roaratorio

Especially while it's at 75% off in the sale, making it 62p:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/406150/Refunct/

For anyone who might want to sample some easy platforming with a very very low entry threshold.

Chill and rather lovely environment (okay, probably depends on you liking brutalist architecture, but still -- there's a day-night cycle! there's sunshine! the water is gorgeous! the music is gentle!) with no time pressure and no penalties for failing a jump hundreds of times (except that, at worst, you fall in the water and have to swim about and haul yourself out again).

N.B. Most reviews describe this as a half-hour game, and there are achievements for speedrunning it in under 8 minutes or under 4 minutes.

It took me over five hours of playtime to beat it, which should be indicative of the co-ordination and skill levels I'm working with here. And yet it did not at any point feel stressful or humiliating for me. It felt like a pleasant, relaxing environment in which to fail repeatedly and experiment.

It started at a level low enough that I could manage it, and then had a really satisfying difficulty curve. If I was stalling on the next objective, I could still run and parkour round the environment purely for fun (and sometimes ended up working out how to pick off the optional achievements in the process).

Towards the very end, I started to think that the last jumps might just flat-out exceed the limits of what I am currently capable of, and it felt like if that did happen, I would still be able to walk away pretty happily having already got way more than 62p's worth of enjoyment out of it.

Will absolutely be playing it again.

Tags:

games

selenak

Very entertaining satiric novel set in and about the publishing industry. Our first person narrator, June (white), is a writer with a debut novel which didn't make a splash and won't even, so her agent tells her, get a paperback edition, in stark contrast to her college friend Athena Liu's (American Chinese) work: Athena has three novels already published, just secured a Netflix deal and celebrates that and finishing the first draft of her newest work with June when she dies an accidental death by pancake. June doesn't just dial 911. She also makes off with Athena's manuscript, about which only she knows, edits, rewrites and publishes it. Presto, success, at last! ! But wait! There's no lack of sharp-eyed foes waiting, social media is truly a jungle, and June might be her own worst enemy....
( Very vague spoilers ensue )

The novel has the right kind of length for this story - which is to say, less than 400 pages - so the various buildings up of suspense - will June get away with it being the big, but not the only one - are not drawn out too long, and there's not a gigantic cast of characters. Said characters reminded me of comedy of manners types - very stylized, often types for certain ways of behaviour - fittng the satire format. The only other thing of R. F. Kuang's I'd read before was Poppy War, a fantasy novel of a very different type, so I'm impressed by her range. Otoh, if Poppy War was so grim that I emerged emotionally exhausted and sure I would go through the experience again (while being glad I had done so in the first place), Yellowface felt like a slick writty automaton which you observe once and marvel at its cleverness but don't feel the need to do it again. But I will certainly continue to keep out an eye for this author.

Current Mood: pensive
Current Location: Kampen

Tags:

book review

crantz

A few months ago I was at the coffee shop to finish a rapidly approaching overdue story for a fic exchange and noticed a poster for an upcoming ZineFest in town! A bigger city's comic group wanted to trial balloon something in our much smaller city to see if it could work. It had no url on it! At all! But I photographed the name and used the internet and found their instagram and their email and contacted their email because I had no instagram and got the url to their just made website which changed a week later! Anyway after much trial and error including 2 days of their sign up form not working until I discovered it would on the third browser I tried, I signed up for it!

And then waited a month or so for a response.

I got in!

I made all my zines, made stickers, packed up my Ceramic Objects, made a sign and day of we got there in plenty of time, had no problems at set up (minus needing to borrow some tape from the front desk of the art gallery where it was being held) and it went great!

I actually sold stuff! People wanted to buy my writing and my art! I made back the cost of everything! And I talked to so many people and the only bad part is I am one of those people who has to deliberately make facial expressions and it had been so long since I worked in retail I had forgotten the facial movements for a customer service smile and my brain was relaying to me that the muscle movements I felt weren't 'friendly smile' they were 'death rictus'.

But everyone was very nice, no horror stories at all! And it feels so amazing people wanted creative stuff I'd done, you have no idea!

