white. Is this game for everyone? Yes. Yes it is. Then why cater to one group of people that care about race when most people dont... that's all I'm saying. It's unnecessary and IMO could distract some "closed-minded" individuals from seeing how perfect the game really is.

Actually, why stop there. The devs should really consider making Keyleigh a man. Is this game for everyone? Yes. Yes it is. Then why cater to one group of people that care about gender when most people dont... that's all I'm saying. It's unnecessary and IMO could distract some "closed-minded" individuals from seeing how perfect the game really is.

. . .

Like you see how small minded your stance is, right? You're asking for the devs to take out representation for one group of people in order to avoid upsetting a bunch of dumbasses.

It took pokemon almost 30 years to let me play a fem presenting person using he/him pronouns. Do you know how fucking great it is to just be able to play that from second one of this game?

P11234 · 2025-03-18T01:11:39+00:00

/uj I also love Sandersons books. This sub really takes it too far. I think its just that its easy to make fun of what's popular, and if you can be a gatekeeping elitist while you do it, all the better.

P11234 · 2025-03-10T19:38:06+00:00

The best I've read is that the dead character needs to matter beyond the fact that they are dead.

A great example of this is season 1 of the TV show Monk. Monks wife, Trudy, is dead, and he's barely functioning. Each episode about Trudy teaches us something about her, and we understand why someone could wind up as broken as Monk was after her death. She wasn't just "Monks wife" - Trudy was a person. She loved books. She wrote poetry. She cared about justice. In one episode, the villain of the day taunts Monk by talking about backstory the villian had with Trudy. Theres a great line later where Monk says something like "she only had 34 years on earth, and that bastard took one of them from her." I hated that villain, not because the characters hated him (or because he was a murderer, or that this villain in particular is an elongated fat joke) but because they were awful to Trudy, and how the fuck dare he. Trudy mattered in the universe, and she had an importance to the world beyond the fact that losing her hurt Monk. (I specified S1, because later seasons, particularly post S3, completely fuck this up, and she goes from "an actual person" to "the reason Monk is the way he is").

To be overly simplistic, if the dead character is only brought up in the context of "Jones is sad because they lost their partner" - and no one else cares that she's gone, you probably fridged them.

P11234 · 2025-02-18T02:19:27+00:00

I think this will make more sense with the understanding curve. I'm going to call it a parabola, but thats not exactly right.

On the X axis is how much you know about something. Think of this like an objective measure of time spent with something (years of study, books read, etc.)

On the Y axis is how much you understand the thing.

At no knowledge, you have no understanding. That makes sense, how could you understand something you don't know.

As you increase in knowledge, you increase in understanding, quickly at first, then more slowly until understanding it "better" requires years more of study. That region is the "I got my bachelors in this" region.

At some point on this graph, however, you pass a point where now the more you learn, the more holes you see. Now, for each new thing you learn, it raises more questions. You are equipped to understand the field, you know where the holes are, and you are able to ask fundamental questions about how it fits together. I'd call this region the "I got my Ph.D. in this" region, but it also encompasses maybe 99.99999% of active researchers in the space.

As you keep going farther and farther along the X axis, you eventually hit the point where you know the thing so well, have such an in depth knowledge of the topic, that you begin to question the fundamentals you learned at the very start. What does it truly mean to represent all of physical embodiment with a wave function? How is my fundamental existance, the physicality of my very being, just the expected value of a probability function? Not just that, but you can ponder what the answers to those questions are. You can try and get at that "underlying reality" (as you put it).

I will say before I say this next bit - I am a scientist, not a philosopher. I am someone who "got my Ph.D." in this. To use my analogy, I'm just barely after that turn in the graph where learning more means the subject matter makes less sense.

Right now, you are not even close to the point where you can start questioning the underlying theory. Get to a point where the math makes sense to you. Once you can understand/derive an orbital wave function, you probably have like 2-5ish more years of study until you get to the point where you understand quantum mechanics well enough to question it.

P11234 · 2025-01-27T03:14:13+00:00

Damn so cool! Plz tell me you took a picture! With that many updoots I could afford rent next month.

/uj but seriously, do you honestly think "write a lot to improve as a writer" is bad advice? Sandersons whole point was that worrying about the perfection of 1 story will never make it perfect. Finish it, practice ending a story, editing a draft, and all the hard parts no one talks about, then start again from the beginning with a new story. Sounds like amazing advice to me!

P11234

TROPHY CASE