dejadrew

 I saw Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse yesterday and IMMEDIATELY came home and started writing fanfic for it? Which is... New. I've never actually finished or published fanfic. For some reason I find it scarier than original fiction. A lot of people find original fiction more intimidating because you have to do everything, you don't have any pre-made toys or tools to play with. Which, I can sort of see that. But for me, I think fanfic has always been scarier because since it's not mine, that means I could get it WRONG. It's impossible to get canon WRONG when it's your own canon. 

... But I really REALLY wanted a particular epilogue scene that is not in this movie and there's one version of it on Ao3 already thank goodness but I had already been thinking about what I wanted to happen all night and it wasn't QUITE right and WAIT WHERE THE HELL DID THIS FIFTEEN HUNDRED WORDS WORTH OF SPIDER-FICTION IN MY WORD PROCESSOR COME FROM oh shit now I have to do something with it don't I...

Also it's a really REALLY good movie and you should go see it even if there's apparently a heightened risk that fanfic might happen. 

Good goddamn, I made a game. Well, a game-like interactive object.

MIND FULL NESS, a game about cryptids and meditation apps.

Created for the 2018 Extra Credits Holiday Game Jam. I've wanted to try to make something interactive for years, and now I finally have, such as it is. It's little and weird and makes very little sense but things happen when you click it and it does not appear to set any computers on fire!

 I started reading different tabletop RP games for a variety of reasons. Partly because of the recent news that the Nebula awards are adding a game writing category. Partly because my MMO guild started incorporating roll 20 into some RP events and it was driving me a little nuts and I wanted to see if there were other systems that would work better. 

Now I'm FASCINATED. There are games that look like nothing I expected tabletop RPGs to look like. In particular I've gotten myself obsessed and hyperfixated on Bluebeard's Bride. It's a horror game based on the Bluebeard's Bride fairy tale, and all the players, instead of playing separate individuals, are all playing one character, the Bride, with each player acting as one aspect of the bride's personality. 

The writing is... it's hard to explain this, and I've been mulling over how to articulate it properly, because what the game does is very strange and kind of amazing. 

A lot of games, and other media, are accidentally misogynist. They make unconscious assumptions about what women are, what they can and can't do. 

This is a FEMINIST horror game that is misogynist ON PURPOSE because it is a game about the horrors of misogyny. 

The rules, the descriptions, the playable character types, the way they are written all deliberately echoes sexist messages society sends about the role of women. You cannot simply leave your husband's manor house because the Bride "knows that a wife's place is in the home." The Animus player character has an ability she can use that is literally victim blaming: she can tell another player that the bad things that happened to her are her own fault, and if the other player agrees and accepts the blame that player will be healed, but if she does not then the Animus will take damage because she blames herself for not setting a good enough example. Trying to fight back physically is called "Dirtying Yourself with Violence," and such unladylike activities always come with a cost. 

And ultimately? You can't WIN Bluebeard's Bride. You can't BEAT the game. It's not about that. This is a horror game about being trapped and helpless. The players are, ultimately, ALSO trapped and helpless. The Bride will be punished no matter what she tries to do. The game is about exploring the story and finding out WHICH bad ending you're going to get. 

I imagine this could potentially be an intensely frustrating experience for some players who are used to trying to win, to fight, to beat the dragon and get loot and rewards. The Bride is never going to get gold or a cool sword. She's either going to be a good wife to a bad man or a bad wife to a bad man and both options come with terrible consequences and it sucks. 

I would LOVE to DM this dangit but I don't know nearly enough people who actually play games period, let alone creepy indie horror games with no victory conditions. 

Anybody know any other cool weird games I should be reading up on?

 AaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAaAaAaaAAAaaaAAAAAaaaaAAAaaaaaaaaaahhhhh

"Please not Atlas Shrugged, PLEASE not Atlas Shrugged, OH THANK GOD."

 Ryan North: *makes a joke for the REMARKABLY small niche marke of "webcomics nerds of the emoji generation who are fans of 1970s maritime Canadian folk music"*

I just REALLY annoyed myself by putting off or forgetting for WEEKS a task that just took me literally five minutes. My brain is in need of several stern talking-to's and also possibly better meds. 