In other news, the latest 'episode' of the Star Trek game I run finished. It was a Beach Episode with lots of Section 31 bullshittery where the players rolled as horribly as possible at every juncture. It was kind of beautiful. However, they got in some AMAZING character moments they hadn't before I would call the whole thing a massive success. The person I'm running these games for primarily and I are now planning the next episode with some very interesting stuff I have to keep under my hat for now.

The Cthulhu/Catthulhu game is going well. I'm managing good player participation, the modifications of the game are going well, and I decided to do a pretty bold move this session that really deviated from the module but got a clue across to the cats that I could not have had them discover otherwise. They also really liked my latest npcs - Pasta and Devil the hippy and military dogs, and Lucille the mangled but healthy and wellspoken cat who keeps/protects the murderous npc Bogdan.

Previous NPC successes were Wiggle and Squeak, the guinea pigs who thought that now their owner was dead, they were going to inherit the house. They had renovation plans. And Fraulein Hoffman, who to her and everyone else's surprise is not a cat but an opossum and possibly having an affair with Burgocat Hans.

I've been having trouble making Pathfinder comics lately, or even HamsterBandit Industries comics lately. I have a lot of pencils and scripts but actually committing to finishing has been tough. I'll wait for a 3 am manic period I guess.

selenak

( Spoilers do wonder whether they they teach Goethe and Marlowe at MIT. )

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Kampen

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selenak

Aka a 2022 novel set in the Appalachians during the late 1990s and early 2000s with the euphemistically called "Opiod Crisis" very much a main theme, and simultanously a modern adaptation of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. The last Copperfield adaptation I had seen or read was the Iannucci movie starring Dev Patel in the title role which emphasized the humor and vitality of the novel and succeeded splendidly, but had to cut down the darker elements in order to do so, with the breathneck speed of a two hours mvie based on a many hundred pages novel helping with that. Demon Copperhead took the reverse approach; it's all the darkness magnified - helped by the fact this is also a many hundred pages novel - but nearly no humor. Both adaptations emphasize the social injustice of the various systems they're depicting. Both had to do some considerable flashing out when it comes to Dickens's first person narrator. No one has ever argued that David is the most interesting character in David Copperfield. As long as he's still a child, this isn't noticable because David going from coddled and much beloved kid to abused and exploited kid makes for a powerful emotional arc. (BTW, I was fascinated to learn back when I was reading Claire Tomalin's Dickens biography that Dickens was influenced by Jane Eyre in this; Charlotte Bronte's novel convinced him to go for a first person narration - which he hadn't tried before - and the two abused and outraged child narrators who describe what scares and elates them incredibly vividly do have a lot on common.) But once he's an adult, it often feels like he's telling other people's stories (very well, I hasten to add) in which he's only on the periphery, except for his love life. The movie solved this by giving David - who is autobiographically inspired anyway - some more of Dickens`s on life and qualities. Demon Copperhead solves it by a) putting most of the part of the Dickens plot when David is already an adult to when Damon/Demon is still a teenager (he only becomes a legal adult near the end), b) by making Damon as a narrator a whole lot angrier than David, and c) by letting him fall to what is nearly everyone else's problem as well, addiction.

( Spoilers ensue about both novels )

In conclusion: this was a compelling novel but tough to read due to the subject and the unrelenting grimness. I'm not saying you should treat the horrible neglect and exploitation of children and the way a rotten health system allowed half the population to become addicts irreverently, but tone wise, this is more Hard Times than David Copperfield, and sometimes I wished for some breathing space in between the horrors. But I am glad to have read it.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Kampen

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rydra_wong

A whole world of games not playable on Mac has opened up to me, and it's Steam summer sale time!

Please rec me your favourite games, bearing in mind that I have very limited reflexes/co-ordination.

(I'm not completely ruling out games involving them, but the threshold for entry has to be very very low. I am currently enjoying Refunct because it allows me to try some simple platforming in a very chill and pleasant environment with no time pressure and no penalties for taking several hundred tries to get a jump.)

Tags:

games

crantz

Hello! I'm Rosencrantz on Ao3 and thank you for coming to read my letter!

My likes: Adventures, ghosts, casefic, stuff that only works within the canon they come from, smut to gen.
My DNWs: Underage (-18/-18 sexual, -18/+18 anything), noncon or dubcon.

All my requests are for Fanfic.

