Just read this article, have some thoughts. It’s by a British critic, and he does NOT tell you he’s only a critic from the outset, which I think is a little dishonest. So, I’m going to tell you at the outset that I am a professionally-trained writer and storyteller, as in I went to school for it and was taught by working writers, led by Tim Powers and James Blaylock; and I have been actively writing and publishing and receiving feedback from both the audience and other writers about my writing since I was 13 years old. Traditional publishing is something I grew up expecting as the norm, and it is still the way I consider myself to be inclined, having investigated, observed, and considered self-publishing; but ultimately deciding that is not what I am about. I tell you all of this at the beginning so you know how to weight my opinions on Vazh’s claims about my profession and my craft.

There’s parts of his article I agree with, and parts that seem to be tarring every single SFF writer with the same brush; he then disclaims himself only once you get toward the very end like, “I’m not a writer” ok, well, that means I’ve just thrown most of your credibility out the window, fella. I mean, he makes some good points, and I’m sure he’s right about the publishing history, and I know he’s right on the bits about Racefail and so on; but I’m not sure the whole article and his sweeping (and rather smugly self-congratulatory) conclusion about “SFF is full of rabid idiots, Horror is the only good genre; we’re sooo much better than them” is the best conclusion to draw here.

I’ve attempted to get into horror, from Benny Little, to Stephen King, to Poe, to Lovecraft, to classic stuff like Frankenstein and Dracula and Jekyll and Hyde; and I think I’m just not someone that gets scared from a book? I’m not sure. I do like a lot of those stories—Poe is my favourite author—but they don’t scare me. And it isn’t that I’m not afraid of anything—I’m afraid of a lot of things. I can’t listen to The Magnus Archives, for example. My point is, I don’t know why he’s holding up King and Lovecraft and other popular writers of the horror genre like they’re appreciably writing anything of different quality to their peers in other genres… except that they happen to scare him, which he seems to interpret as them having some kind of mystical power. Which, “whether it scared me the first time I read it—me, someone who only reads horror” is a terrible metric.

Because writing is not mysticism, it’s not magic—it’s a craft, like woodworking. What you personally like is not necessarily objectively better than what you don’t (a stupidly large amount of so-called critics don’t seem to understand this). The question isn’t “did I like this?” it’s “was this concept executed well?”. I’m not going to put a hand-carved wooden mechanical cuckoo clock in my house, because that is not something I like; but I do recognise that a hand-carved wooden mechanical cuckoo clock is objectively a wondrous object made by someone with a great deal of skill and with hours of labour. To say that such a clock is objectively bad and poorly made because it is not to your personal taste would be considered crass and incorrect as an assessment. So why do we allow such a thing when talking of fiction, particularly horror? A person who habitually reads horror is going to become harder and harder to scare, so their using their own fear as a metric is no good. A person who habitually reads humour becomes harder to make laugh. But while you can watch someone make a cuckoo clock and learn to appreciate the skill and time, you cannot do the same with writing, writing is all done alone and mostly inside the writer’s mind. The typing of words is really the end of a very long internal process of thinking. You can’t watch that. You can’t know what goes into writing until you do it, yourself.

And I actually did read one of Vazh’s book reivews, I’m not claiming this out of nowhere—I read a review of the Ursula Vernon book he mentions in this article, and it’s very clear that he is in fact someone that thinks his own personal taste is objective, that his own personal emotional interpretation is objective. It’s eye-rollingly ridiculous that you cannot actually trust his judgement, he even lays out why you shouldn’t in the review as he tries to support his argument.

As a writer, one of the hardest things to learn—but one of the most important to furthering your own learning of your craft—is how to “read like a writer”. Reading things paying attention to pacing, structure, conceit, word choice, syntax, even rhythm. Being able to pull the curtain aside and watch the gears turn and the springs uncoil is the key to understanding whether something has been executed well—or badly. And believe me, once you pull that curtain aside, it’s hard to put it back. That’s why it’s important to read as much variety as possible. Without knowing how to do this, without understanding how the sausage is made, you cannot really successfully analyse which parts of the process went right and which went wrong. To compare it to telling jokes: Without knowing that humour relies on Delivery and Timing, without knowing a joke is structured on a Setup and a Punchline, you cannot actually figure out why a joke was good or bad, all you know is when it works on you.