There are several other tasks like that sitting there looming glumly at me which I suspect could also be tackled with similar speed if I can just kick myself in the head enough to start ROLLING. One of those tasks is blogging. For someone who likes to write and sometimes can even get paid to do it, I am deep down convinced that I am very boring. 

To heck and darn with it I say, all right, let's experiment with smacking a few birds with one stone today. Today, I shall CLEAN. Which is boring. Intensely boring. No one wants to read about cleaning. I don't want to live the act of cleaning firsthand, why the hell would anyone want to do it vicariously? WELL TOO BAD because if anyone is reading this you are ABOUT to live through this vicariously. I am going to LIVEBLOG CLEANING MY DAMN ROOM in the hopes that it A: gets clean, and B: I can feel less guilty about how neglected my so called social media "presence" is. 

It's also a useful psychological exercise for me, DELIBERATELY writing/doing something that I already know will be weird/dumb/boring/flawed. It always has been, and I highly recommend it as a trick. When I was sketching as a teenager, I used to fret intensely that my sketches from life didn't look "realistic" or exactly like their subjects. 

So what did I do? I started sketching with coloured pencils and markers, and deliberately using "wrong" colours.

I would sketch people in purple and green and shade with orange. I would draw trees with hot pink. And now I didn't have to WORRY about being "unrealistic" or "getting it wrong", because I knew from the start it was already wrong, so I could relax. The pressure was off. And consequently, my sketching skills improved immensely. 

When I had to tell stories in front of a crowd and was worried about "embarrassing myself" or "looking silly?" I put on a silly hat. 

Now I don't have to WONDER if I look silly! I KNOW I look silly! It's too late! Might as well get on with it and stop worrying!

So I am about to go on tumblr (seems better for this kind of task, also more followers to hold me accountable) and liveblog the most boring unpleasant mind numbing task ever invented. And I WILL bore and annoy people! Including myself! AND I'LL DO IT ANYWAY!

Back in Canada, for a rather different New Year's than last year. I was up all night going to an ex-pat New Year's Party hosted by my guest house company last time, watching the big Tokyo TV special with all the J-pop stars and then walking off to visit a shrine to ask for blessings (GAWD I wish those photos had turned out. There was a dude who brought his new kitten to the shrine for blessings. KITTEN! KITTYKITTYKITTY!) followed by a trip to the top of a nearby skyscraper/mall's observation deck to watch the first sunrise of the new year.

This year, I went back to an older tradition, which SOUNDS less cool, but I kinda missed it. I forget how or when it started, but one year I was feeling gloomy/pensive so I slunk out of the house to do the countdown outside in the cold under the stars. And... I kind of liked it out there. Looking up at the moon, the big dipper, Orion, listening to the sound of all my neighbour's parties drifting out into the stillness, hearing the stillness occasionally broken by a tipsy reveller stumbling on to a porch somewhere and shouting a New Year greeting across the lake, shouting it back for the heck of it....

It's been my personal tradition ever since, which kinda puzzles my parents, I think. But it's just kinda nice to meet the New Year one on one.

2013 seems nice. Kinda cold and quiet at first, but they all are. Really pretty, though. I hope we get along.

*Sigh*

Why is it, lately, tech support people keep telling me to do things I've already done?

I've been having a string of bad computer luck, lately, so I've been spending a lot of time going back and forth on e-mails with various tech support people and forums. And I am an OLD PRO at talking to tech support, now, I can call tech support like a BOSS, I have the lines down, I know what questions they're going to ask me, so I pre-empt wherever I can. But sometimes it doesn't WORK.

"Hi! (statement of problem) I have already rebooted, powercycled my modem and router, done a virus and malware scan, followed this this and this procedure laid out by your website, done that finicky little thing in cmd that somebody asked me to do the last time I wrote in with a similar kind of issue, and tried this solution suggested by teh googles. What should I try next?"

"Have you tried powercycling your modem?"

"...Yes. Yes I have."

"Try doing a virus scan."

"...Please redirect my ticket to someone who can read."

(*sigh*) I've never actually said that (though oooooh, I came close on that second last ticket to blizzard). I know tech support is a thankless yucky task and the vast vast majority of computer problems ARE solved by things like "turning it on and off." But, but, it's RIGHT THERE! In the original post! If they'd just read it through, it would save both of us time, frustration, and wasted effort!

*siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh*

Back to another round of e-mails and support forums...