X-Men: TAS

World of Warcraft

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Hellboy (Comics)

( the letter! )

watersword

Face of sadness & rage: the public library here has had to cut its streaming services, likely in part because of the destruction of the IMLS, which funded a lot of that. This is a fucking travesty.

It's been too hot to bake, so I picked up a loaf of bread and am basking in the season's first tomato sandwiches. Bliss.

One thing I want to do before the end of the summer is borrow the ice cream maker and dehydrator from the Thing Library; my ice cream quest continues (Dutch Chocolate is perfectly fine but not a standout); blueberrying has not been scheduled but I have agreement that it sounds like fun from the people I want to go with. I am up to H.M.S. Surprise in the Aubreyad and enjoying myself thoroughly.

I love summer so much. I feel like a person.

rydra_wong

* SAVE OFTEN, especially in the early game when you may be very fragile and the game's auto-save is infrequent.

BUT -- don't reload from a save unless you actually die or otherwise hit a "game over."

This game is about failing, and it rewards you for playing forwards through failure. Some of the best moments in the game come from failed checks. There are always alternative routes and ways forwards. If you tried to savescum it, you would miss most of the game and all of the point. Embrace failure.

~~Okay there are those two specific checks where failing is so emotionally devastating I would not judge anyone for savescumming. But apart from those.~~

* You can just pick one of the Archetypes for a starter build, and leave messing around with custom character creation until you've seen the stats in action and understand how the system works. Don't stress about it. Or, if you want, you can throw yourself into custom character creation despite not having a clue how it works, and you will also have a fun time. Your initial build and your later choices about what you put points into will radically change your experience of the game, but you can't do it "wrong"; there are no optimal builds which are "better".

* Press tab to highlight objects you can interact with, or activate "detective mode" in the settings to do it automatically. Yes I know this is the sort of thing that is probably obvious to people who have played video games before.

* If your Health or Morale (displayed on the lower left of the screen) fall to zero, you have about 5 seconds to apply a healing item (if you have one) by clicking the cross above that stat.

This is the one timed element in the game, and also the one mechanic that some of us initially have trouble grasping.

With all the other mechanics in the game, you can not only learn them by flinging yourself in and floundering about, this is IMHO the best and most enjoyable way to learn them. No idea what the Thought Cabinet is or what Internalizing A Thought means? Try it and find out!

* Perhaps the most important tip of all:

If you feel you are flailing around and failing on most of the checks you try and you've just been informed you have acquired a Thought you can internalize in your Thought Cabinet and you have no clue what that means or maybe you just had a heart attack and died before you even got out of your hotel room or you had a nervous breakdown because a child insulted you and you have no idea what you're doing and it's been three days and you still haven't got the body down from the tree --

THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE PLAYING THE GAME "BADLY". THIS IS IN FACT THE UNIVERSAL DISCO ELYSIUM EXPERIENCE AND MEANS YOU ARE PLAYING THE GAME CORRECTLY. WELL DONE.

Tags:

selenak

Aka the series which was delayed for years, with the result that there is much preemptive sceptism. Having watched the first three episodes which got dropped a few days ago, I very much like what I'm seeing so far. The way the series provides a distinct feeling of a place and people reminds me of what the show Ms Marvel did with the Pakistani community in New Jersey - in this case, Riri Williams comes from the Chicago South Side, as does the director, google tells me, and that's where she returns to in the series' pilot.

( Spoilers could make an Iron Suit in a cave, but would need the cash to be brought to the cave first )

Current Mood: pensive
Current Location: Sylt

Tags:

crantz

I can't start making my big planned fry up breakfast for another hour (long story, not needed here) and I'm just staring at the clock while visions of tiny potatoes, fancy cheese, and eggs dance through my head.

I also keep thinking 'maybe I should go eat some ravioli' before realizing that would ruin that entire fry up's ability to be eaten. ALAS.

My mom's off participating in a dragon boat race in another province and we only just realized she was in such a hurry she forgot to leave us the streaming link so we could watch her race! I'm going to just sit here and hope she wins or places.

She isn't hugely competitive (neither am I) which came in really useful the other day when we went to a jigsaw puzzle contest as a team of two and all (but another parent/kid team) of the other teams were four people who led to us finding out there's speed puzzle clubs in town.

