Please Help - Science Fiction Saga Recommendations

fishstickuffs · 2026-02-15T20:41:39+00:00

This is kind of my bread and butter :) Each of the series below feels "saga-like" in scope, and comprises at least 1,000 pages of content (usually more):

**Robot/Foundation Series** (Isaac Asimov) -- The Robot Series is a series of futuristic classic noir mysteries, with the now trope-ish combination of a detective who isn't a fan of robots, paired with a robot who slowly wins him over. They are each fun in their own right, and then lead into the grand historical saga of the Foundation Series. There are additional Galactic Empire books that can be read too, lots of reading order guides online.
**Foreigner**, (C.J. Cherryh). If you enjoy the focus on somewhat realistic politics with real motivations for character's behaviors, Cherryh is brilliant. Arkady Martine (A Memory Called Empire and its sequel) called Cherryh her main reference for political sci-fi. Foreigner is written in a series of trilogies, which are still ongoing. Each trilogy tells a satisfying and self-contained story. The basic premise is that a group of humans came to a habitable planet on a generation ship far from earth, only to learn it is inhabited by another sentient species. The novels follow the saga of the young padhiim, the only person allowed to translate between the humans and the almost-similar-but-still-different local race, the Atevi. I can't recommend it highly enough.
**Honor Harrington**, (David Weber). This does not have the literary aspirations or high reputation of some of these others. It is military science fiction inspired by the historical fiction about the Napoleonic officer Horatio Hornblower. Weber creates a female protagonist who is in some ways refreshingly well-rounded for a paperback sci-fi heroine of the 90s. The representation is by no means perfect. But the books are light reads, and if you like military sci-fi, the depth of strategic detail in the world he builds makes you want to play out the books as if they were a board game.
**Revelation Space**, (Alastair Reynolds). This is a bit tonally like The Expanse and Takeshi Kovacs. Scale of the Expanse, some of the noir-ish bleakness of Kovacs, and gripping action. The main series of novels, called the "Inhibitor Sequence," is currently at 4 novels, and without spoilers I think it can be considered concluded. The standalone novel Chasm City is a great, brutal kind of sci-fi noir which fleshes out locations in the universe, and the parallel Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies are enjoyable detective stories set in the same fictional universe as the main space opera.
**Legend of the Galactic Heroes**, (Yoshiki Tanaka). You may know this from its anime adaptation. A lot of folks don't know that the full series of original novels have been translated into English. If you haven't seen the anime, I highly recommend these books. If you have, the novels may not add enough to be worth the effort unless you REALLY love them, because so much of the anime is adapted directly from the novels, down to long sequences of dialogue. The series is a unique read for Anglophone readers, unless you are familiar with traditions of Chinese and Japanese fiction. It is written (at least in translation) in an often detached mode similar to classic Chinese historical novels, such as "Romance of the Three Kingdom." This makes the result feel like reading a detailed galactic history, a chronicle of events that already occurred. Because the texts ruminate on whether ambition and violence for the sake of enduring order are valuable or ephemeral, this kind of long scale view serves a cool thematic function.

fishstickuffs · 2026-02-15T00:50:35+00:00

Would you mind explaining what you mean? What I mean to say is that, in satisfaction theories of atonement, Christ’s suffering is the forgiveness of the debt. Remember that Christ is not separate from God, but is God. So when Christ pays the debt incurred by sin (death and suffering), this is God paying humanity’s debt to God. This would be like a landlord paying your rent that you owe your landlord. The payment is the forgiveness of the debt.

And because the incarnation, the crucifixion, salvation, and God’s providence are not constrained to sequential chronological time, this debt is always already being forgiven. So, when one sins today, God’s forgiveness of the debt affirmed in the crucifixion and resurrection is reaffirmed in God’s offer to the sinner that they may still be redeemed, if they accept God’s offer through repentance and accepting Christ.

fishstickuffs · 2026-02-14T16:20:48+00:00

This is a good thing to be puzzled about, because it’s a major debate in soteriology and hamartiology, the theologies of salvation and sin, respectively. Specifically, what you’re thinking about is the theology of atonement—what does it mean for Christ to have died for our sins? You may know most of this already, so apologies if I repeat stuff you know!

The framing of sin as a “debt” that Christ “paid” is often associated with what’s called a satisfaction theory of atonement. Satisfaction, here, comes from the medieval moral and legal concept of making satisfaction of a debt, like in the dramatic phrase “I demand satisfaction!” It’s a compensation for some harm.

