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I imagine most of the gamers who follow this journal have already seen itch.io's Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, but just in case anyone hasn't, it's pretty cool. For a donation of $5 or higher (the default is set to $10, but you can adjust it in either direction), they'll give you DRM-free access to over a thousand games, resource kits, and tabletop rpgs. The campaign still has three days to go, and so far, they've raised more than five million dollars.

Games and other items that particularly caught my eye include:

• Night in the Woods, which I've seen highly recommended (Windows, Mac, & Linux)
• Celeste, which I will definitely never play, but really enjoyed a Let's Play of (Windows, Mac, & Linux)
• Signs of the Sojourner, the Kickstarter demo of which I enjoyed and recced previously (Mac & Windows)
• Dungeons & Lesbians, an adorably named dating sim (Windows, Mac, & Linux)
• Lingotopia, a game where you learn a language of your choice while exploring a city (Windows, Mac, & Linux)
• Desktop Goose, literally a goose that hangs out on your desktop (Windows & Mac)
• A couple of Spanish language Twine games, El Interrogatorio and especially No cortarás a tu hermana con el filo de esta espada (browser)
• Oxenfree, another game I've heard very well spoken of (Windows, Mac, Linux)
• Quench, a truly adorable looking game about guiding animals through a landscape (tragically Windows only!)
• Dungeon Tileset 2.0, which is adorable pixel art tiles for dungeon maps
• TTRPG Design Lenses, a set of cards to help designers evaluate different aspects of their games
• Hero Too, a "single player journaling game" about a teenage trans superhero you create
• The Bonds That Tie Us, a GMless TTRPG about relationships
• The D1 RPG, which I imagine is what it says on the tin
• and Rosette Diceless, a GMless game system that "focuses on collaborative storytelling and consent-based conflict resolution".

And of course, if you just want to give, there are links for that as well:

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
Community bail funds
Other ways to donate and help

Hello, Dreamwidth. I seem to be having trouble keeping up with you lately. Everything is more or less fine in my own tiny corner of the world, there's no emergency that's been keeping me away, it's just... really sad knowing how much isn't fine, and isn't going to be fine any time soon.

But have some Wednesday things.

READ

( Three painfully good DA:I fics, emphasis on "painful". )

I also enjoyed the Witcher longfic Meet Death Sitting by bomberqueen17, as well as some of its sequels. It takes place after the Netflix series, I think? It's got the tiredest, most resignedly altruistic Jaskier, and eventually some Jaskier/Geralt, and a really lovely brave Ciri, and also a sequel where Yennefer sort of dubcons Jaskier (just, not in a way he seems to greatly mind?) into letting her peg him and it's incredibly hot. It's so hard waiting to read the installments that are still in progress! But I've been brave so far!

Also, this ficlet about Finch and Reese and a pomeranian puppy by argylepiratewd for sholio's Happy Distracting Comment Fest is incredibly adorable, with spot on character voice, and I love it. ♥

PLAYED

Mostly Stardew Valley these past couple of weeks!  My astonishingly gullible vestibular system apparently finds the charming pixel art so convincing that it gives me motion sickness if I spend too much time walking around in the game, but I get really invested in these fetch quests, so I do my best.

It's funny, because when I first picked up this game a couple of years ago I had no opinion on any of the love interests, and that's still nearly true -- but somehow since coming back to it this month, I've grown wistful about Robin and Demetrius not being romanceable in a polyamorous fashion.  This is so completely on brand for me.

WATCHED

The Expanse through the entire first season! I really wasn't sure I was going to like it after the first episode, given ( spoilers ). But I actually ended up really glad we kept watching it! There's actual plot that actually kind of holds together, the space politics and environments are pretty interesting, and most importantly, there's a character who makes my id extremely happy.

( Amos-centric spoilers. )

( Other spoilery comments. )

I wouldn't recommend this show without qualifications -- it's fairly heavy on white dudes, and it's got some mild to moderate sexism going on, in that it's got some genuinely interesting female characters, but the narrative can get kind of weird about them. There are also several applicable content warnings: lots of violence, death, and despair, a scene with some really gross attitudes about sex workers, and a fair bit of body horror. But I've ended up enjoying it, and I'm looking forward to watching more!

Sym-Bionic Titan through episode 1x10, "Lessons in Love". Animal harm warnings for "Tashy 497", but this show really seems to have hit its stride. Octus is so adorable? A teenage girl got to have emotional complexity? I really enjoy things so much more when they aren't just all fight sequences all the time!

READ

Many fanfics, as usual! Favorites include:

The Man in the (Summer Weight) Suit by st_aurafina, an exquisite time travel fix-it for Person of Interest. I want to say more about it, but I don't know how to to do it justice without spoiling it. It's really good. 4k.

Pinioned by AbigailMoment, a painful (and at times grisly) but also deeply endearing Good Omens fic in which Crowley does much to protect Aziraphale. ~6k.

New Lands for the Living by DramaticEntrance is another wonderful time travel fix-it, this one for Star Wars, and with a more convincing Poe/Luke romance than I could have imagined. There's loneliness, but also teamwork, friendship, love, and even hope. 50k.

Taste of Freedom, also by DramaticEntrance, is a lovely Leverage AU in which Parker tries to rob Eliot, but finds his bare apartment so distressing that she starts bringing him stuff instead. 10k.

like nails in my feet by Riona a Silent Hill 2 fic, which probably functions as a complete warning if you know that game. If you don't... ( have some content notes? ) Riona excels at psychological horror, and this is no exception. 1k.

suddenly becoming one you have never read by susiecarter is for a pairing I'd never heard of -- GQ/Croc from Suicide Squad -- but it's also amnesia fic, so I guess that worked out okay! It's... emotional hurt/comfort while one party is severely injured and hiding in a sewer? But like, in a warm and fuzzy way! ~3k.

