sometimes knowledgeable people ask about my keyboard and I tell them about my ✨10 layers✨ and they look at me like I said I ate 40 pizzas in 30 days so now let me explain myself. I'm going to try to make this as short as possible and probably fail

left thumb has access to two adjacent layer toggles:

• Symbols 2, for symbols and a numpad. very similar to stock layer 1
• Movement 3, for arrow keys, mouse movement, Home/End/etc., and screenshots.

additionally, both of those layers change the other toggle to Mod Move 4, so you can hold both of them to activate that layer. Mod Move is three rows of arrow keys combined with Ctrl, Shift, and Ctrl+Shift for text editing and navigation.

right thumb has easy access to the SM5 Edit 1 layer, which just remaps some right-hand keys for ease of use of the StepMania 5 editor. the only reason why it comes before Symbols 2 is because the Moonlander key editor (Oryx) only allows momentary layer toggles to activate higher-numbered layers, and I often need the function keys from Symbols 2 during StepMania sessions. we'll come back to the toggle for layer 7 later.

let's step back for a second, though. all of these are "momentary" layer toggles, meaning the layer is only active while the toggle key is held down. I don't want to hold a key down while writing stepcharts; more generally, I find myself needing to stay in some random layer for an extended period of time, so a solution that works for any layer would be nice. for this purpose, Mod Move 4 maps the number row to locking toggles for the corresponding layers. (all non-0 layers map the right pentagon key to a layer 0 return, so there's always a safe way home.) this is also the only way to activate layers 5 and 6, which are for changing keyboard colors and settings.

finally, R Home 7, way down at the bottom of the right thumb cluster. this is a completely reversed copy of layer 0, and it serves two stories:

• my left hand is off my keyboard and I need to type with just my right hand.
  • for this, I just stretch my right thumb down. it's not super comfortable, but it works.
• my right hand is on my mouse and I need to type with just my left hand.
  • my mouse is between the two halves of the keyboard, so I can just move my mouse to the right and toggle the key with my pinky. it feels REALLY WEIRD but so smooth

layers 8 and 9 are mostly reversed copies of layers 2 and 3, except R Numpad 8 has the numpad on both sides so that I have a way to type numbers with just my right hand. (if it were a purely reversed copy of Symbols 2, the numpad would only be on the left.) this whole system is the only way I can continue to use Blender with this keyboard and I absolutely swear by it.