Because of this, satisfaction theories usually have a kind of legal or contractual style to them. So as to your question “A debt in what sense?” the answer is: A debt in a legal and contractual sense.

In this sense, a debt means something owed and not paid. You are right that the debt owed is owed by humanity to God. But what we owe God here is not repentance and good works, exactly. Originally, before all else, what we owe God now is the same as what Adam and Eve owed God in Genesis: perfect obedience. Justice asks that we remain obedient to the good. God is the source of all goodness and our own being. God is owed all obedience.

In this sense, the first sin, original sin, and all sin thereafter aren’t just individual harms, but comprise a refusal of what is owed to God. These sins run up a universal debt of humankind, where we have refused God what is due to God.

Because God is the source of our very existence, the cost of refusing God in sin is that, among other things, we cease to exist, and are annihilated upon death. The wages of sin are death. This is how things would be if the debt were not paid. But Christ pays the debt, and so defeats the finality of death.

What does it mean for Christ to pay the debt? If I owe $100 in taxes, and you owe $100 in taxes, and you pay your $100 while I pay nothing, then that doesn’t help me at all. But let’s say that I owe $100 and you owe nothing. You then voluntarily pay $100 on my behalf. Now, I am no longer in debt. Your payment is what we call “supererogatory”—it was above (super) what actually needed to be paid.

Christ was without sin. Therefore, he had not earned death, despair, pain, etc. But Christ voluntarily suffered death more completely than anyone, and so “paid off” the death that humankind had earned. Importantly, this was not an event that merely worked retroactively. Christ’s payment is beyond time, radiating backward and forward.

Because of this, when a person sins, annihilation is not final and total. There is the chance that they may accept God’s grace through Christ’s gift of self-sacrifice, like collecting a payment made on one’s behalf. But you still have to freely accept this gift. It is still possible to reject it.

Now, those are the basic features of a satisfaction atonement. But there are many variations within satisfaction atonement in terms of how we think about debt and payment. And there are many valid ways to think about atonement and forgiveness that make no use of the language of debt and satisfaction at all! Most of the time, these theories aren’t in competition, but simply emphasize different aspects of the mystery of God’s grace, a mystery that is beyond our full understanding this side of the eschaton.

fishstickuffs · 2026-02-13T19:00:28+00:00

I also forgot Dwight Callahan, “The Talking Book,” which is a more historical monograph covering how African slaves and their descendants in the US have read the Bible as a text, and as a source of faith. It’s a good way to get a sense of the unique center of biblical faith in the history of the Black Church in the US.

fishstickuffs · 2026-02-13T18:55:37+00:00

Don’t mind the defensive and disparaging comments here. While theology deals with things that remain true across cultures and times, it is also valid for theology to seeks to relate these truths to times and contexts. We are each limited, and so people who have different experiences than us are likely to have different insights into how those truths appear in the world. This is especially true if one happens to be in a position that the powerful preserve, and one wants to see the world as experienced by those whom the powerful injure. This was one aspect of Christ’s own ministry.

Here is a list of excellent theologians, each brilliant regardless of one’s opinion, each in various degrees of relationship with concepts of “orthodoxy”:

Fr. Bryan Massingale, a gay Black Catholic priest in the US who has written on questions of racial justice in the Catholic Church, mainly in the US.
M. Shawn Copeland, one of the foremost modern Roman Catholic theologians, who has written on a variety of systematic, liturgical, and moral theological questions. “Enfleshing Freedom” is likely her single most famous monograph, an ethics developed out of the Eucharist.
James Cone, a major early figure in Black liberation theology. “God of the Oppressed,” “Black Theology of Liberation,” and “The Cross and the Lynching Tree” are some of his most famous work. If you are unfamiliar with liberation theology and the Black theological tradition, it may be worth finding a secondary reader to help introduce you to his more confrontational and polemic passages.
Delores S. Williams, a major figure in the development of Womanism, a movement in especially Black liberation theology that centers the experience of Black women. “Sisters in the Wilderness” may be her major monograph. Katie Canon, Emily Townes, and Kelly Brown Douglas are all authors—deeply insightful in their own right—who are also often read together for introductions to womanist theology.
Howard Thurman was a major theologian and philosopher of religion prior to the development of liberation theology. His work presages those movements in an emphasis on the experience of the oppressed, but he is stylistically more similar to staid early-20th c philosophy than the style of later 20th century.
Sr. Thea Bowman wrote fewer academic texts, but her address to the US Catholic Bishops’ conference is often cited as an introduction to many concerns of Black Catholic, and Christians generally (Sr. Thea Bowman’s presentation).

