Emotional volatility is an extreme form of self-neglect. I know better than to internalize my feelings to the point of self-detonation. I am far too hard on myself, the one person I am so graciously stuck with until the curtains fall in the finality of life. My precious body, mind, heart and soul take care of me as best as they possibly can given the circumstances. The berating they receive every once in a while when I make a mistake which has consequences that are worse than usual are too extreme. I seem to conclude that I have no choice but to punish myself, because now that I’m an adult with no parental authority to chastise me, it’s clear that a punishment must be handed down to truly solidify how awful of a mistake I made. It’s not a way to live, I know this. I know it whilst inflicting unfettered mental pain onto myself. This pain slithers inside and wraps its tendrils tightly around my heart that then struggles to feel anything but sorrow and anguish, quickly turning into this physical pain that claws its way under my skin making me want to rip it off along with every last strand of hair on my head. All that unnecessary effort just to make myself feel worse than I already did to begin with. My poor sorrowful heart and sharp-tongued mind takes these feelings as proof, magnifying all my inadequacies and incompetence. Just another typical day turned unnecessary and ridiculous. C'est la vie. I’ve since bounced back. Life is a beautiful, scary, fucked up mess. Being human is not for the weak, yet we persist and persist. Despite it all, we are stronger than we give ourselves credit for. I just hate when it happens, and I’m allowed to complain, just like anyone else. That doesn’t take away from our overall persevering spirit and determination. I am still love and light at the end of it all, so I try to remember it as much as possible. I place sticky notes around my computer with affirmations; I am a spiritual being having a human experience. Everything I don’t like is reflected back to me in people that rub me the wrong way, in situations I try to avoid. There is no escape, only persisting through the fear I hate to face head on. It will get easier, I know it will. I just want it now. One day, it will here. And I will look back and think to myself… how silly it is to be me and to be human. Nothing is so serious, happiness and love are all that matter. Stop being so dramatic, you. Start writing about your life when you’re not looking at it through melancholic vision.

written by amelia rodriguez / a.k.a amy

published october 8, 2026

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The purple-potted pothos keeps you grounded.

You keep looking at the plant whenever you're in the living room. Its two long vines drape over the pot, over the counter, sitting in the air. Confusion lingers in your mind each time you stare down its leaves. You remember this plant sitting on the kitchen counter of your family home over a decade ago. How has it even survived for so long?

Do you remember when exactly the pothos plant first appeared? Not really. It was probably bought by your mother, and placed in the kitchen one day with absolutely no fanfare. But you do remember the first time you tried to water the plant. You gave it way too much, and were scolded accordingly, because the plant could have drowned, obviously. This can't happen again.

From the corner of your eye, each day, dark green leaves colored the background of every rushed breakfast that accompanied your mornings before school. As you grew in height, the vines grew in length. As the dirt in the pot became dry, you gave it the perfect amount of water, every time, marveling at how many vines were growing out of the same spot.

The plant could not talk. You definitely wondered at least once if it could dream. If a plant could dream, it had memories to draw from. If a plant had memories, it had experiences, and there is no end to your hopes of learning about the way other beings perceive our fleeting lives on the planet we all share. Of course, you never told anyone about these hopes, because your life so far has taught you to bury thoughts that others would see as stupid.

What you knew for a fact is that the plant was there for you. It never left the kitchen, but you and your family members entered and exited constantly. The purple pot could always be trusted with whatever you had to say, because it never moved from its spot. You adored the consistency that it never wavered in. You definitely wished that more people in your life were like the pothos.

Could you think highly of a specific plant? Yeah, you can, can't you? How can you not? Surely a plant that's watched half of your life is more than an ordinary plant. You know you can follow the vines further and further back, and confront the events that the plant bore witness to.

Middle school comes and goes. High school comes and goes. College comes and gets aborted abruptly. One more year comes and goes. That year was really rough for you. Staying mostly confined to your room staying awake until 4AM every day seemed like a dream come true for a while, until the dream was devoured into a nightmare. You didn't see the plant as often, nor did you water it as often. Your mother had to pick up that slack. Yet it persisted.