Vazh’s assertion that authors have some kind of obligation to know “what readers want” (even as he holds up horror writers as being good because they don’t do that, and denigrating SFF as being bad because they do ) is laughably entitled and deeply uninformed about how writing a book works. Professionally speaking, I was taught by the originators of Steampunk , who were always emphasising that thinking about what genre you wrote in was bad. “Genre is for your editor to worry about, you worry about writing the story” Mr Blaylock always told us when we fretted about what genre we were. The professors of his Creative Writing department always taught us that the minute you started thinking about “what do readers want” was the minute you stopped being any good and started being a hack. The fact that Vazh thinks authors should pay attention to that, rather than paying attention to our job, which is writing a story, is the same attitude that fuels these “too defensive and afraid to engage with their story, can’t get off of Don’t Hate Me Island” stories he’s complaining and fretting will infect his favourite genre. A lot of his observations are true; his conclusions, however, trip over his… shall we say, “being an audience member who has never even done a school play”, to use a metaphor.

I think it isn’t just horror that is starting to suffer from being too self-conscious and scared of harassment to actually buckle down and do the business of telling a story. I have seen that defensive style of writing start to infect everything; and it started way back in 2012 or so. It isn’t just horror—horror is simply the last genre seeing this happen. And I think it’s not entirely irrational for an author to worry—as Vazh pointed out, this is an age of harassment unparalleled, and harassment has never had much consequence, even before social media. Social media makes it easier to do, and the culprits harder to catch, than ever; and the message to authors is still what it’s always been: get a thick skin or get out of the profession. So I can see why people would over-correct and cater toward the group most likely to send suicide bait and other horrible things. Unfortunately, that means you aren’t creating art so much as pap .

I think if it’s true that publishers are now majority staffed by white middle-aged women, that White Woman Tears are a huge part of the problem of “well anyone that has anything negative to say is an egotistical sexist bigot”. And let’s be real, White Woman Tears have been a problem for decades. Just because women are in charge now doesn’t mean the kyriarchy isn’t still being enforced, I agree with Vazh on that. That’s kind of what a lot of writers mean by decolonizing SFF. We are not a monolith that all throw our weight behind the publisher. That’s ludicrous to assume. Publishers are like Studios, and they treat Talent exactly the same way. Wild that Vazh doesn’t seem to get that.

Vazh having a clear non-understanding and dismissive attitude toward “decolonize SFF” is thinly-veiled bigotry that also—again—displays that he thinks SFF writers are the same thing as SFF publishers. But the solution to the problems he’s correctly observing is decolonization, is publishers that are run by Black and Indigenous People of Colour (or BIPOC, as it’s often abbreviated), is SFF that is written by BIPOC, rather than simply SFF that stars a white author and white editor and white publisher’s idea of palatable BIPOC. The solution is the same as it is in Hollywood, and you can point to Hollywood as proof the solution works—how many successful films and shows are being written by BIPOC about BIPOC and casting BIPOC? Kpop Demon Hunters, Shogun*, Nope, Lovecraft Country, Prey, Reservation Dogs, Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities , Hazbin Hotel, Helluva Boss… there’s dozens of examples, more by the day as the big studios are forced to accept that the people want other than white men’s stories.

If only book publishers—and their critics—would understand that they need to look to their sister formats of storytelling to see what is the path forward.

*I'm aware the book Shogun was originally written by a white man; the tv series, however, is written by Japanese-American writers in collaboration with Japanese actors to improve the cultural and historical accuracy. And it is a wildly popular adaptation because of this.

When you're familiar with a few elements contributing to the problem, the way Techbros talk about AI starts to make sense. But you have to know what's contributing.

1. The sorry state of schooling

So this is one that a lot of people are familiar with, because most people went to public school and witnessed first-hand the horror of it. But I'm not just talking about public school; I'm talking about pedagogy, which is the word for what method you use to teach students. With one exception, all pedagogy is based in religion or other non-scientific worldviews. I like to call this the "world of should". The world SHOULD work like x, people SHOULD work like y. Well they don't. The "teacher lectures, you take notes" model has remained unchanged for thousands of years--despite huge developments in the fields of psychology, child psychology, paediatric and adolescent health, and other fields that you'd THINK would be relevant to pedagogy as they are about how people, including children, learn.