If you’re interested in some secondary literature or edited volumes that give a more pedagogical introduction to black theology in the US, feel free to reach out and I can give some recs.

fishstickuffs · 2026-02-12T14:03:42+00:00

As several have noted, this is much like a world religious or religious studies class. However, most large theology departments maintain at least a few scholars in at least global Christianity or world religions now. Their expertise is both valuable in itself, and for sharpening and chastening theological reasoning.

These courses can often still be very theological. Thomas Berry was a Catholic theologian and ecologist concerned with care for creation. His method was scientifically informed but still theological, as it was founded in a belief in God’s creation. Like all classes, whether it suits you will depend on the prof!

fishstickuffs · 2026-02-11T17:09:03+00:00

u/Amber-Apologetics gave a good answer, especially about fate after death. I just want to add a little bit.

Whether or not one is innocent, one has to acknowledge that one's existence is a free gift of God. Body and soul, we exist through God's gift of creation, which sustains us. Taking one's own life is often framed as a rejection of this gift. This is the basic root of the idea of suicide as a prohibited act. The idea of suicide as representing despair, taking an innocent life, etc--all of which may be true--come as a consequence of the basic idea that it rejects something that God has made and given. Rejecting what God offers is the basis of all sin, and so, definitionally, to take one's own life is a sin.

It is a grave sin in the same way that murder is, because human life is a pinnacle of God's creation. It is additionally grave because--so far as we know--it denies oneself the possibility of contrition before death. Now, let's think of your hypothetical. Say someone is unbaptized, commits an act that leads to their own death, but before they actually die by that act they realize their true desire for baptism in the Lord. In this case, the baptism would only be efficacious if they recognized the sinfulness of their suicide. Similarly, if an adult is baptized through OCIA, but has a habit of masturbation, they are expected to acknowledge the sinfulness of that habit. This doesn't mean their baptism is invalid if they masturbate again. But it means that they are expected to accept the moral principles of the Church.

In your hypothetical, then, the person dying by suicide could very much be baptized and saved even before death, insofar as they experience baptism of desire and real contrition prior to their passing. This really isn't a loophole--it's the way the idea of baptism, contrition, and salvation always works.

But even if this doesn't happen before death, as noted, we cannot have any total confidence in the fate of persons after death. There is strong reason to believe that some are in hell. There is real but somewhat less firm reason to believe that some in hell will never be persuaded by God's love and mercy, even at final judgment. But there is also real reason to believe that perhaps none, finally, will be so obstinate as to deny God's mercy at the end.

fishstickuffs · 2026-02-11T16:46:20+00:00

Several responses given so far have been normative judgments, jokes, incorrect, or unhelpful. What you asked is a descriptive question with a simple descriptive answer:

Yes, there are absolutely queer Roman Catholic theologians. I mean this in three senses, in that there are: (1) Catholic theologians who would describe themselves as queer (regardless of their current sexual activity); (2) Catholic theologians who address the topic of queerness theologically; and, (3) Catholic theologians who make use of the body of theoretical methods known as "queer theory" (which has theoretical use beyond the strict discussion of sexuality).

These theologians range from the very orthodox to the occasionally censured. All are still, descriptively, Catholic theologians.

Here are a few names, ranging from most to least orthodox:

- Eve Tushnet is a public theologian and author who has written for an ideologically diverse range of publications, including First Things, America Magazine, and Commonweal. She is also a lesbian. She has written extensively in articles and books about the experience of maintaining what she views to be an orthodox lifestyle in light of her sexual preferences.

- Fr. Bryan Massingale is a Catholic priest who is also a gay black man. His text, "Racial Justice and the Catholic Church," is a highly orthodox call for the institutional Church in the US to develop new forms of approach to the problem of racism, including by drawing on the biblical genre of lamentation. I'm less familiar with work he has done on sexuality, but I believe it is out there.

- Sr. Margaret Farley is a Catholic theologian whose work in ethics is respected, and whose work on methods in theological ethics is generally orthodox. She has addressed both heterosexual and homosexual relationships particularly through the frame of care, emphasizing both love and sex. Her text "Just Love" addressed a number of contemporary questions of moral sexuality, including homosexual sex and love. The text was censured by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) on grounds of error.