The world isn't done messing with you yet. Now comes one of the worst things imaginable that could happen to you. That's why it's time to start planning a hasty retreat. It doesn't matter where, right? As long as you escape, you can live a life. Where? Ohio? Sure, whatever. The long-term planning can come later, but you need to leave as soon as possible. There's nothing else to do.

One of the vines begins to shrivel up. It dies.

You grit your teeth through the last summer spent in your hometown. Maybe because there's a sense of encouragement coming from the plant, you forge a path through every tiring shift at work. September couldn't come soon enough. But what about the pothos? There's no way you want to leave it here, right? No, absolutely not. The plant is going to come with you.

The night before your move, it's time for the procedure. Multiple layers of paper towels are sitting in front of you, and you take your fingers, digging them slowly into the dirt. With the lightest possible force, the plant is gradually lifted out. The short length of the root system surprises you. Is that it? The plant been showing its full self the whole time, with nothing beneath the surface? The plant is placed ever so gently upon the paper towels. Moving to the kitchen sink, you give the pot a deep clean. That was satisfying. When was the last time that anyone in the family cleaned out the pot that the pothos made itself home in? It was the least you could do now.

Would the plant survive the trip in the air? You were terrified at the thought of unpacking your bags only to find a plant that had been torn to shreds by an ignorant airport security employee. It's okay. It'll be fine. You're overthinking it, as usual. It's a routine of thinking that you will come to be more and more familiar with, but that's okay, too. You just have to focus on the plant right now. So you pack it inside of a big plastic bag, carefully giving it space to breathe in your suitcase. You get another plastic bag, and go outside to the garden shed to pack fresh dirt for the plant to live in. Now it's time to pack the purple pot. To pack the purple pot will mean the end of your packing, and your point of no return.

Deep, deep, deep down in the recesses of your mind, you push away a recurring thought you don't want to say out loud. You know it. You know this situation that you've found yourself in. You don't want to. You don't want to do it. You needed more time. You needed a different circumstance. You needed everything to go differently. You didn't want it to go this way. You don't want to go yet. You don't want to be rushing this. You don't fucking want to be rushing this. But you have to.

Sleep starts to take you into restless dreams. Inside your suitcase, a vine begins to wither.

You're awoken by your alarm, and soon surrounded by all of your siblings, saying one last goodbye. Your sister gives you a bag of gifts. You and your siblings all embrace in a group hug. You go downstairs, bringing your bags, and your mother hugs you farewell. The move is a blur. You're driven to the airport by one of the very people who caused it. Their sobbing over a situation which is entirely self-induced on their part confuses you. You have no sympathy for this crying. At the airport, before saying goodbye, you spite them. You “remember” to give back your set of house keys. It makes them hurt more. You hope it will make them understand. You know it won't, though.

One flight later. One reunion later. One drive later. There it is. The apartment complex that you and your partner were approved for. The area doesn't look great. A suburb, one hour north of downtown by bus. It's been less than thirty minutes and you already begin to sense- no, no, it doesn't matter. It's time to sign the lease. Oh, wait, look at that. The apartment you got approved for is suddenly unavailable, and now you have to rent a different apartment that's fifty-one dollars more expensive per month. Whatever, who fucking cares. You just have to move in. So you sign the lease.

A hailstorm of boxes fly up the stairs and into the new apartment. Let it be a blur. As soon as you possibly can, you free up space on the raised counter in your new kitchen. Unpacking your suitcase, you pull out the purple pot, the bag of dirt, and the pothos. Much to your relief, it looks intact, save for some wrinkles on one of the leaves. With loving hands, you place the pot on the counter, and empty the dirt inside, packing it down smoothly. Making a hole in the center, you unzip the pathos plant bag, stringing out its long vines, placing them on the countertop as you plant its roots inside the hole. Covering the roots with the dirt, you get a cup and fill it with water, dripping a small amount over the pot. Finally, it's done. It's done. It's done. The pothos and its purple pot are home. You hope that you're home, too.

The pothos plant continues its ever-watchful presence over your life. It sees you coming home from your new job, every day. You know that the plant can see it just as well as your partner can; the office job life is not meant for you. Little more than a month in, and it kills you inside, slowly and methodically. The plant sees your days beginning to merge together in a cycle of exhaustion that only grows worse and worse. You have no choice, of course. It pays the bills. It makes you financially stable. That's worth it, right? You convince yourself of this. The pothos is not as convinced. Sitting in the living room, you stare at the pothos, with its two long vines draped over the counter.

