It’s Monday Again: Tuesday Edition

A girl leans her legs up against a wall and smokes.

It might not be Monday now, but that’s not a problem.

The beginning of the year, also known as last week, was fairly auspicious in that I wrote not one but two pieces on the blog. I hope to maintain that kind of entropy for the rest of the year but much like my desire to cut out junk food, I doubt it will happen.

My summation of 2014 (with appropriately vague title) really should have included relevant links to my own work, as that seems to be the standard fashion but I ended up not caring much about re-directing people to pieces I was proud of, just yet. I might need to marinate on that a little more. I did do some good writing last year, but it’s hard to feel like you’ve really accomplished much as a mostly amateur writer. It was a lot more fun to highlight the best of some of my friends’ and peers’ work, as well as try to encapsulate just how last year was to both myself and to games at large (okay and awful, respectively.)

The second piece I did was a personal, poetic unraveling relating to my feelings about The Uncle Who Works for Nintendo. I’ve come back to that game a few times, poking and prodding about why it was so good but I finally sat down and hammered that post out in one go, feeling satisfied that I held something important in my hands for at least a moment. I am still shocked that Michael Lutz managed to capture something important to me, even if a lot of it I brought to the game myself. Having a game at least provide that kind of petri dish for emotional culture growth is rare.

I also read a really awesome article about Shadow of Mordor (prompting me to pick up the game, finally) by my partner-in-crime Tzufit. She talks about accessing a relatable power dynamic that’s different than other games, like Bayonetta 2, as well as what it is like to play a woman, who for all intents and purposes, is treated like a man. I can’t help but agree with Tzufit’s desires to engage with a power fantasy that is not related to sexuality, as that is sometimes off-putting in games for me as well.

Last but not least, last week was our Justies/GOTY episode on Justice Points, and I suspect you’ll want to check it out. We didn’t go into it looking for consensus and I think the show is much more entertaining and amusing for it. You be the judge.

 

 

 

 

It’s Monday Again: Attention and Fantasies

A sketch of a woman sitting alone at a bar.

I did a lot of stuff last week so I decided to once again shamelessly steal an idea from Leigh Alexander and update you on all of the places I was doing things around the Internet.

Last week’s episode of Justice Points featured Lulu, otherwise known as BlueSweatshirt, talking about her indie witch simulator  Fantastic Witch Collective. We asked her a lot of questions about the gay witch aesthetic, as well as poked at issues of diversity, decorum in e-sports as well as Far Cry 4. It was a lot of fun.

I have had a lot of issues lately sleeping and so I’m often up very early in the morning and that is a good time to play video games without being interrupted. One such morning saw me playing Borderlands and I had a very odd experience with killing a skag. Goes to show though, how little I know about the mechanics of some of my favorite games and instead choose to barrel into fights without any outside knowledge about how it should work. Still, it was weird feeling that emotional about a fictional animal that would tear my face off.

A lot of interesting digging has been going on about The Hashtag That Shan’t Be Named lately, specifically in a sociological vein. I read A Man in Black’s Storify about their perceptions of Goobergate from the perspective of how 4Chan culture operates and felt inspired to go on a tweet rant  about the larger forces at work that inform said culture. This also lead to an interesting tangent about why I hate the phrase “attention whore,” because Goobers seem to be using terrorist tactics towards any woman who dares to be successful. You can read the Storify on all of this here. Thanks for WarrenIsDead for collating all of it.

Finally, my first published piece of game writing went up over at Paste Games! It is my thoughts on the intersection of how millennials have been living and why so many of us love life sims for this reason, including the newly popular Fantasy Life. I was really excited that Paste picked up my pitch and it is a subject that I consider pretty close to my heart as someone who’s had to move around and live fairly austerely; gaming has been a huge savior in my life even when I have fallen on hard times.

If you like this feature, let me know in the comments section!