Souls Like Strings

• Sometimes you just need to rm -rf the repo and start over
  • but you shouldn't do this with a fair chunk of work on a branch that doesn't exist on remote
  • and you definitely shouldn't do it twice in the same week
  • to the same branch
• Vite handles styles in dev (at least the ones you import in your components) by adding them as inline style tags
  • this can lead to very annoying and confusing CSS issues
  • and if it does, that's probably a hint your CSS isn't very well scoped
  • should probably make a...

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison.

What if the emperor was a decent guy?

Poor Maia is the 4th son of the elvish emperor, consigned to a remote manor with his abusive uncle for the crime of being born to a wife the emperor didn't like very much. Or at least he was, until the airship his father and three brothers were on exploded, making him the new emperor.

Growing up with no one to talk to other than a drunken uncle who beats you for fun is perhaps not the most standard training for emperorhood, but...

Doesn't just jump the shark; plays hopscotch with it

Why

• Absurdly over the top, but can still get you invested in characters
• You never know what you're gonna get when you start a side quest
• Entertaining JRPG combat with depth and real-time elements
• Ichiban is strong candidate for my number one protagonist

Why Not

• Gets a bit grindier toward the end after mostly avoiding it well
• Some late game bosses are absolute tanks even if you're levelled appropriately

Impressions

Trying to predict where Like a Dragon will go next is an exercise in futility....

• Upgrading webpacker (Rails webpack integration) is hell
  • So is migrating from it to Vite
  • So is upgrading it to the actually-maintained React on Rails
  • In general, stuff that integrates React & Rails seems to not be super fun
  • Our internal icons package is not compatible with Vite's interpretation of ESM, and at least one way of fixing that breaks it for everything else

The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison.

I came here to drink tea and solve murders

The more I read of this the more convinced I became it was partway through a series, but I never really felt compelled to put it down and check. Celehar's very matter-of-fact approach to decidedly not matter-of-fact situations is a perspective which seems like it should make him a boring character, but never manages to. Instead he's just a competent guy trying to get his job done in the midst of murder, undead and office politics.

We begin with the...