Oh- it's time for this conversation, again. This argument isn't new. Each time the subject comes up, you wish you had a different response. How can you help her understand? You're tired. You're so fucking tired. You're not trying to hurt her. Maybe you can do it another day. Another day means another opportunity for a promise. The pothos sees it from a mile away. You're behind the kitchen counter. She's behind her desk. The pothos is in between. It can't take a side. The stress, the stress, oh God, the stress. You end the argument for the day with a promise that you probably won’t be able to fulfill. You know you can't predict your mood in the future, but you wish you fucking could.

A vine fades into browner hue.

You continue to keep the plant safe and watered. Nearly one year after moving, your new routine has solidified. It's not as exciting as you hoped it would be, and you've grown frustrated with it, but there is nothing you can do. One of the only things that keeps you grounded is the pothos. The plant is old. The plant has grown, and ungrown. One vine remains. One vine, dotted with dark green leaves. One vine, and the stories it carries within. It's lasted this long. You're doing all that you can.

Summertime. Vacation time. Finally, a goddamn break. It also means a break from the pothos. You're prepared for this, though. That's why you bought an automated watering device to care for it during the week you'll be gone. It'll be okay. So you fly out with your partner, into the social unknown. And in that unknown, you enter the territory of fright. A frightening feeling that you go along with, because it's exciting, and new. You don't really think much about it. He probably doesn't, either. You just let yourself get wrapped up in the warmth, in the fuzziness, because it's sudden, because it’s fresh.

The plant is doing okay when you return. You notice that more of the leaves have fallen off, but the vine itself is still a pleasant green. So, you don't fret too much. The fretting will come soon. Maybe the pothos was trying to warn you. It’s learned from experience that change is a powerful force, one that is not always for the better, one that cannot always be planned for. Yet, you don't heed the plant's warning. If it could, it would probably sigh at you. Instead, it becomes saddened.

Nobody could be prepared for their life to change forever on one August evening. Least of all you. That's why, after you come home from work that evening to face it, your ability to engage in routine stops. There is no routine in a time like this. No routine. No comfort. No pleasure. Only debilitation. Only a new type of suffering. Last year's wasn't enough. And the pothos knew. It saw everything when it happened. She's only telling you all of it now, almost a year later. The plant was never able to tell you, but you wonder if it wanted to. It's too late. It's too late. It's too late. It's too late. The thought repeats.

The vine changes color.

It's impossible. The pain is impossible. Everything becomes impossible. In that pain, you don't even realize. You don't even realize what's slipping away, right in front of you. The cup of water is neglected. The watering device is unplugged. The thoughts all exited your mind as soon as you came home from work that night. There was no plant in the apartment that could be tended to by anyone. Not by you, and certainly not by her. The grasp of depression tightens.

The plant knew.

One brisk autumn morning, you wake up next to her, the same as always. There's not much of a choice, after all. Only one bed. You get out silently, and slowly step to the kitchen to scrounge together a breakfast. You get to the pantry, and take out a box of cereal. You move to counter. Suddenly, your head moves up, called by instinct.

You see a purple pot, sitting on the counter. Inside the pot lies a lone, brown, deceased vine, with one round leaf still attached.

You stare at the vine. You begin to cry.

When curriculum is changed, the focus is often on how we teach rather than questioning what's actually being taught and why.

We've changed how we teach students to arrive at answers in math. We emphasize number sense and conceptual understanding rather than relying exclusively on memorized procedures. We've introduced different approaches to literacy instruction, writing frameworks, reading strategies, and assessment.

But how often do we step back and question the purpose of the content itself?

When was the last time we looked at the math curriculum and questioned whether everybody really needs to know trigonometry and advanced algebra? When was the last time we questioned whether being able to write poetry was a necessary skill for everybody?

It's not that these skills aren't valuable. Writing poetry is a great interest subject, and there is absolutely cultural and historical value in exposing kids to poetry. There is definitely a future engineer who needs trigonometry and geometry.