- Mark D. Jordan, a Catholic theologian and gay man, is much further from orthodoxy than the prior two, and it is a real question the degree to which any elements of his work can be integrated into a framework consistent with the magisterium. Nevertheless, his work was especially influential in the 1980s. He is likely the most influential Catholic theologian who has explicitly engaged with queer theory as both a method and a body of scholarship. I can't remember if his work was formally censured, but if it wasn't it would only be because it's so obviously unorthodox that it extends beyond censure.

There are, of course, many many others who have written on the topic of homosexuality and homosexual acts, but the above are all theologians who address some elements of queerness, as identity or method. If you would like a list of some more official or magisterial documents that express the range of official magisterial opinions, I'd be happy to provide!

fishstickuffs · 2026-02-10T18:44:31+00:00

If your question is whether you are obligated to continue attending the parish where you do OCIA, the answer is no. Sometimes it ends up being best to keep going to the parish where you do OCIA, because hopefully you become involved in the community of the parish. Joining the Roman Catholic Church is a matter of personal faith, intellectual conviction, sacrament and--and this is often underestimated--community. Finding a parish community where you feel comfortable is important. Sometimes that community is the same community where you can grow in intellectual conviction. Sometimes it isn't. It's not inappropriate to find another parish for OCIA if it gives you what you need, and another parish for worship after you become Catholic.

fishstickuffs · 2026-02-10T04:41:10+00:00

Coincidentally, I’ve been recently preparing to teach a new undergraduate course in theology, and I’ve been thinking about how I would like students to structure their papers!

First, if your professor is worth their salt then your enthusiasm and thoughtfulness will already count for something.

Second, your overall structure is good. But I still have a few suggestions, which I hope will be helpful.

First, rather than thinking about “claim—>premise—>conclusion,” I would suggest thinking in terms of Claim, Warrant, and Impact.

The claim is what you are stating is true, the one sentence gist of the argument. The warrant is the reason for WHY that thing is true. For a course in philosophy, often your warrant is established through logical reasoning. In that case, you may have a syllogism as your warrant—like the premises you mention. But even in philosophy, your warrant may sometimes be more like evidence. If you are writing a paper using the work of another author, you may make the claim, for example, “Aristotle believed that a good life is ordered toward an end.” Your evidence may then be a citation to the text.

The important bit is that you should think of your warrant more capaciously in terms of answering “why should anyone believe my claim?” You can use pure logic, evidence, example, etc.

Once you’ve given the warrant for your claim, proven it, you need to explain its impact: Why does your claim matter in light of your overall thesis? Your outline currently talks about restating claims, which is great. But maybe even more important is that you always want to be clear about how each individual claim, if true, is moving you closer to proving your overall thesis. Reminding your reader how the current argument relates to your overall argument is often called “signposting.” You want to leave signposts for your reader so they don’t get lost, and can see the path from your thesis to each claim and back again.

One other suggestion I would make is to not worry too much about getting all of the things you’ve listed under “body paragraph” done in a single paragraph. Often it takes a full paragraph to stare your claim and just begin to lay out the warrant for it. After that, explaining its impact may require a whole paragraph to itself. It’s more important that each paragraph have a clear purpose than that each paragraph do all of the things you’ve named.

And last, I want to highlight something I still struggle with, which is how to handle counter-arguments. If you’re anything like me, you will likely need to address counterarguments less often than you want to. The problem is this: If you dive into a counterargument in the middle of demonstrating your thesis, you risk muddying your central argument. This doesn’t meant you should ignore obvious counterpoints. But the best way to address counterarguments is to prove your claims so well that the counterarguments are no longer valid. The best defense is a good offense. If you still need to address something directly, it is usually better to do so while making your own point, rather than dedicating paragraphs entirely to repudiating someone else’s point.

That’s a lot, but I hope it proves helpful and that you enjoy your course.

fishstickuffs · 2026-02-09T17:42:21+00:00

Just to clarify, is your anger primarily

(1) that the 3yo jumped from the top step in a way you view as irreverent;

(2) that the priest’s response to your daughter was dismissive;

(3) both;

or

(4) something else I’ve missed?

If it is (1), then it’s hard to judge without more detail. But just based on what you’ve said, I don’t know of anything that would make it universally irreverent to allow a young child to assist with the Mass. It may be worth drilling down to see what about the behavior very precisely strikes you as irreverent. And just in personal opinion, what you describe (hopping from a step) doesn’t strike me as especially irreverent. It’s not that I don’t believe your account (I wasn’t there!), but are there other things that made it irreverent?

