Larfen Writes Longer Posts

I was recently relistening to one of my all-time favorite albums, Spiderland by Slint. This album has set up permanent residence in my skull, and there are probably very few days since I first heard it in high school that it hasn’t come across my mind. Reinterpreting and analyzing my feelings about the album have taught me a lot about what I value in art, since I have officially canonized it in my brain. I want to share here my most recent interpretation of the album: that it is a bildungsroman. That German word is just a fancy way of saying “coming-of-age story”. Coming-of-age is one of those universal, eternal themes like love and war. It is the process that every adolescent goes through where they begin to see the world “as it truly is”. In telling a tale of this human experience, the author gets to make claims as to what they believe the “true nature” of the world is, and it allows them to explore what it means to accept that reality. Let me give you a quick anecdote. Probably the ...

  It’s back-to-school season, and I’ve seen two school issues that got me thinking. First, there was a spat of discourse on X, The Everything App, about whether it’s a reasonable policy to force kids to lock up their smartphones during the school day. Personally, I think if you’re against this policy you are beyond cooked. First off, kids would NEVER independently use their phones at school to help them learn. I didn’t get my first smartphone until college, and if I had one in high school I 100% would’ve been looking at memes on that shit all day instead of paying attention in class, and probably more important, instead of talking to my peers and teachers. I understand concerns about safety and communication, but whether you’re able to text your mom that you’re safe during a school shooting isn’t going to change whether you live or die. There’s almost nothing that can happen during a school day that’s so urgent that a child can’t wait until they get home, or just call using the sch...

These are notes that I wrote down off the dome for Sheik today (4/10/25). I’m formerly Chicago PR (peak rank 9) with over 10 years of maining Sheik. Includes MU tips & tricks and things to be solo practiced. This guide is by no means comprehensive and my goal is simply to provide my particular perspective on the character, for you to absorb as you see fit. Some of the information may not be strictly true, but I have found to be true enough for practical purposes (i.e. chaingrab percentages). My general thought process in writing was to put down the things that I try to remind myself of when I sit down for a set. Universals If you throw a stack of needles on the ground, hold shield on top of them. If they hit your shield with an aerial they’ll miss their L cancel and you can shield grab You probably only need to use fair, bair, nair, tilts, needles, and grab in neutral. Everything else is fluff Sheik cannot be reaction tech chased, as it’s impossible to react to tech in place vs te...