But are we being fair to students by expecting them to decide whether they need those things at 14, 15, or 16 years old?

We already have different academic pathways that allow students to choose which subjects they want to pursue in greater depth. But those choices come with consequences. A student who decides at 14 that advanced math isn't for them may discover at 25 that they want to become an engineer. Suddenly, they need to go back and acquire the prerequisites they didn't know they would need.

Why are we expecting teenagers to make educational decisions that can create barriers well into adulthood?

And if we take away the pressure of deciding future careers from teenagers, how does that influence what we teach those same teenagers? What would high school look like if its primary purpose were to expose students to different subjects, skills, and interests rather than sort them into future educational and career pathways?

How do we design a system that doesn't punish a 20-something for not knowing they wanted to be an engineer at 14?

There is another question we need to ask: How much of what we teach, and what we've stopped teaching, is determined by educational value, and how much is determined by administrative convenience?

Part of my role as a tutor is enrichment for kids whose parents feel they need a challenge. Not everything I teach is remediation.

I have one student whose parent has requested that I teach deeper thinking because much of the writing the student is doing in school involves stating an opinion and backing it up with a fact or two from a book or article.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that type of assignment. It teaches students to support their ideas with evidence.

But there's a difference between identifying evidence and examining what that evidence actually means.

We can ask students to make deeper inferences, question why an author included a particular scene, consider why something was written a certain way, or explore whether there are other reasonable interpretations of the same text.

Is it a problem if students aren't being asked to do those things? That depends on what we're actually trying to teach.

If we're teaching critical thinking, then being able to question meaning, make inferences, and examine different interpretations matters. If we're only checking for basic comprehension, then forming an opinion and backing it up with evidence from the text may be sufficient.

The purpose of the learning matters beyond the stated outcome.

And that brings us back to how curriculum is organized.

Teachers have limited instructional time and an enormous number of outcomes to address. They are often expected to combine multiple skills into single assignments, assess numerous outcomes, and demonstrate that the required curriculum has been covered.

Integrating skills isn't necessarily a problem. In fact, it can be excellent teaching when students understand how different skills and concepts work together.

But when the pressure to cover curriculum outweighs the time available to teach it meaningfully, we risk creating assignments that serve administrative requirements more effectively than they serve students.

Some skills are taught in isolation with no meaningful connection to anything else students are learning. Other skills may receive less attention because they take too much time to teach or assess properly. And sometimes we combine so many outcomes into a single assignment that it becomes difficult to determine what the student actually understands.

What if we approached curriculum differently?

What if we started by identifying what students should ultimately understand and be able to do, then worked backward to determine which knowledge and skills actually contribute to those goals?

We could examine which skills everyone needs to function independently, which skills develop over many years, and which subjects are better suited to exploration and specialization.

We could also question whether every student needs to demonstrate learning in exactly the same way, or whether the method of demonstrating understanding should depend on the skill we're actually assessing.

None of this means abandoning foundational knowledge, memorization, or traditional assignments. It means understanding why we're using them and whether they're accomplishing what we intended.

If bureaucracy, time constraints, and the pressure to cover every outcome are influencing what gets taught, what gets dropped, and how students are assessed, then perhaps we're losing sight of the larger purpose of education.

We spend an enormous amount of time asking how to teach the curriculum more effectively.

Maybe we need to spend considerably more time asking what belongs in the curriculum in the first place, and why.

We are experiencing a time of great knowledge “without a lot of meaning.” I was listening to a Tarot podcast and the host mentioned this. I couldn’t agree more. With the time I get to spend exploring, which I feel might come to an end soon, the “meaninglessness” of things is very obvious when you talk to other people who feel as though they have no choice or agency regarding their life. And the ones with some sort of faith, there is certainly greater agency, but it also makes me curious about what kind of Truth they are seeking.

Most of us are stuck in a capitalist nightmare of our own making. There’s the kernel of self-awareness and there’s actual self-awareness, where you can catch yourself falling into an egotistical tail-spin or a hyper-fixated thought. Many of us swim in the former, still. Self-awareness requires deep curiosity. Self-awareness requires humility. Self-awareness demands you to be wrong most of the time. I find myself enjoying being wrong, or having certain impressions first and then realizing that I feel differently after a conversation or further introspection. Isn’t it a lovely thing? That we can change our mind/thought/choices/selves?

