Biweekly Bundate 6/15/23
Happy Pride!! Be gay, do crime!! Support your queer brothers and sisters!!
- I wanted to put this out on Friday, but been workin' a bunch, so that didn't happen! Oops!
Binkies (Gags, goofs, other positive notes from the week/fortnight)
- watching Witty go after one of the secret bosses in Deltarune was super cool
- Saw Dropout Live last weekend and it was so much fun. Really glad we went. Also just awesome to hang out with friends again; the three of us that went haven't hung out together in a few months, so it was great hanging all together.
- this was not hosted by Sam Reich, which I mention because the host's opening joke was "My name is [i forgor] or, as the cast calls me, Sam Reich from Wish.com"
- dropping this later than intended and I need to share that I made a puzzle for the players in my Quest game which was hysterical in practice, beyond my wildest dreams. Also, I, unthinking, threw giant stone statues at a character who can turn "any crafted object into dust." Amazing oversight on my part and it was hysterical to watch my players just unmake my combat, an actual joy.
What I've been Playing
- Jeanne d'Arc is outstanding. I had never heard of this game until recently and looking for lists of best PSP games, it kept cropping up and then Mint recommended it, so I decided I needed to check it out. I see why it's popular, this game kicks ass. Falls a little more on the Fire Emblem side of tactics games, but still solid. Also, a magical girl transformation for Jeanne kicks ass.
- added to say that I cannot wait to see all the magical girl transformations in this game since there's one for every character who gets the same style of magic item as Jeanne. There's also clearly a subplot with Roger and demons or something and I'm curious but also like, I just don't care about Roger that much.
- Beat Spryo the Dragon, a solid bit of nostalgia for me. I don't remember what happened, but I think I had gotten to Gnasty Gnorc and for some reason never was able to beat it. Decent chance I'll go back and try to get everything. At the very least, all the dragons.
- will be moving onto Ripto's Rage soon enough.
- Started up Tactics A2, which clearly improves on Tactics Advance, except for speed, which it somehow made EVEN FUCKING SLOWER. Still whips, though.
What I've been Watching
- Finished watching AP Bio. Pretty decent. I wonder if they knew they were going to be canceled or not. Either way, the last episode is pretty good--ends on a warm note despite opening on some contested territory, story-wise, but it sets up that warm ending nicely, imo, which I guess it contentious. Great writers on that show, clearly. Do wish we'd gotten to see Dan and Heather get together, though.
- watched Carol and the End of the World, I thought it was really good. I watched the first episode a while ago, but I was not mentally really in a spot to watch it, I think? Idk, that first episode hit me in a soft spot I didn't know I had and so I didn't touch it for quite some time. Glad I gave it another shot.
- Been watching a lot of Game Changer and Sam Reich is an unhinged madman who should never be stopped.
What I've been Reading
- Started reading Hellboy and *god **damn***, I love Mike Mignola's style. I wanna learn how to do that shit. Gonna start pushing myself, art-wise to experiment a little more.
- "How Trans Comics can save the World" solid article about the importance and value of trans comics which, in some cases, seek to make what was previously sub-text into just text. Give it a read if ya want!
- "Copyright rules, AI drools, and Plagiarism is for Suckers who have no Soul" REALLY good article about copyright and AI. It's very long. Like, longer than an Ed Zitron post, so watch out. It took me a few sessions to get through it, but it's very good. Highly recommend giving it a read.
- Trans Figures You Didn't Hear about in School This was a fun little read from Erin in the Morning, who does work keeping track of anti-trans legislation in the U.S. as well as transgender wins. This made me think of a conference I went to where one of the panels was on queerness in the Early Modern/Medieval period and there were some really cool ones! I think one was The Portentously Queer Life of Death. There was also one about a Spanish trans-man what was really cool. Anywho, we've always been here, we're not going anywhere!
- I've been making my way through a book called The Politics and Poetics of Transgression; it's an old (1986) text, but it seems relevant to my dissertation. Anyways, chapter 3 is concerned with the sewer and has this line, which I think is still hugely relevant: "Smell was organized above all around disgust" (139). Essentially, smells--particularly offensive ones--were a huge part of the formation of the bourgeois identity in 19th century England: the poor smell bad and the bourgeois did not. The big sort of reason that this is lighting up my brain and I wanna share it is it seems particularly relevant to the movie Parasite which I only watched this year (i know, i know) and smell figures heavily near the end of the film. Additionally, Amelia Louks recently published her thesis Olfactory Ethics: The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose, which lit people up, apparently. This debacle even spawned a podcast episode on NPR's It's Been a Minute, which was pretty good. She wrote a brief article which sums up the the ideas present in her thesis.
- I also think there's something to be said about the sort of cultural project they describe in chapter 3, part of which was started by moral purist crusaders, who, shockingly, sound a lot like the ones we have today. They've always been fucking dipshits and very little has changed. Cool.
Other general thoughts, etc.
- thinking a lot about romantic relationships lately. There's a lot to be said there, but it is sort of frustrating how all my friends that I see are in relationships. For a long time it hasn't been an issue for me, but lately, it's hitting different. I'm happy for them, of course, I'm just frustrated at how difficult, damn near impossible tbh, it seems for me. There's a lot to unpack there that belongs in therapy and so there it will stay.
- probably related is the idea of parenthood. Undeniably what I watch is a big part of this: I'm at the end of Scrubs almost and in the last few seasons, there's a lot of talk about growing up and becoming a parent and what that means. And when I was younger, I thought it was really sweet and it still is, but now... again, it just hits different. When I was growing up, I always imagined I'd be a parent. And that stuck with me into being a young adult (an actual young adult, like my early 20s). Without saying too much, it's not something I think about much anymore except in instances like this.
- I'm almost done with my buddy's partner's gift and then I'm moving onto making something for me, which I'm super excited about.
hey, if ya like what I post and you can spare it, you can toss a few buck here. I don't like shaking the change jar, but it's hard out here, y'all.