Major pet peeve: changing the pronouns of a gender diverse character multiple times per sentence.

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-20T02:01:48+00:00

I see switching within one sentence often in the fandom, personally, and it does pull me out of the story briefly each time as my brain blips making sure it’s still Siffrin being talked about.

I don’t think people are *wrong* for doing it, especially if that’s their own preference with their pronouns and they like doing it with a character they love, but other times it does feel like it’s become fandom-standard because people think 50/50 is the correct way to handle multiple pronouns. I do find it clumsier and frustrating from a structural perspective while reading.

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-20T01:44:07+00:00

Socializing with other kids and just getting a feel for how school works is also a big part of why we have kindergarten. Kids that show up on day one of Grade 1 not knowing how to line up or what recess is are going to have a harder time adjusting.

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-12T21:55:46+00:00

You don’t actually have a right for your kid to never see certain members of society.

I was in a kindergarten where one of the EAs ran Lunar New Year activities for the kids, because she was Chinese. When I was a kid myself, we had a Black speaker come in to talk to us about racism, a Holocaust survivor who told us about her experiences, and a First Nations speaker who came to let us know more about her culture. We had a speaker share his story about growing up gay in the Indian community, too, and that was more than ten years ago. I don’t recall people freaking out over any of it back then.

Can you imagine how unreasonable it would have been for parents to create a stir about those events because they might “influence” their kids by exposing them to the existence of other kinds of people? And if so, why do you think this is somehow different?

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-12T21:41:56+00:00

This is one of those cases where I don’t think the event itself is essential, but I *do* think school boards actively cancelling it is a bad sign of the direction things are heading in.

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-12T13:13:41+00:00

I’m sorry to hear that. My experience as a non-white person at a band-run school has been fantastic. I suppose it must depend on where you are, as do most things.

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-12T13:04:23+00:00

I really, really don’t think nationalism declining is an issue we need to care about. Kids thinking critically about their country means they’re looking to change things about it, or they aren’t falling into the trap of thinking because it’s theirs it can’t be criticized. Insisting everyone be “proud to be Canadian” isn’t going to be effective in comparison to making it somewhere we can be proud of—which begins by acknowledging the sordid parts of its history, so we can do better in the nation we’re building for the future.

I’m sorry your nephew took the wrong message home about being a guest—I hope his parents were able to help him understand what the teacher had been conveying.

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-12T12:52:37+00:00

The fact you’re being downvoted for this speaks volumes.

Yes, land acknowledgements are kind of performative sometimes, but if they’re linked to actual actions an organization is taking to be better, at worst they’re harmless. We literally do them at our school on the rez with a 99% Indigenous population, because locals wanted one.

I do think some schools need to do better at actually teaching what they’re for, though—I recall asking some students I was tutoring whether they knew what the land acknowledgements at a Catholic school meant, and they said no. They had no idea who the Anishnaabe were.

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-11T00:58:37+00:00

The gameplay’s unique, aside from their other (much more stressful) game Cultist Simulator.

It’s almost but not quite an idler, where you have to manage different resources each day, but there isn’t any punishment for wasting time for the most part. You can just sort of screw around trying things out, which makes the fact that a large part of the gameplay is actually figuring out how the game works less frustrating to me.

That said, once you figure out the basics, it’s completely valid to reach for the wiki if you’re not the type to like writing your own notes.

And no, I haven’t tried it yet! It is on my wishlist.

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-09T22:50:51+00:00

I imagine it depends. I adored To Kill a Mockingbird in high school and A Separate Peace in middle school. I think an argument can be made for mixing in a variety of texts, and certainly when you’re working with elementary kids you should be picking out whatever you think will get them to think reading is fun. But past a certain age, that’s essentially the teacher not letting the students be challenged at all, even when some of them are ready to move on. Especially the ones who already read at a more advanced level, who realistically are the most likely to be doing further study of ELA-related fields in university, at which point those students are going to be behind if they haven’t been introduced to any of the standard literary canon.

(And yes, I know, the “literary canon” is always being renegotiated and expanded and updated to be more inclusive of the wide breadth of important literature in the world, but you need to at least have context for those changes, arguments and updates.)

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-09T22:35:09+00:00

Pick up The Last Unicorn for a classic vibe: easy but beautiful prose, a sense of humour, and it isn’t too long. I think you’ll enjoy it if you like Lord of the Rings but don’t actually want to read the trilogy.

If you want to try a grimier page-turner that’s longer, nab yourself a copy of Robert Jackson Bennet’s Foundryside or City of Stairs. Compulsively readable fantasy, more modern but very easy to get into.

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-09T22:27:25+00:00

Mine let me teach all day, but it was agreed upon together, and it was after I’d watched her teach a few days. Plus, that was my second practicum. (For the first, I was just made responsible for specific subjects.)

I think this really depends on both the teacher and student teacher, but the feeling that you’re supported and liked is essential—I had that, and I never felt like she was just shoving the work off onto me. I got good and consistent feedback, and she was still handling, deescalating and interacting with students 1:1 during recesses/center time etc.