I pulled the Knight of Swords card to inspire my outfit today. I’ve decided that while I can, I will pull a card for inspiration, and create something out of it. Today, it was inspiring myself to dress up beyond my comfort zone, and then venturing out. The Knight of Swords card, has teen angst energy to me and I do feel a bit like a teenager again in this moment. I am on the cusp of possibilities. It’s up to me to follow the right road, before I get too caught up in the choice that I’m not actually moving along the path. Feels like Teen Spirit, but with a whole lot of responsibility. I have all the things I could ever imagine wanting. A place I can call home surrounded with books, art, and art-making tools. And now Taro tools.

What do I do next?

#taro #daily #writing #learning #InfiniteDoors

First day of 100 Days: The first day was pleasant, and a bit multitasked and driven not only by being in my menstrual window but also by my deep love of chocolate. I have had a LOVE for chocolate since I was a little girl. I would pass on gummies and didn't care for sours, but chocolate was a way into my heart. Fast forward years later, that love has grown to new depths from sourcing and intentionally working with Cacao as a ceremonial drink and medicine for several years. Cacao is one of my many loves within the plant/fruit kingdom and has served many potent connections throughout the past 10 years of my life. Her medicine of delicious decadence, yet rich bitterness, has served many lessons of open-mindedness, patience, connection and wide love and appreciation.

Cacao, scientifically known as Theobroma Cacao- meaning “fruit of the gods” is only found growing in tropical regions where the climate is moist and hot in conditions. The tree has a teeny-tiny pollinator friend called the midges. These small bugs look to be the size of mosquitoes and do the massive job of pollinating the cacao trees within these areas. The cacao tree will mature within 3-4 years and begin producing fruits. The cacao tree is classified as a Califorus tree, which means the pod is not growing from branches or leaves, but from the tree's trunk, which was a major fun fact for me(cauliflorous trees, right on!) Another fun fact that I was learning is that cacao beans are actually the seeds of the fruit, not actual beans. When you see a fresh cacao pod, it has a hard shell for the skin of the fruit and when cracked open, the beans are covered in it's pulp, which is a great ingestion for animals but not so much us, as mammals. Cacao will undergo 4 major processes to get it into the chocolaty goodness we know and love. The first, and most crucial part of the chocolate journey is fermentation. One would never truly know that chocolate is considered a fermented food unless you know how it was made. After about a 3-6 day fermentation period, the pulp or cocoa butter will fall off, and the seeds will germinate (another fun fact incoming), which is the part in the process where chocolate really receives its flavor. Fermentation to germination is truly where we start to see the magic happen within the process of getting the “chocolate” that we all know of. Raw cacao or natural chocolate really does have this outstanding, complex flavor profile that allows you to taste the soil is has grown in, the fermentation is has under gone the, drying and roasting, which are the last two steps. After the cacao beans have undergone fermentation and germination, they will hit the drying, roasting and winnowing or grinding process. Cacao beans are covered with a shell which needs to be pelled after roasting to get to the actual chocolate bean. This process can be time-consuming and highly rigorous. The whole process of getting cacao to be in a state where it can be made into chocolate is a service of love and devotion- can you feel that the next time you consume chocolate, in its raw form? Dark Chocolate or higher percentages of cacao can be highly beneficial for the body, mind, and spirit if used in certain contexts. Cacao, or higher forms of dark chocolate, contains molecules that help nature the body and help us form deeper relationships with the health and well being, of our being! Polyphenols are the first compound that so many know within chocolate that is “good for us”. This compound contains high amounts of antioxidants. This works in ways to protect the body on a cellular level, making us feel well cared for and promoting good production amongst our cells, A+ for that! The next compound we can overview is Tryptophan. This might sound familiar to you in the way of knowing this amino acid as what makes us “sleepy” within the Thanksgiving turkey. Tryptophan is essential for the body to produce serotonin and melatonin, as well as overall growth and development of protein and muscle. Introducing more of this to the body allows for a more calm and emotionally balanced state to the body and mind... go chocolate! Let's go on, “Anandamide (The Bliss Molecule): Named after the Sanskrit word ananda (meaning joy or bliss), anandamide is an endocannabinoid that naturally occurs in the human brain and binds to cannabinoid receptors to regulate mood, pain, and appetite” (quoted from grizzlynews.org). Cacao is known for its “heart expanding properties, which in spiritual context can be from abundance of situational experiences, but on a physiolocigal level dark chocolate contains certain flavanoids that allow for the blood vessels to expand and become coated for a more through and readily blood pump through.