What's the exception? Montessori. Dr Montessori used evidence-based science to design her curriculum, and developed and improved it using more and more of that throughout her life; after her death, the schools for teachers and the associations that use her methods improved on them more using the same evidence-based science. There were still other schools that didn't use her entire method, only taking bits and pieces--those schools, like Waldorf for example, often try to associate themselves with Montessori, but they are not accredited and do not have the same rigorous training given to Montessori teachers, nor do they base their pedagogy on evidence-based science. They just use different, newer religious beliefs to fuel their pedagogy--usually New Age type stuff.

If you've never BEEN to a Montessori school, you don't understand the difference here. If you were raised inside a religion, you do not understand the difference here. Montessori centres the child, and puts into praxis the concept of children having human rights and being full persons from birth, and Dr Montessori advocated for children's rights for her entire life, making it a part of her address to the first meeting of UNESCO. Though a Declaration on the Rights of the Child had been approved by the League of Nations in 1924, and was even displayed in every school in France, it didn't change the way children were educated. Dr Montessori started her career being given the class of disabled children that the school she worked for had given up on--this was not a woman who started her career with children that everybody found easy to teach or even love, but with those of us who are even now often given up on, abandoned, and forgotten in institutions. She started with us, disabled kids. Special needs kids. Montessori is ENTIRELY based on what works for EVERYONE.

And what is that? Well, play. Showing children how stuff works with models they can touch and manipulate and interact with. Cooperation. Mixed age groups. Peers being allowed and encouraged to teach peers or youngers (or olders!). Teachers not being authoritarian figures but helpers who encourage children to have their own opinions and ideas. Children taking care of their own classroom together by sharing chores they are taught how to do.

You are taught how to do EVERYTHING, in Montessori--and if you're struggling, you can ask for help and get it! There is no homework, you do things in the classroom where there's a teacher available or a friend to help you if you need it. There is a great value placed on teaching children how to be persons over teaching x amount of math and testing. So, you learn not just what you're learning, but also how to teach and explain it to other people, and that you have a right to get help and that your fellow people in this world are friends to work with, not enemies to compete with. You are given enough support that you can struggle but also get help, and know the reward of finally grasping a new thing.

You learn, in a word, how to be human.

Contrast this with the way we encourage competition from birth in other schooling, we punish children for deviating from the lesson plan, we punish them for falling behind, we punish them for speaking, we punish them for having the wrong answer, for asking for help, for not knowing, for knowing too much, for questioning, for exploring. We punish, punish, punish! It seems the thing a shocking number of adults hate more than anything in the whole world is children. Is it any wonder that Matilda is such a favourite book?

We also teach them that other people are enemies. We do this by separating age groups strictly, having grades, large classroom sizes, and most work being done at home; and punishing children for trying to help one another in the classroom. We also treat abuse as a separate totally fine thing when kids do it to other kids. We have a word for it and everything: bullying.

Children do not learn how to learn. They don't learn how to teach, or explain what they know. They don't learn that other people know things they don't, or have experiences they don't, that their experience and perception isn't universal. They don't learn the reward of learning or getting better at something after struggle.

2. Devaluation of the Arts and Absence of Public Art in most of the US.

Take a look at a photograph of Paris or Florence or Mexico City. Right away you'll notice there's a fuckload of art everywhere, from street performers to statues and architecture. Now look at the average US city. Nothing. The buildings don't even have ornaments, most places. It's just boxes and signs and advertisements--which don't contain art anymore. Sure, some cities have one big piece that's famous--the Bean for example, or the Arch, or the Bridge or something like that. But these are huge structures in a desert of boxes and ads. But it goes farther than that, that's only a symptom of the problem.