I also read and enjoyed several original short stories recced by forestofglory.  My favorite was Give the Family My Love by A T Greenblatt (also available as a podfic!) which is about a perilous trek to an alien library while the Earth may be dying, and about relationships, and about hope. 5k, or 42 minutes in audio form.

PLAYED

Become Nothing by AbigailMoment, enthusiastically recommended here.

WATCHED

Brooklyn Nine-Nine through episode 7x05, "Debbie", but honestly, the only thing I have to say is about "The Jimmy Jab Games II, and that is ( a minor spoiler ).

( Doctor Who through episode 12x10, "The Timeless Children". )

In addition to my assignment fic, I wrote one treat this Chocolate Box, for amovingtarget.

I didn't mean to -- I was hoping to write at least one treat this time around, but I thought if I managed it, it would at least be for a fandom I'm in. Except then I was skimming her prompts and vaguely regretting I couldn't write for any of them, and suddenly I couldn't sleep for the opening paragraphs assembling themselves in my head.

For the record, I have never played Dishonored myself, but I have watched cut scenes from all the games, entirely due to amovingtarget's influence. And Billie was always a favorite of mine, and the series does end on an intriguing note, and, well...

Title: the dream of a waking man
Fandom: Dishonored
Characters: Billie Lurk & the Outsider
Rating: Teen
Contains: Bone-weariness, fragile hope, and series spoilers all the way through DotO.
Word count: 676
Summary: "Old habits," Billie said, "go down fighting."

( He looked like a body pulled from the river, pale and soft-skinned from time underwater. )

READ

( Three fics under 15k. )

Hockey RPF: To Be Seen Aright by Deastar, which is 110k of glorious Sid/Geno BDSM AU dealing with a ton of internalized and original flavor domism -- including about a million microaggressions against subs as well as some really bad scenes -- on its way to happily ever after for its endgame OTP. I almost wasn't sure I could rec this in a public post, because it's locked to the AO3 and what if mentioning it was violating privacy somehow? But the author has linked to it on an unlocked tumblr, so I think mentioning it is okay. Which is good to know! I really love it!

In a more nonfiction vein, I found this post about tumblr undermining communities really intriguing. The lack of moderation for common spaces is definitely a big problem there, and ( I was also really struck by... ) Content note: the post is discussing these things in the context of asexual and aromantic communities, and contains links to other posts discussing some pretty heavy stuff relating to anti-ace prejudice.

Thanks to stunt_muppet, I've also enjoyed this three-part review of Pathologic, a truly fascinating game I am glad I will probably never play!

PLAYED

Alter-Ego, a weird life simulator from the 1980s I played once or twice as a kid (not in the 80s) and whose existence I was reminded of by this satisfyingly uncomplimentary review, so then of course I had to play it again.

( It's such a creepy game... )

Eyes of Tree by ursula, which is a beautifully written Twine game about someone trapped in service to the Lady under the Hill in a time when said Lady's court receives news of the Americas. Content note for allusions to historical slavery and genocide.

( Spoilery discussion. )

This is the kind of thing people post on Wednesdays, right? I guess if nothing else, now I post this kind of thing on Wednesdays!

READ

Some really excellent Dorian/Iron Bull fic by tofsla.  I think The Four Flowers" might be my favorite so far -- a gorgeous story, loosely inspired by Tam Lin, where they meet under very different and rather mythic circumstances.  Everything of theirs I've tried so far was pretty amazing, though.  They focus on exactly what I -- a person who has never played DA:I, to be clear! -- love about this pairing:  that romance and long term relationships are new and tender possibilities for them, and they're as careful with each other as they know how to be.

violsva's distinctively named ficlet Fresh Pict, which is a delicious morsel of endearing Bucky/Clint AU.

An amazing innuendo-laden bredlik-style poem about the Hugo Award mess!

Some great Worldcon panel write-ups by schneefink.

An assortment of articles about ( terrible things. )

And a few other articles about good things, ( albeit in the context of mitigating bad things. )

GAMED

OMG, the demo for Signs of the Sojourner (crowdfunding link!) is so cool!  I honestly don't play many games at all, and I think this is my first ever deck-builder, but I the mechanics are so clever, and the art is just gorgeous!  I couldn't possibly summarize it better than this review by IF legend Emily Short, but if it looks like your kind of thing, it's really worth trying!

( One more note about that... )

I've also been playing Lily's Garden (which I also learned about from Short's blog!) when my brain needs a break from things, and I really enjoy getting to design my virtual garden and beating the fiendish tile matching levels, but some of the story is kind of alarming -- ( spoiler ).  But hey, it's weirdly soothing when I'm not fretting about the main character's life choices.

Last but certainly not least, I've been enjoying a bunch of casual-level StarCraft II co-op with amovingtarget, mostly playing as the basic Terran character to her Protoss, but one time we each played random characters, and I got these amazing Protoss assassins!  I wouldn't mind having that one again!

WATCHED

Some more Doctor Who, with breaks when we couldn't all spare time for 45 minutes of television.  But we've made it up to ( very mild spoilers )

And some vegan recipe videos amovingtarget keeps throwing my way, most notably for chia seed pudding.  I make mine way sweeter and just add chocolate, but oh my gosh, it's so good?

The Uncle Who Works for Nintendo by Michael Lutz, who in discussing the game creation process gave a beautiful summary both of why I love it so much and why horror fans might love it less:

Assuming I've done my job correctly, what I've made is a horror game that, if it is in the least bit scary when you first play it, manages to get less frightening each subsequent time.

It's thoughtful, humane, and -- depending on the endings you collect -- hopeful. Plus it provides thorough content notes before the start of play, which I always appreciate.

( a few more thoughts, mild to moderate spoilers )