Dear diary!

I found a plastic food container in the freezer. I’d been thinking to eat it today, the day when I’m alone. But, when I could finally pry open the lid to see what was inside, it was just something brown, like a puddle of frozen mud.

Isn’t that fascinating?

The little town next to where I live, it’s teeming with racists. Finally there was a sinkhole there, which I have good reason to believe, in reality is a not fully opened hole leading straight down to hell.

I think the whole town might sink into this hole one fine day, and I haven’t made up my mind yet, whether it is a good thing, or a bad.

I choose indifference this time.

Speaking of which,

Have you thought about the fact that neutrality almost always benefits the strong party in a conflict, the oppressor.

Game 063 in the collection is Tee & Sorcery. It's golf, but every hole is a little adventure: you level up, buy better clubs, cast spells on your ball, and at the end of each realm you play a boss hole where the cup stays sealed until you've beaten the boss with your golf ball.

In the kingdom of Fairhaven, every argument (border quarrels, inheritance, who gets the last scone) is settled with a round of golf. At the heart of the Royal Clubhouse sits the Golden Tee, the peg the first shot of the world was struck from. Then Lord Bogey, a sorcerer who has never once made par, crashes the festival, shatters the Tee into five shards and curses every hole in the land. “If I can never make par, then NOBODY shall!”

You play Pip, a caddie who has never played a real round, and who trips over an old sand wedge stuck in a rock while running away. Pip pulls it free. It complains.

Like every game here, it uses no asset files. Every character, face, course, texture and note of music is made in code. It's built with three.js and plays on a phone as well as on a desktop.

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A talking wedge

The wedge is Wedgewick the Wise, formerly Archmage of the Greens, who has been stuck in a club for 300 years after losing a bet. “Long story. Bad lie.” He's your mentor, your spellbook and your running commentary for the whole quest, and he does most of the teaching:

Next stop, the Sandsea Dunes. Pack sunscreen. I burn easily. I am made of metal.

The story is nine short scenes, two to eight lines each, typed out with a voice blip pitched to each speaker and a portrait rendered from the 3D character. You can skip any of them. The tone is Saturday-morning cartoon: nothing is scary, nobody dies, and every boss is grumpy and then sorry.

The golf has to work on its own

The first rule I set was that if you stripped out all the RPG parts, it should still be a nice little golf game. So every shot is real 3D golf:

• Aim left or right, and pick from four clubs: Driver, Iron, Wedge and Putter. The game picks one for you based on distance and lie, and switches to the putter on the green.
• A dotted arc of glowing orbs shows where a full-power, perfect shot would go, with tick marks for 25, 50 and 75% power. Wind isn't in the preview. Reading the flag is your job.
• The swing meter takes three presses: one to start, one to set power, and one to stop the marker in the sweet spot on the way back. Hit the glowing zone for a PERFECT strike, which flies straight and a little further. Early or late and the ball hooks or slices by how much you missed.

Under that is a physics simulation that runs at 240 steps a second. The ground is a heightfield, and the ball bounces or rolls on it with different friction for each surface. A ball rolling over a crest can take off again. Tree trunks, windmill blades and walls are solid, but tree canopies are soft and just soak up speed. Each club has backspin that bites on the first landing, so drives run out and wedges stop.

The cup can lip out. Come in too fast and the ball rattles round the edge and keeps going, which is exactly as annoying as it should be.