We don't value art, in this country. We don't think art is important. For all the entertainment we make, it's just that--entertainment. It's made by people only interested in making money, rather than being made to say something, or to decorate something, the way that Art is. You can see Art happen despite these mercenary goals, but that art has a huge price tag--I recently went to see a touring broadway show, and it cost me $400 and driving about 2 hours. That art is not available to everyone, and as progressive as Broadway is in comparison to Hollywood, it's not nearly as accessible as movies. And while community theatres exist in MOST communities, they are poorly funded and not well-patroned. People just don't go see a play on a saturday night the way they see a movie. We don't give the arts funding, we have been drumming STEM STEM STEM into kids heads for a couple decades now, all while media has gotten easier and easier to not pay for, making it seem like it costs nothing to make.

If you aren't taught what art IS and the history of humans making art, and the reason humans make art, you're not going to know any of that. If you aren't given opportunity and instruction on how to make your own art, you will never know how much effort and skill it takes to make art either, and will have no sense of context, no ability to analyse, no ability to engage with art in a way that values it. With how art is simply not taught at all, kids are limited to whatever they pick up from the world around them. Sometimes they get lucky, and live in one of the few places in the country that has a lot of art, or they have parents that value art and know to show them art and talk with them about it; but leaving it up the chance means a lot of kids are stuck growing up in ugly places devoid of not just art but natural beauty.

3. Zero psychological education for the masses.

Do you know what therapy actually does? No really, do you know what a therapist is supposed to do for you? None of us really get told what it is we're supposed to expect from therapy, and that means we have very little idea of how to tell a good therapist from a bad one.

Therapy is a class to teach you about how brains work and teach you skills for how to manage your thoughts and emotions. That's it. It's a class. A therapist is a teacher. And most of those skills and ideas are those that we can only access if we go to therapy, even though they're skills that we need to navigate life.

One of these ideas that most people do not have is called Theory of Mind. Theory of Mind is the idea that your experience of reality is not universal, that YOU are different from OTHER PEOPLE. That YOU know things OTHER PEOPLE do not, and OTHER PEOPLE know things YOU do not. Other people may be feelings things YOU are not. YOU may be feeling things other people do not. Etc etc. It's the first thing the therapist has to teach most people.

This is just one of many, many things that people should be taught from birth, other examples being: how to de-escalate, how to understand emotions, dealing with trauma, advocating for one's rights, understanding boundaries, communicating clearly with words and body language, and on and on. Things that we are ONLY taught if we go to a therapist, which is often behind layers of barriers such as money, time, and shame.

4. We do not value play, fun, or hobbies.

Do you have a hobby? Most people my age and younger will say they don't have the time, or will say they like "watching movies" or "listening to music" or "hanging out with friends". These are not hobbies. A hobby, to quote Bob Ross, is an applied interest. A hobby is something that requires some amount of skill-building, such as knitting, making model planes, or playing the guitar. Most hobbies are some form of creative skill, or employ creative skills in combination with social activity (such as the SCA, Camping, or playing soccer).

Having a hobby requires time and money, which most people no longer have; even kids from rich families do not have time in a lot of cases, because kids have been pressured more and more academically and have been burdened with more and more homework as years have gone on. I hear now that it's getting to where kids are given so much, in some places, that it is not humanly possible for them to get it all done and still get even one hour of sleep. And most adults are working 2 and 3 jobs just to barely scrape the rent and car payments together, if that. "Nobody has time for hobbies" is seen as sad, but not catastrophic--after all, hobbies don't teach you anything useful.

Well, they do. They teach you to practise a skill and show you the reward of getting better at something that is hard to get good at. They teach you the value of struggling through being bad at things, and how in order to get good at something, you have to enjoy the process of doing it, not being good at it but just doing it at all, whether you're bad OR good. They're very good for stress and I would argue they're a form of play, they often create art, and play and art are the whole point of being in a society.

5. Toxic Masculinity

Men are denied friendship. Friendship requires vulnerability, and men are not allowed to be vulnerable, that's sissy stuff. So men don't have friends, and they don't know how to make them, and they don't tell the friends they have that they consider that person a friend, and they don't know how to maintain relationships, and on and on and on. Men are not given affection past a certain age, because 'you're a man now'. Men are not allowed to cry past a certain age, because 'you're a man now' and so on. This results in men who are socially malnourished and starving for any form of affection, because they're told the ONLY person they can ask for affection from is a sexual partner and that the ONLY form of affection they are allowed to have is sexual gratification. And then we throw them a further restriction that they're ONLY allowed to have ONE partner.

