The first thing you gotta understand about the dead is that even if they manage to cling to the afterlife and retain a sense of themselves, they only have access to one verb, and that verb is "haunt". Without a medium like me who knows how to channel their voice and give them words, breaking all the glass in the kitchen is the only way to get your attention and making your friends foam at the mouth and chant gibberish is their best attempt at speaking to you. It doesn't mean they meant you or Samantha any harm. It's important that you understand that.

When you said who you thought it was haunting you? You were half right. The couple who sold you this house, the husband said his mom died here? Well, that's not strictly true. Turns out, it was his dad. And he has unfinished business that he wants you to deal with.

The second thing you gotta understand about the dead is that they don't really have the same concept of privacy that the living do. Or, it's more accurate to say that they can't. When that haunt a something, they more or less become that thing. Its spirit. Technically, its primary nooperceptual locus. Doesn't matter. Point is, if they're haunting a house, they "see" whatever happens in it. They don't even really understand anymore why that would be a problem. It's not personal, just a side effect of the consciousness shift.

So, when I tell you that your entity, the dad, saw you, um, become... transgender? Transition. Right. When he saw you transition, it's not like he was a living person looking in your window while you changed. He just knows because the walls and floors know. And apparently he didn't know, before you arrived. That that was a thing. That people could just... do that.

So. What he wants you to do is talk to his son and tell him that his mom was actually his dad, and get him to update the headstone. His name is Martin. Which, you know, it's hard for the dead to convey specific words. It's mostly just emotions and imagery, which is what makes my job so interesting. But this came through really strong. "Martin".

He seems pretty confident that his son will be cool about this, especially if someone who gets it talks him through what it means. And if he doesn't? Well, the third thing you gotta understand about the dead is that if you piss them off, they get mean. So let's hope that this guy is just happy to have gained a father from beyond the grave.

Bruno Dias posted 18 October 2024 on azhdarchid.com

Against 'Metroidbrania': a Landscape of Knowledge Games

Knowledge games tell you things, even if they ask you to make significant leaps of logic with the information they present – as in Animal Well, where some of the critical knowledge has to be arrived at by analogy, by seeing things in the environment and relating them to the player’s affordances.

A few other typical features of knowledge games:

• Players are asked to build an internal model of a narrative or system, rather than just internalizing discrete bits of information. For example, The Case of the Golden Idol asks players to reconstruct sequences of events.
• Knowledge is useful more than once and/or far away from the site where it's gained. In Animal Well, learning the "secret" affordances is useful throughout the game, for example; the final level in Case of the Golden Idol asks the player to understand the full story, not just the events of that single level.
• Knowledge is a central resource – in a 'pure' knowledge game, the only resource. So, for example, an immersive sim having a post-it note telling you that the password is 451 does not have the knowledge game nature.

…

I enjoyed Bruno's post about the broad category he describes as "knowledge games" a lot, even if he allows the concepts of "genre" and "mechanic" to remain muddier than I would prefer^[1]. But my biggest takeaway was learning about the term "metroidbrania", which is so ridiculous I find it kind of fascinating. It suggests that "metroidvania" is becoming a term so divorced from any intrinsic semantics that it becomes a purely syntactic signifier.

Some of the games listed as belonging to this purported genre are almost luridly disjoint from anything that is typically implied by the (already broad to the point of near-uselessness) base term "metroidvania". I defy anyone to tell me what Her Story has in common with either Metroid or Castlevania^[2] beyond the fact that it is a video game. Some of the games do involve movement through a virtual space, but that's not the same as the distinctive many-keys-that-fit-many-locks pattern that the term implies.

But the fact that the term is silly isn't as interesting as the way in which its silly. It suggests that injecting a word into "metroidvania" functions as an affix converting it into a term for a genre of video games. It works much the same as adding "-ly" to an adjective to make it an adverb, or to use an example that's much more recent, adding "-gate" to a word to make it indicate a scandal.

As such, I propose that we standardize on this. Let us no longer argue about "roguelike" or "roguelite"; these games are now "looptroidvanias". The dual meaning of puzzle games will haunt us no longer now that we can say with full clarity "metroidbrania" or "tetroidvania". JRPGs are now "statroidganias", platformers are "metroidvaniups", and racing games are "fastroidvanias". Finally, to…

I referred to my trip to the Luis Buñuel film festival as "going to the boonies" one time and now I'm facing an excommunication hearing at the cinema society

the world yearns for novelty buttplugs that make funny noises when you fart. train whistle, duck call, kazoo. I'd do it myself but I lack entrepreneurial verve

what was the original one-button interface? that's right. the humble tummy

when you're young, you think: blowing out is the enemy of candle, so air must be the enemy of fire. but no! it is a lie it is a trick it is a ploy by SECRET LOVERS air and fire. they play their games to make you think it's safe to leave them to their smoldering affair. but beware

you grow up hearing people do stupid, kinda racist impressions of Al Pacino in Scarface. then you finally watch Scarface and it turns out Al Pacino is also doing a stupid, kinda racist impression of himself in Scarface

youtube poops are the modern democratization of experimental film

Anna Holmes posted 17 August 2024 on annabookwriter.medium.com

To My Unmasked Friend in the Fifth Year of COVID

But you didn’t wear a mask.

For whatever reason — you wanted to show off your makeup, it makes you itchy, you believed the messaging that COVID is endemic (what does that actually mean?), you just don’t think about it anymore — you made a choice that actively excludes people like me from participating not only in an event like a convention, but society at large. And yes, it is a choice. Every time you step out into the world without a mask on your face, you have made a decision that your very good reason, whatever it is, supersedes the right of disabled and at-risk people to exist safely in your orbit.

Well, hold on, you say. It’s not any one individual’s fault, it’s the inadequate public health messaging. Isn’t that what you’ve been saying?

And I have. In the past, I have talked about how it is unconscionable that health authorities have thrown their hands up and rescinded guidance that would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives and prolonged a pandemic that, to hear them tell it, has been bested. It hasn’t. Worst of all, the financial motivation that we all know is driving this premature victory lap isn’t even being fulfilled. Long COVID and other post-COVID complications are costing the global economy one trillion a year. Meanwhile, article after article handwrings about nobody wanting to work anymore, about the sagging college application scene, about declines in military enlistment, and the strain on our healthcare systems.

All of this is very much the fault of our leaders, who have decided the political ramifications of “normalcy” are more important than the health and lives of the 400 million people living with long COVID across the globe, the immunocompromised folks who are increasingly being shut out of every conceivable public space, and the disabled community which has been screaming into the wind about our marginalization since before the virus even hit US soil.

But I want to be very clear. You are helping them do this.

…

This hard but important post captures something I've wanted to express for years but have never found the words (or the courage) to say out loud. I try very, very hard to avoid getting outright angry at the people in my life who take no precautions against COVID. I tell myself over and over that their behavior is a product of larger structural forces that shape their understanding of themselves and of reality. This helps. It keeps me sane in an insane world.

And when I talk to people about COVID, I am as non-confrontational as I know how to be. I frame everything in terms of my own safety measures and say nothing about theirs. This keeps me sane as well, because I do not have the energy or the skill or the grace to try to convince everyone I…

Quark DS9: I wonder what the Vortas' favorite food is...
Me: What is humans' favorite food?
Me, a second later: dumpling