Twenty holes, five realms

There are five realms with four holes each: three regular holes and a boss hole. I wanted every realm to play differently, not just look different:

RealmWhat's differentMeadowmereA turning windmill in the fairway, spring mushrooms that bounce the ball, pondsSandsea DunesSand everywhere, quicksand that stops the ball dead, an island green, a pyramid, strong windFrostpeakSheet ice where the ball barely stops, snowdrifts where it barely starts, a frozen lake with holes in itCinder CalderaLava rivers and geysers that fling the ball into the sky on a rhythmSky CitadelFloating islands over nothing, bouncy clouds, a teleport rune and low gravity

Some of my favourite hole names are Sheepish Start, Quicksand Gulch, Icicle Run, Avalanche Ridge and Starfall Stair. As Wedgewick says about the Caldera: “Lava is a hazard, like water but rude.”

Each hole gets one to three stars: one for finishing, two for par or better, three for under par. If you go past the stroke limit, the curse wins and you can retry. That's the only way to fail.

Boss holes

At the end of each realm the cup sits under a shimmering Bogey Seal. To break it you have to hit the boss's weak spot with your ball, and the boss gets a turn after every one of your shots.

BossHow it plays

Grubbins the Gopher King

Pops up from one of six molehills round the green, then burrows somewhere else. He'll kick your ball away if it stops near him.

Duneborn

A sandworm coiled round the green. Only the head takes damage; the coils bounce your ball away.

Big Frosty

A yeti on an icy throne behind three ice walls. He throws snowballs that bury your ball in a drift.

Double Bogey

A two-headed magma ogre on a ledge behind a lava moat, so you need loft. His stomp shoves your ball away.

Lord Bogey

Floats round the green behind two orbiting shield orbs and teleports after each shot.

Triple Bogey

Bogey's final form: a three-headed dragon. The fire head leaves a fire patch, the frost head an ice patch, and the storm head changes the wind.

The bosses were the most fun to write dialogue for. Grubbins was promised all the golf balls he could eat, and after you beat him he admits: “Golf balls are actually very hard to chew.” Big Frosty turns out to be lonely because nobody ever asks him to play. Double Bogey's heads can't agree on anything, including whether to fight you:

LEFT HEAD: We crush the tiny golfer! RIGHT HEAD: We could also just… let them through? I am tired.

And at the top of the Sky Citadel, Wedgewick recognises Lord Bogey. He's Bogart, Wedgewick's old apprentice, who took a fourteen on the first hole 300 years ago and ran off when everyone laughed.

The RPG part

The RPG layer is there to make the golf richer, not slower. A hole still takes two to five minutes.

You earn XP by finishing holes (more for being under par) and by bonking monsters with your ball: Puffslimes in the meadow, scarabs in the dunes, penguins on the mountain, ember imps in the caldera and Bogey wisps in the sky. Each level gives you two points to spend on four stats:

• Power makes the ball go further.
• Control slows the swing meter, shows more of the preview arc, and softens hooks and slices.
• Luck widens the PERFECT zone, adds a bit of gold, and sometimes gives you a lucky bounce off a tree.
• Magic gives you more MP for spells.

Gold comes from coins and gems on the course and from finishing bonuses, and you spend it at Old Man Eagle's Pro Shop in the Clubhouse. There are six club sets (from Willow Woods up to Dragonbone, plus Starforged after the ending), six balls and six charms. The balls are my favourite: the Feather ball ignores most of the wind, the Slime ball bounces more, the Iron Heart hits bosses harder, and the Comet leaves a trail.

Spells come back to Wedgewick one at a time, as you recover each shard:

SpellWhat it does to your next shot

Mulligan

Rewinds your last shot and gives the stroke back

Gust Ward

No wind, no hook, no slice

Fireball

Burns through trees, brambles and ice walls, and does double damage to bosses

Frost Step

Freezes water and lava under the ball so it skates across

Seeker

The ball curves toward the cup near the end

Each one changes what a good shot is. Frost Step means a lake is suddenly a shortcut, and Fireball lets you go straight through a wood instead of round it. There are also power-up crystals on the course that give you a Rocket Tee, a Sticky Ball, a Spring Ball or a Ghost Ball that passes through everything.

A storybook look

The characters are chibis with huge heads, built from simple shapes with toon shading and ink outlines. Their faces are painted onto a canvas in code, with eyes, highlights, brows, a mouth and blush, and they switch between happy, surprised, angry, sad and blinking. There are no animation files: everyone bobs, walks, swings, cheers and slumps procedurally.