We placed dead last but we had a good time, beer, and nachos. I'm not a big puzzle person but I don't dislike them and I found it really soothing. Lot of convo about her (passed away) parents who loved puzzles so that was warm and fuzzy.

So my maternal grandparents loved puzzles. And I wanted to give them a gift to their interests! So I asked them what their favourite ones to put together were. And they said 'boats, water, lots of pieces'

Brilliant, I thought. My favourite art piece of the moment includes all those elements and so I got them a 1000 piece puzzle of The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa

My grandpa, upon opening it Christmas morning, looked up at me and said in the saddest voice: "I thought you loved us"

One of my favourite gift mistake stories, anyway! They appreciated me trying my best.

Man, I miss when they were both alive and well and they'd be staying over for a week and I'd make sure to get up at 6 am so I could sit at the kitchen table, drink coffee and watch their solitaire strategies. Grandma always had some insane anecdote and Grandpa was always very chill and serene.

rydra_wong

Disco Elysium is currently 90% off in the Steam summer sale, making it a mere £3.49.

Play Disco Elysium, everybody. Yes, even if you don't play video games.

(It was the first video game I ever played -- apart from having once(?) played Pac Man as a child, many many decades ago -- and it was a perfect choice.)

If you understand the principle of a Choose Your Own Adventure book, have a vague sense that "stats" and "levelling up" are things, and can grasp "click to go to a place/interact with an object," you are sufficiently equipped.

ETA: Okay, I will add in

astrogirl's excellent content warning:

It's definitely not for everybody. I mean, for one thing, it gets pretty much all the trigger warnings for everything. Alcoholism and substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, discussions of sexual assault, gore (not visual, but some of the descriptions are very vivid), you name it. A number of characters are giant racists. (Towards fictional races/ethnicities, mind you, but it's still ugly.) Evil children will hurl homophobic slurs at you. That sort of thing. And whatever your politics, the game will try very hard to make you feel uncomfortable about them.

Tags:

games

watersword

Very pleased at how fast my ankle's been healing; it barely hurts at all except when I flex my toes, and I assume that will get better next week. Ice and rest doing their job as advertised! The knee is — I don't want to say getting worse, that's not true, but as the scab gets thicker and more attached to the skin, it feels more uncomfortable to move my knee through flexion/extension, and that is not fun. Botheration.

I have a dark feeling I should get PT after this; I can feel my gait getting fucked up by having both legs injured in different ways. A new adulting experience, and I already do not like it because it will involve insurance. Maybe I'll call the EAP and make them give me a to-do list or something.

While lying in bed and icing my ankle, I have re-read Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy and Fledgling; I know we've talked about it before, but wow it gets more and more noticeable how she just doesn't think of queerness as related to desire. The stuff she's interested in about gender and sexuality forces her to acknowledge the existence of same-sex sexual interactions, but nothing about them is ever anyone's first choice or pleasurable except in the ways her worldbuilding allows her to impose on the characters.

I am idly fantasizing about a shopping app that lets me:

manually add items from a variety of independent vendors (i.e., not Amazon);
once a month (or whatever time period I set), checks if any of the items on the list are on sale;
if it finds an item on sale, it stops going through the list and purchases that item, removing it from the list;
if nothing is on sale, it picks a random item from the list, purchases it, and removes it from the list;
repeat next month.

Note: steps 2-5 do not involve me making decisions or receiving alerts.

Things to Get Me [referral link] is perfect at #1. Google Shopping kind of does #2 but only kind of. The rest of it, I'm fairly sure it doesn't exist and I understand why, I can easily see where this could go very wrong, but I want it for myself and I'm mad that either I gotta build it (no) or outsource to a human. Further botheration.

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December 2018

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Page generated Jul. 11th, 2025 01:14 pm

Reading

Finished Refunct over the weekend and genuinely cannot rec too highly

R.F. Kuang: Yellowface (Book Review)

I need to put this feeling into a drug and huff it

Ironheart Episodes 4 - 6:

Barbara Kingsolver: Demon Copperhead (Book Review)

I am now the proud owner of a secondhand Steam deck! Rec me games!

Dear Rare Male Slash Writer

(no subject)

For anyone I've successfully lured: my top Disco Elysium tips

Ironheart (TV Series) Episodes 1 - 3

Hup hup hup

PSA

idle contemplations

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December 2018

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