And then they just create feedback loops that reinforce all of this. But if you isolate someone like that, and malnourish them, they're gonna get really fucking hostile and unstable. Like REALLY unstable. And they're gonna have some pretty weird ways of interacting with other people, that are very aggressive, hostile, and miserable. This also means that any social mileu dominated by men is going to reinforce this toxic masculinity. Places like, say, tech, which is dominated by not just men, but men who have been told they are failures of masculinity.

---

Ok, let's review.

The way we teach children and what we DON'T teach them, the devaluing and non-presence of art, and the lack of interpersonal and behavioural skills results in an inability to understand:

1. That your experiences--all of them--are not universal.
2. That in order to learn something, most people need it taught to them--this includes explaining the concept multiple ways, using metaphors or similes, models, diagrams, and patience to walk someone through something you already know all these different ways.
3. That there is value in enjoying the process of doing something, even if you aren't very good at it, and there is value in persisting to practise that thing so that you can improve your skills.

I have observed that, over and over, people enmeshed in coding end up in a kind of weird combination of a negative feedback loop and an echo chamber. It isn't JUST one of these things above contributing to that; it's all of them interacting with each other.

And that's why you get guys very earnestly trying to describe how cool it is to be able to create songs at the push of a button, with zero effort, and just as earnestly not understanding why anyone would actually ENJOY practising something and making the music their own self. That's why you get people who can't tell when a video or image is AI. That's why you get people who do not understand how AI is not at all the same thing as art.

AI is really highlighting the catastrophic failures that have led us to this point. But those failures started a long, long time ago.

All of these are free to use and reproduce in any variation as long as you can blazon it the same way (I will include the blazon, or formal heraldic description, under each flag). The shades of colours and the execution of the blazon can all be variant. As long as you can recognise it at the size of a postage stamp OR twenty yards away in the rain, it is correct.

Leather/Kink General:

A field chevronny sable and azure, a pale argent, on it three hearts gules.

I re-arranged the stripes of the leather flag, and made it three hearts instead of one because of the many triplicate concepts in kink: top/versatile/bottom, dominant/switch/submissive, safe/sane/consensual (nb: there is criticism of ssc by the Mad community, as well as those with kinks that cannot be made safe. However SSC is still a part of the community and the discussion about it is a good thing!)

Polyamory/Non-Monagamy

Blazon: A field per fess azure and sable, a fess or, upon it a pi symbol gules.

As you can see, all I really had to do with this one was flip the colours of the fess, or middle stripe, and the pi symbol. Now it has higher contrast and is easier to see!

Transgender Flag

Blazon: A field per pale azure and argent. To dexter, a sea-horse rampant sinister or. To sinister, a butterfly volant gules et rose.

Okay, so I have a Thing about the proliferation of Stripes In A Gradient flags. I hate them, to put it lightly. I think queer people deserve Creatures and Beaſtes. In fact, transwomen picked out the butterfly and transmen picked out the seahorse long before my time! I discovered our mascots as a baby transboy way back in 2007 and was delighted. All I did was 'translate' the sea-horse into heraldic depiction, because I think hippocampus is a fun creature. For the joined flag, I swapped the field colours so the butterfly could be colourful, as butterflies should be, and added pink that way.

Transfem and Transmasc Flag

Transfem Blazon: A field per pale sable and gules, a butterfly volant argent.
Transmasc Blazon: A field per pale azure and sable, a sea-horse rampant.

The individual banners are more heraldic. I took the colours of the trans flag and made the colours basic heraldic ones, and added the black of flux and spring and transformation, as well as adding gold because many seahorse species are mostly yellow, including the most famous and well-recognised one. The sea-horse is facing the blue side to signify transmasc people going from a state of flux toward masculinity. I would have done the same with the butterfly but butterflies are symmetrical!

