I disagree-- I trust them, but I still think the process is important. If you don't want to read the words, you don't have to, but I feel better that they're there.

See, I think the description of the challenges you set for them is the most helpful part of this whole post! If you have any more you can think of, please do share them.

the basic idea was: hold the kid, with less and less support over time. Beyond that, I was just winging it.

Can you give more description of what you did in your 30-minute sessions? Holding the kid the whole time? Taking breaks? Did they/you get bored? Did you do any other playing in the water to make it more interesting for them?

My own belief about why so many people didn't want to believe Quirrell was Voldemort is that Eliezer is nearly incapable of writing characters that people actually dislike (perhaps due to, as mentioned: "make every character awesome," "give characters understandable flaws drawn from real life").

See also: Ferrer Maillol, a guy who literally orders the main(ish) character to be tortured and was still quite likable!

Thank you for this description of why Hermione isn't really a second protagonist, I was struggling to put a very similar feeling into words. She simply doesn't resonate in the same way that Harry does, even though in various ways she is set up to do "protagonisty things" taken at face value.

No, it's supposed to be for June 20th, sorry.

Update: this week we'll be singing Ballad of Smallpox Gone in honor of Smallpox Eradication Day yesterday. Also: please do RSVP if you haven't yet.

What would a problem solving approach to this in the form of LW comments even look like?

Thanks, added that to the post! I made double last year and I think it was about 2 dozen, so that sounds about right.

The original recipe used eggs instead of banana and butter instead of coconut oil, so those are certainly doable as replacements. For other vegan options, I like chickpea flour as an egg replacer because it's cheap and shelf-stable, though there's also Just Egg or other commercial egg replacers. For the coconut oil, any solid fat will do, e.g. Crisco or any vegan butter (though most of those contain coconut oil).