The courses use one terrain shader per hole. It's driven by a surface mask built from the same shapes the physics uses, so what you see is exactly what the ball feels. Fairways get mown stripes, greens get a fine checkerboard, sand gets wind ripples, ice gets cracks and quicksand swirls. Ink lines where surfaces meet make the edges read like an illustration in a picture book.

Water has foam at the shore and moving ripples. Lava glows and has a cracked crust that drifts. In the Sky Citadel, the void shows the sky through it with clouds drifting below the islands. Over all of it there's a little bloom on magic and lava and a warm storybook colour grade with faint paper grain.

Between holes you walk Pip round a floating-island world map, with the five realms circling a central mountain and the Sky Citadel above. A tilt-shift blur makes it look like a miniature diorama.

A few things are there just to make shots easy to read: a shadow under the ball at all times so you can tell how high it is, a glowing trail coloured by your spell, and a pulsing ring where the ball is going to land.

The sound

All the sound is Web Audio, with no audio files. Each realm has its own short theme with its own instruments: flute and pizzicato in Meadowmere, oud-like plucks and a hand drum in the dunes, celesta and bells on Frostpeak, low brass and taiko in the Caldera, and harp and a choir pad in the sky. Bosses get faster, minor-key versions, and there's a march for the map and a cosy waltz for the Clubhouse.

The effects cover a swing whoosh, a different contact sound for each club, a chime for PERFECT strikes, bounces for each surface, the cup rattle and drop, splashes, lava hiss, coins, monster poofs, boss roars, the seal shattering and a level-up fanfare.

On a phone

On a desktop you aim with the arrow keys or A and D (Shift for fine aim), change clubs with up and down, and swing with Space. Number keys cast spells, Q opens your item pouch and V shows the whole hole from above.

On a phone you drag anywhere to aim and tap a big SWING button three times. The spell and item buttons sit in the bottom-left. Every button is at least 44 pixels so your thumb can hit it, and it works in portrait and landscape. There's also a Gentle swing setting that slows the meter and widens the PERFECT zone, for younger players.

What the bot found

As with the other recent games, the dev/ folder has test harnesses, and the most useful one was a bot that plays golf.

simtest.mjs checks that the simulation is pure (no three.js, no DOM and no Math.random) and deterministic, fires random shots from random spots on every hole to make sure the ball never goes through the ground or gets stuck in a tree, and checks every boss can be beaten through the real hit path. Then two bots play all twenty holes: a search bot with perfect timing has to make par or better on every hole, and a noisy bot with human-like timing errors has to finish every hole inside the stroke limit. The pars in the game were set from those bots.

Watching the bots play found a lot of problems I wouldn't have spotted by hand:

• Drives rolled 85 yards. The ball kept all its flight speed when it landed. That's where the per-club backspin came from.
• The cup was far too big. The bot was chipping in from 100 yards. It shrank, and so did the speed a ball can drop in at.
• The noisy bot kept hooking into the woods. It planned for perfect shots and then missed. Now it checks every shot it's thinking about against a hook, a slice, a fat and a thin strike, and picks one that's safe if it goes wrong.
• The sandworm couldn't be hit from more than six yards, because it kept moving while you aimed. Now it holds still while you line up and moves on its own turn.
• Beating Lord Bogey looked like losing. His health resets when he becomes Triple Bogey, so the bot saw the winning hit as negative damage and never took it. Boss progress now counts across both forms.
• Late-game Power turned par 5s into par 3s. Each point of Power now adds half as much speed as it used to.

browsertest.mjs then plays the game in real Chromium: it makes a hero, skips the prologue, walks the map, swings with real key presses, uses a Mulligan, holes out, goes shopping, reloads and continues, and hits a boss. Then it does the same on touch-only phones in portrait and landscape, checks that every control is big enough and nothing overlaps, and fails on any console error.

The whole game is about 8,000 lines of plain JavaScript modules with no build step.

Play it

Play Tee & Sorcery, or find its statue in the Garden of Games with the rest of the collection. If you want to see how it's built, the design doc covers everything from the physics to the boss turns.

As Pip tells Lord Bogey near the end: “Golf is not about the score. It is about the walk, and the friends, and the one good shot that brings you back.”

Grab your wedge. Mind the lava. Have fun!