Non-Binary Flag

Blazon: A field per pale purpure and or, two werewolves rampant dexter; one argent langued or, one sable langued purpure.*

Werewolves are neither human nor wolf, no matter what they look like; they are always werewolves, and shift freely between shapes. Also, my best friend who is non-binary loves werewolves and wanted a werewolf to be the non-binary Creature. Heraldically speaking, a "werewolf" actually is a "wolf with human hands instead of feet, and human ears", so if you wanna get real correct, you could draw it that way too! These flags are not set in stone bc of how they look in this post!

Aromantic Flag

Blazon: A field counter-ermine. A saltire argent, upon it five pine trees proper.

I chose the saltire because it makes an X and that symbolises how aromantic people "X-out" of the idea of romantic stuff. I chose pine trees because my mother, who is aro, loves evergreen trees the most in the whole world; trees are also green, like the green stripes of the flag, so I thought it fitting. Trees are also not living beings that have any kind of pair-bonding, and yet also have sexual relations with other trees to make more trees. I used counter-ermine because it's more visually distinct and interesting. I wanted to also show that these flags can be made into any shape of shield or banner and still work.

Asexual Flag:

Blazon: A field semy pique purpure and sable. A saltire argent, upon it five dragons rampant sable and purpure.*

Another saltire, this time because asexuals do not interact with sex in the usual way or at all. Piques (i.e. the spade symbol) and dragons because in my long years in the community, I have seen these two symbols used the most for our community. Having a semy means I can include both the pique and the dragon without cluttering up the flag. This one is probably the most intricate and difficult to draw, but again, the dragons can be as detailed as this or can be like, trogdor or something. As long as they're recognisably dragons with four legs and two wings, and only one foot on the ground, you're good!

Intersex Flag (Distressed/At War)

Blazon: A field or per chevron purpure. A pile to base purpure. Two gouttes de sang, to base a unicorn rampant sinister or.

Ok so the intersex flag as it stands, the field or with the annulet purpure, is a perfectly fine heraldic flag. But the thing is, I’m angry about a few things that are going on with intersex people and have been going on with them for some time. So I made this “in distress” version of the flag, because we are at war!

So the two drops of blood are because intersex babies and children are mutilated to force them into the binary. The gold unicorn rampant is because we are simultaneously denied ambiguity by the medical establishment as adults, forced into the binary by way of being denied, “you’re not REALLY intersex because your genitals don’t look ambiguous enough”, when the standard for “ambiguous enough” is never met by judgement of the doctors–to them, a truly ambiguous enough, truly intersex person is imaginary, like a unicorn. And the chevron points up because we are fighting and our rights are on the rise if we stand UP!

Bonus: Monsterfucker Flag:

Blazon: A field per saltire tenné and or. A saltire sable.

The X is for Xeno, or 'strange', and X is also used for the Unknown, as is the black of the void. The orange is because Halloween is a monsters' holiday. The yellow is for joy and both moon and sunlight, for monsters encompass all possibilities. Yellow is also because I don't see it that much in pride flags, so using it here makes it distinctive.

Orange (Tenné;, which can also be depicted as tan or brown) is, like pink (rose), a very late addition to heraldry—as indeed it was to the English language!

Edited to Add (2 June 2025): I have not designed the lesbian, pan, or a few other flags because I am not in that group and a group member should design that flag. I am willing to help any that want to design such a flag to follow heraldic rules of grammar.

I have not designed the bi, genderqueer, or other flags of groups I AM in simply because either I have not had the time yet, and/or I haven't decided on or found out a good Creature to be our mascot. I am as always leaning toward Mythical Beaſtes not much seen or used, such as a peryton or a pantheon. I think perhaps a water- or air-based creature ought to be the one for genderqueer or genderfluid, as water and air are the mutable and changeable elements of transformation and flux.

Punk Stuff: Repair Furniture

So your office chair is sinking no matter what you do, or the wheels snapped off, or the cushion went flat, or your cat tore of the upholstery?

All of that is fixable--IF you have furniture made of wood. The way you can tell is flip the chair over. Do you see some staples or some plastic? If you see staples, there is wood under there and you CAN repair this creature. If you only see plastic, I'm sorry but that chair was manufactured as trash first and a chair second.