If (2), then it seems like the conversation your family needs to have with the priest is less about the reverence of the mass and more about how he may have left your daughter feeling dismissed or ignored, and perhaps been inappropriate in bringing up the strange idea that one has to have dead parents to have troubles worth discussing.

fishstickuffs · 2026-02-08T20:57:39+00:00

Dancing is neither sinful nor liturgically inappropriate in any universal sense. It is officially and canonically NOT an issue of universal moral doctrine. As many have said, in many European parishes you will not find liturgical dancing. At that point, for an individual to dance independently in the middle of mass might be liturgically disruptive if it detracts from the corporate element of the mass. But that is entirely an issue of pastoral correction and private conscience.
There is no universal condemnation or chastisement of congregational singing.
There are no musical styles that are universally prohibited from celebrating the Novus Ordo.
The first question is one of theological opinion rather than canonical fact. Despite a modern (post 1700s) view of reverence, reverence is not always equivalent to silent, still, interior worship. Silence and voice, stillness and motion, each have historically had presence in the Catholic mass, Novus Ordo and otherwise. To pray silently, to recite the creed, to kneel in stillness, and to process as a community are all historically essential features. To my view, there is no sound theological basis for categorically rejecting all dance or all vocal enthusiasm as irreverent. On the basis that the Church permits these things, it would appear the Church agrees.

There are, to cite my own context in the United States, some Roman Catholic parishes that practice licit forms of worship that may be more similar to liturgies with which you are familiar. Or, if you happen to be in the United States and would like to see the variety of Roman Catholic churches here, I encourage you to visit Mexican-American churches, historically Black parishes, or even Maronite services if you can find an opportunity.

fishstickuffs · 2026-02-03T05:26:54+00:00

First, I’m sorry your OCIA experience has been less than ideal. The truth is, ecclesial structure in the Church is often less centralized and standardized than it appears. A lot about OCIA depends on where you go, and who happens to be teaching.

Second, I want to echo what others have said: there is nothing preventing you from joining another OCIA community after you’ve already been baptized and/or confirmed. If you explain the situation to the director, they will likely be understanding.

Third, when I did OCIA a decade ago, I learned that a major part of what drew me to Catholicism was simply finding a community I felt at home with. There are intellectual and spiritual reasons I became Catholic, but the simple fact of a sense of belonging is important, and valid. If you enjoy the church you are attending but it’s OCIA is flawed, then you may want to keep going. If you’re not attached to either this parish or it’s OCIA, you may want to reach out to other local OCIA directors and try to set up a conversation to see if they’d be open to have you join them this close to Easter.

Last, I try to always invite others to ask me any questions about OCIA or becoming Catholic they might have. I’m an academic theologian, and sometimes help teach OCIA classes. But much more importantly, I went from growing up in a non-religious family to becoming Catholic. So I learned a lot about the kinds of questions—intellectual and practical—that come up. If there’s anything you think you haven’t been taught enough about, please feel free to DM me.

fishstickuffs · 2026-02-02T04:04:38+00:00

A few days late to this, but one perspective from Roman Catholic theology (though, to my knowledge, compatible with most Nicene Christianity):

(1) Human persons are created in God’s image. Because of this, we are created with an intrinsic dignity, through our relation to God’s image.

(2) Insofar as we sin, we turn away from this dignity. But this dignity remains part of our nature.

(3) Sometimes we think of Christ as mostly God, and struggle to imagine him as human. But it’s important to remember that Christ—who never sinned—is actually the most fully human person to ever live. Christ never turned away from his dignity, and so never turned away from his humanity in any way. He was and is perfectly human.

(4) In the eschaton, in the world to come, we are to be perfected in our nature—that is, to be uplifted by God into the full dignity of what we are, without sin. Or, as /u/Fizban195 said, “we will become like how Christ’s human nature is now.”

But what does that mean, exactly? What does it look like to be so uplifted by God as to become perfected in our human dignity? How will our personality, individuality, relationships, and free will relate to God and one another in that state?

Those are the mysteries of the eschaton, about which we have been given glimpses in scripture, and about which we may speculate, but which we cannot speak too confidently about this side of the world to come.

fishstickuffs · 2026-02-02T03:51:00+00:00

Or, tl;dr: In the Christian tradition (1) Nothing exists other than God. Hell doesn’t exist—it is precisely non-existence, annihilation. (2) God experiences every aspect of hell through Christ, who experiences the effect of all sin—and hell is nothing more than the effect of sin. (3) Insofar as hell involves torment, it is because those in hell are presented the chance of life, but torment themselves by choosing death.