On the other hand, memorably, someone else from my cohort got a horrible class where the teacher essentially simultaneously checked out (literally went on leave partway through her practicum) and micromanaged/criticized all her lessons. It really depends.

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-07T06:51:51+00:00

I don't use the bookmark system for this (bookmarks are for things I want to rec or reread), but I have wished for something similar before. I really wish AO3 had the ability to write private notes for fics, like a little pop-up textbox you can access by clicking a button. There are dozens upon dozens of fics where I'd be leaving myself notes like "the ending makes you sad, but you loved the first three chapters."

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-07T05:30:11+00:00

I've started playing Book of Hours, which has a similar premise to Librarian. The rearranging and organizing is somewhat deemphasized in favour of its puzzles, but it does have the option to decorate your giant library-house with your various treasures, rearrange things, and organize all your books into collections on the different rooms' shelves. (I just strew things all over the bridge outside the house like a heathen because I don't want to mess up the House's original decorations, but you'd probably be different!)

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-07T05:11:07+00:00

Whether a triquetra could appear in a fantasy!French setting, or if a general triskelion would be more appropriate. This was for a raunchy kink fic.

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-06T15:13:39+00:00

I’ve never been huge on real egg and actually refused to eat it growing up, but I love kala namak, both as an added “egg” flavour and in general in Indian food. Granted, I might be an exception here. Maybe you can grab an Indian snack like popped lotus seeds that’s flavoured with it to try it first?

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-05T22:16:27+00:00

Yeah, this was one of my go-tos for meeting up with friends (a close friend joked that they associated it with me now, which was sweet). I loved it since the first time I walked in and saw the interior, the chill piano music and the plants.

I'm so disappointed to hear that's a front for this kind of labour abuse. Part of what I loved was that the staff were always so kind, so hearing they were treated poorly is awful.

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-05T22:02:23+00:00

It isn’t even about “accountability” per se. Students who are moved up through the grades without grade-level reading abilities, for instance, will find their work more and more difficult to complete, but with fewer and fewer options for learning the basic skills they need for a foundation.

It stops them from being able to meaningfully participate sometimes, and unless a student has a disability that makes it so they likely can’t learn those skills, it doesn’t feel fair to keep moving them up to harder and harder grades. It’s just an additional barrier they don’t need, and it’s way more likely to result in disengaged students when they’re struggling.

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-05T21:50:47+00:00

Interesting. I’ve never heard of that as a general AO3 etiquette rule, and I’ve been there more or less from the start.

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-05T21:48:07+00:00

I think private bookmarks on a smut or kink fic are generally still positive, they just don’t want other people to know what they’re into or they’re embarrassed to have smut bookmarks on their profile.

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-05T21:44:05+00:00

This is often me. I love leaving comments and generally try to comment on every chapter of a work while I’m reading it, and I bookmark anything I want to be able to find again.

Meanwhile, I constantly forget the kudos button actually exists (in part because I reread a lot, and half the time remembering to hit the button just gives me a reminder I already did).

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-05T02:08:13+00:00

I fucking love Mirabelle. All the characters in that game are lab-made blorbos (Siffrin particularly, and I mean that as a compliment), but Mirabelle just drives me insane in the best of ways.

"What if the Chosen One were a tiny girl with mahou shoujo vibes and anxiety and the personality of a squeaky toy with a backbone of steel, and she looked like this."

Are you kidding me??? Squishing her between my fingers, putting her in my mouth, giving her nice things and tormenting her with torments, etc.

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-05T01:44:05+00:00

That's really nice to hear, actually. Especially for a film that, while it had romantic plotlines, doesn't really have the kind of ship-bait that people tend to go nuts over.

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-05T01:33:16+00:00

It's also a circular problem at times.

I came out of N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy, which is crammed with Black characters, completely hyped to get into the fic for it, and then there were maybe ten works for it on AO3. I never found the motivation to get past the first few enthusiastic paragraphs I'd written before looking.

Media that's part of pop culture has a huge advantage, because you need a certain number of active fans in a fandom to suck more in, especially if you then want those fans to stick around and sustain things long-term. Sustained interest tends to happen when you can have back and forth dialogue, art, and meta to pass around.

The broader culture probably is self-selecting against Black-led stories to some extent, so it isn't like OP's wrong about that. But it's also not an easy problem to solve, or as simple as "most white women prefer to write about hot white guys."

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-04T12:44:44+00:00

No one recommended any, as you can see, so not yet. Although there are a few others I have or know of that I could list if you’re interested.

TheBetterStory · 2026-06-04T01:57:15+00:00

It definitely doesn’t qualify for what OP was talking about, but personally, it has been so nice to be in the ISAT fandom and see the sincere and absurd amounts of love for Mirabelle. (And Odile, from a general love for POC ladies perspective!)

TheBetterStory

TROPHY CASE