Hello, Eric! How Are You Doing? My Inquiry Is...

You Can Now Play the First LGBTQ Computer Game, For the First Time

‘Caper in the Castro’ was thought to be long lost.

Caper in the Castro is a legendary video game, not because legions of die-hard fans continue to play it, but because it was thought to be lost forever. Now, what is largely considered to be the first LGBTQ-focused video game (it was released in 1989) is on the Internet Archive for anybody to play.

The game is a noir point-and-click that puts the player in the (gum)shoes of a private detective named Tracker McDyke who is, in case you couldn’t guess by the name, a lesbian. McDyke must unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of Tessy LaFemme, a transgender woman, in San Francisco’s Castro district, an historically gay neighbourhood.

OOOOOHhh!

The game was released as charityware – freely, with a strong request to give a donation an AIDS Charity of their choice. I’d like to push towards still following that and donating, if you’re able.

(And you might also want to donate to the Internet Archive, who is hosting it now, while you’re at it – they’re in the middle of a donation drive, and could use your support.)

*Waves in greeting from across the Internet*

(Don't know if you've gotten questions like this before but wanted to see what you'd think, considering how much you seem to like Shadow.)

Q: Concerning Shadow's title of Ultimate Life Form, do you think that it is something empowering he should wear with pride, or a curse/burden to be freed of which, among other things, shackles him to horrific and unrealistic expectations?

I feel like this question is kinda like a litmus test for why a person may like Shadow.

Personally, I think there's nuance to be found here. To me, Shadow feels both those ways about being "The Ultimate Lifeform," but how he feels about it bounces between one or the other depending on his mood. He is The Ultimate Lifeform, a being of great power that demands respect when he's trying to intimidate someone or achieving his goals -- Goals only he is capable of achieving, with what he is and all that. Obviously. He's the Ultimate Lifeform, so of course he should be the one to step in and solve the problem. He was designed to be an unstoppable force...

... So when he fails, he has to mentally come to grips with that failure in a way that, I feel, is more difficult for him than, say, if Sonic fails. Sonic is natural. His failures are natural. Shadow is unnatural. His failures. Are. Unnatural. They are not meant to happen. It's arrogance until it's not. His status is just as much a rope he holds to climb a mountain as it is a noose around his neck. A source of confidence, and Gerald Robotnik's judgemental gaze.

He's proud. He's an achiever. He's a pillar of strength. Until he slips.

So, how he (may) feel is how I feel. Depending on his mood, Shadow's Ultimate Lifeform title is both a boon to him and a great and terrible weight. He draws strength and self-loathing from it in equal amounts. That's simply how I interpret it, anyway.

This is my favorite ever description of Tolkien.

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. 

Today we remember the more than 11 million people, Jewish and Gentile, who were slaughtered in the death camps, who succumbed to disease and the elements in concentration camps, who were sterilized to prevent the “dilution” of the “Aryan race,” who were worked to death, or nearly, in the works camps, who were imprisoned for their political or religious beliefs, who were sterilized or killed for being considered disabled, who were gassed to death in the Einsatzgruppen mobile gas chambers, who were shot into graves they had been forced the dig, and those who managed to survive all of that and were forced to remember the horrors they had seen and experienced.

May they rest in peace, may their memory be a blessing, may peace be upon them, and may we all say Never Again.

oh my god guys i'm actually really writing the time travel au i could cry. i finished the draft of chapter one i started writing back in 2020. never give up on your dreams.

On this day, 11 August 1964, 18-year-old Scottish anarchist Stuart Christie was arrested in Madrid while carrying explosives to blow up Spain’s right-wing dictator general Francisco Franco. Christie was working with the underground anarchist resistance to the regime, which began after Franco’s victory in the Spanish civil war in 1939. However, unbeknownst to Christie at the time, the resistance group had been infiltrated and its plan betrayed. When Christie went to an American Express office in Madrid, he noticed a member of staff alerting undercover police, and promptly left. He later recounted to the Guardian newspaper: “I felt curiously detached as I took a deep breath and walked out of the office, trying to keep my face expressionless. Mustering all the confidence I could, I paused at the doorway to look at the group of five men now standing to one side of the entrance. Until I appeared at the doorway they had been deep in conversation. They stopped briefly, exchanging knowing looks with one another, and carried on. An empty taxi pulled in to the pavement beside me. But when the driver appeared to invite me to get in, I knew it was an undercover police car. I was being hemmed in. By this time I had reached the corner of the busy calle Cedaceros. As I steeled myself to make a dash through the crowds I was suddenly grabbed by both arms from behind, my face pushed to the wall and a gun barrel thrust into the small of my back. I tried to turn my head but I was handcuffed before I fully realised what had happened. It was all over in a matter of moments.” When arrested Christie was wearing a kilt, which confused the Spanish press in to describing him as “a Scottish transvestite.” He was sentenced to 20 years in prison but after an international campaign in his support he was released in 1968. Christie remained active supporting and helping record the history of the Spanish resistance movement until the end of his life in August 2020. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1781778678673941/?type=3

there is something so crazy and powerful about having art of your oc that was made by anyone other than yourself. like oh my god you actually exist outside of my own brain that's WILD

twerking to the wolf hall theme

A lot of fiction these days reads as if—as I saw Peter Raleigh put it the other day, and as I’ve discussed it before—the author is trying to describe a video playing in their mind. Often there is little or no interiority. Scenes play out in “real time” without summary. First-person POV stories describe things the character can’t see, but a distant camera could. There’s an overemphasis on characters’ outfits and facial expressions, including my personal pet peeve: the “reaction shot round-up” in which we get a description of every character’s reaction to something as if a camera was cutting between sitcom actors.

When I talk with other creative writing professors, we all seem to agree that interiority is disappearing. Even in first-person POV stories, younger writers often skip describing their character’s hopes, dreams, fears, thoughts, memories, or reactions. This trend is hardly limited to young writers though. I was speaking to an editor yesterday who agreed interiority has largely vanished from commercial fiction, and I think you increasingly notice its absence even in works shelved as “literary fiction.” When interiority does appear on the page, it is often brief and redundant with the dialogue and action. All of this is a great shame. Interiority is perhaps the prime example of an advantage prose as a medium holds over other artforms.

fascinated by this article, "Turning Off the TV in Your Mind," about the influences of visual narratives on writing prose narratives. i def notice the two things i excerpted above in fanfic, which i guess makes even more sense as most of the fic i read is for tv and film. i will also be thinking about its discussion of time in prose - i think that's something i often struggle with and i will try to be more conscious of the differences between screen and page next time i'm writing.

fuck it i'm sharing gundam super omega from a comic i never plan to finish lmao