Tools for tearing off the old upholstery and putting new upholstery on:

• Staple gun
• Staple remover for staple gun staples (this is a specific tool you can't use an office staple remover for this, it isn't strong enough)
• Pliers
• Staples for the staple gun
• Fabric scissors
• Utility Knife

Materials:

• Fabric (heavy)

Step one: Flip the chair over, find the staples and start removing them. Do not fuss about the weird tissue-like stuff covering the bottom of the chair. That's fine to rip, it WILL rip, it's fine don't worry about it. This will be TEDIOUS. You may need to use pliers for some of the difficult bastards.

Now, if you WANT to make this a little easier, you can disassemble the entire chair--take the bolts that hold the chair lever and lift and rolly legs off, take off the bolts that hold the backrest on, and now you can work on the chair seat (or backrest) separately. But remember to take photos of the chair before removing the bolts, so you know how to put it back together. And keep track of which bolts go where, put them in like a section plate or something.

Step two: remove the fabric. At this stage you can also replace the foam. This will require 1. foam and possibly 2. a tool called a Hot Knife. You can also use 3. batting if you want to be Fancy.

Step three: lay the old fabric out on the new fabric and trace it on the wrong wide of the new fabric with a marker. Sure you could use tailor's chair or smn but I can SEE a marker a lot better.

Step four: Cut that new fabric shape out.

Step Five: Put the new fabric on the chair and staple one (1) staple in the middle of EACH side. Not a corner, a SIDE. It's best to pick the backmost side, the one that bumps into the backrest cushion, as your first staple, then the frontmost, then the left and right.

Step six: Start stapling around the edge, pulling the fabric snug but not crushing the cushion foam too tight. It will pucker on the bottom part, that's ok.

Step Seven: If you have disassembled the chair, re-assemble it.

Boom, done.

If you need to replace the hydraulic lift, that's a bit complicated but a new lift is like $20! There's also a special set of tools you'll need to remove the old lift, they're under $20 and you can help your friends or donate the kit to a maker space or repair OTHER chairs. And you just take the chair off the old lift, pull it off the rolly legs, and put the new one in, and set the chair on it, and bam, done. Lifts just sit there! They don't need bolts or nothin.

If you need to replace the rolly legs bc one snapped off, you can do that too and replacement legs are like $20. You'll have to just flip the chair over and pull off the old legs, which may require some help or a mallet. The new set of legs may also come with instructions! I have never done this one, but I have put many chairs together and the rolly legs aren't really bolted onto the lift at all, just stay together from gravity really.

If you need to replace the wheels, THAT is a bitch. That is a bitch. Pulling the old wheels OFF is the hard part. Putting the new wheels on is p easy though, and they make wheels that won't rip up carpet or wood floor too! Some of them even light up!

If you want to repair a SOFA or something, that can be a lil complicated and involve SPRINGS. Springs are a sign of Good Quality Furniture though, as is a wooden frame.

Anything without a wooden frame is designed to be trash. If it has a wooden frame, though, you can repair the hell out of it. New springs are cheap, so is twine, so is foam and batting; really, the most expensive part is the upholstery fabric, and caster wheels if you're getting caster wheels. You can put legs and/or wheels on most anything, btw.

And you know, repairing your own furniture is a lot of fun! You can customise it, you can get sth cheap as hell and fix it up! It's not a garage craft that requires a helluva lot of strength or ability either. I do get tired and need help with some of these steps, and space them out; but my joints is real fuckened and I can still fuck with an office chair or repair a sofa spring.

Just remember: wood and especially soft things like fabric or foam can harbor bedbugs & fleas. Do not shop on the curb unless you have a bug oven big enough to cook them dead!

 ETA 2 Feb 2025:

I recorded a demo reel showcasing some of the voices I can do! I've long been told I should do something about how decently I can play with my voice, and so here it is! Check it out! I've included transcriptions beneath the cut below.

( Transcription )

Credits:

Nolan, Christopher. Dark Knight. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2008. 152 minutes.

Pratchett, Terry. Monstrous Regiment. New York: Doubleday, 2003.

Priestly, John. An Inspector Calls. 1945.

There was ad-libbing but not enough to note.

Gonna try and use this blog for my professional presence online as a writer. Not sure what to put here yet, but stay tuned.