for no particular reason, did some research about programming stairs. i think this is actually surprisingly related to all of my character controller issues, which doesn't seem very obvious at first. but consider the following:

• stairs usually means you've gotten lateral walking figured out, and now care about verticality
• stairs mean you need to solve weird interactions with jumping or falling off of ledges
• stairs are more complicated versions of ramps, and therefore slopes

which means that most of the problem solving i would be doing for all of my character controls will appear in a video about programming stairs.

... i still think i would be solving this with some sort of leg hitbox. sue me