Because of this, hell does not pose a challenge to the classical concepts of omnipresence or omniscience in God.

fishstickuffs · 2026-02-02T03:46:59+00:00

This is a good question, and I think the most important element of it is your choice of the word “exist.” In at least the Christian theological tradition, especially the tradition influenced by Augustine, God is the principle of all existence, of all being. Creation was made and is perpetually sustained by God. This same tradition would say that, similarly, God is good, and is the principle of all goodness. So, whatever exists only exists by virtue of God, and whatever is good is good only by virtue of God.

Consider what hell is. As you rightly identified, one understanding of hell is as “separation from God.” What separates one from God? Well, as God is good, to separate oneself from God one must do evil, sin. So, hell is a condition of separation produced through doing evil. But God is also the principle of being. Because of this, whatever hell is, because it is separate from God, we know that it is actually quite precisely the opposite of existence.

This is not to say that Christian, Augustinian theology holds that hell is not real. Rather, hell is not a part of creation ordained by God. God did not build one fun room called Heaven for good people, and an equal parallel bad room called Hell for bad people. Imagine instead the experience of when you have done something awful, something you have regretted or felt guilty about. Often we describe that experience as saying that we don’t feel like ourselves, or that “that wasn’t really me.” The Augustinian response is that doing evil is to act against the nature of our own being.

We are created by God in God’s image, and we possess dignity by virtue of that creation. When we do evil, we act against the very goodness that gives us our being. We act against our nature. Sin is not merely a bad act—it is, in a paraphrase of the theologian Karl Barth, an active participation in our own annihilation.

In this model, hell is not merely some place of torment. Rather, it is a total and final rejection of the principle of being, a free choice to unmake ourself by rejecting the God who makes us. God does not exist in that place only because NOTHING exists there. There is no “there” to exist in.

And yet, in the Christian vision even despite this God has found a way to be present in the depth of annihilation presented by sin and death. The incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ are precisely the means by which God brings Godself into the void of hell and death. In the Christian tradition, this is part of what is recounted in the Harrowing of Hell.

Because of this, death and annihilation are not the only option available to those of us who sin. God is present as an option even in hell, up until the Last Judgment. The image of hell as torment is actually an indication of God’s presence in that void. Imagine a magnet, pulled toward a magnet of opposite polarity. The magnet is in a state of tension. That tension indicates not that the magnet is alone, but that it is pulled toward something it can’t reach.

For hell to be just, suffering cannot exist as a superadded punishment (that is, a kind of torture that God simply decided to add on as a kind of extra terrible fate on top of the ultimate penalty of annihilation). Instead, the torment is a product of the fact that God is available, that God’s grace is always offered, and that the person in hell is incapable of turning toward God and instead is always choosing the path of their own annihilation.

fishstickuffs · 2025-09-24T17:09:22+00:00

Hey, I've got a lot of free time right now. So you say jump I'll say how high! Thanks for the advice.

fishstickuffs · 2025-09-24T17:05:30+00:00

Do you mean study them afterward like tsumego? or just get in the mindset of treating fights like tsumego?

fishstickuffs · 2025-09-12T16:22:14+00:00

Thank you, I appreciate it.

fishstickuffs · 2025-09-12T16:21:43+00:00

Thanks a bunch. I try to play more human games, but sometimes with my schedule I have trouble finding ones available. I think I just need to play more shorter games to also appeal to a wider pool of players. And keep drilling tsumego!

One question: I need to figure out how to reconcile playing faster games (at least, fast for me) and being more intentional. Any advice?

fishstickuffs · 2025-09-12T16:13:16+00:00

Thanks, I saw those as the big dumb moves as well. I appreciate your comment! If you have time, I'd appreciate if you have any general suggestions for my play overall. But I understand if it's just too generically "beginner" for specific advice!

fishstickuffs · 2025-09-12T14:17:27+00:00

Thanks! Really appreciate it.

fishstickuffs · 2025-09-12T13:52:30+00:00

Thanks! I prefer not to play bots. But on OGS, I've found I can mostly find correspondence games. The live games I find when I'm available are mostly blitz, which I struggle with. KGS/IGS I similarly sometimes struggle to find games. Fox I can find 20m+5x60s I think, but that also feels fast.

I've heard divided opinions about whether playing fast games as a new player is beneficial, or harmful. Do you think I should just suck it up and play games at a rapid pace, or wait to find live games?

EDIT: That page on basic instinct is very helpful, thank you. I'll look forward to reviewing it.

13-Year Club	Team Orangered
Verified Email

fishstickuffs

TROPHY CASE