commonplace book

links are disappearing from the internet all the fucking time.

whenever i have to search more than two minutes to find something i'm pasting it into DW & linking it in this entry.

links are presented without comment, beyond "it was something interesting enough i felt like digging it up again."

gone home by anna anthropy
i didn't dream of dragons
impertinence on trigger warnings
on losing faith

"gone home" by anna anthropy

part of my commonplace book project; should not show up on your reading page

from Anna's now-defunct blog, retrieved via http://web.archive.org/web/20160403054349/http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=2127

SPOILERS for gone home below! the game’s a few hours long, so maybe this is post-game reading material.

gone home is a coming out story. exclusively. i guess there are some hints of other plots lying around the mansion: your dad’s a hack writer, your mom’s into some dude. but the central story of the game is, undeniably, the story of a teenage queer girl falling in love, discovering her queerness, her first relationship, the fallout surrounding being a queer teen, and ultimately what becomes of that first relationship.

i find the game hard to relate to. i’m saying this of a game that’s NOT ABOUT SHOOTING PEOPLE and ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY FEATURES WOMEN CHARACTERS. most videogames are totally alienating to me. this game contains characters whose lives are ostensibly closer to mine than an easy 99% of digital games. and yet there’s this gap: this game’s main character (not the protagonist, note) is very different from me, and her story is very different than mine, and i think i’m more aware of that distance than i would be with joe bald shootman because i do compare my experience to hers, as a queer person who was once a teen.

look: when i was the age sam – the game’s main character – is, i didn’t even know i was a woman. i was confused and ugly, incapable of looking at myself in the mirror, and using the internet to have cybersex with boys. i was pretty sure i was gay because i knew i sure as hell wasn’t straight. the first trans kid i ever interacted with (it was on irc) ran away from home before her christian parents could send her to a boarding school for boys, trying to hitchhike across the country to visit me. she stopped calling halfway, and i don’t know if she was picked up by the cops or someone worse or what. i never heard from her again.

see? MESSY. and though the pretense of gone home is that you’re assembling a story out of journals and notes and scraps scattered around the house, sam’s story is surprisingly non-messy. she meets a girl. they go ghost-hunting. they get close. physical affection happens, and then love does. they kiss. she comes out to her parents. well, she’s a cis girl, that’s probably a big part of it. gender isn’t something sam ever has to figure out.

almost immediately after it’s established that sam is into this girl, you’re granted access to this secret panel in which are hidden a few sheets of looseleaf. it’s a story sam wrote: in it, she’s a pirate captain, and her first mate, the love of her life, is lowered into magic goop that changes him from a man into a woman.

and, like: yes, this is the sort of thing a kid going through confusion and transition would write. we all externalized this stuff in some way. but it’s the timing that makes it all too convenient: if i had found it any other time in the game, it would have been different. but, no, it was timed very carefully: it shows up right after sam narrates that she’s in love with a girl. it’s like an explanation. aha, that explains it. the puzzle is solved.

ultimately, i found sam’s story hard to connect with because it was too neat. there seems to be nothing else going on in sam’s life, nothing else going on in the game, other than her queerness, her first love, going to her girlfriend’s bands’ shows. “that’s true of any teenager,” my slut told me. “that’s how it feels.” but it didn’t feel like that to me.

anyway, gone home is still like a million times better than yet another game about dudes shooting other dudes in the face.

on losing faith

part of my commonplace book project; should not show up on your reading page

by Elizabeth Bruenig, from her now-tragically-defunct blog, retrieved via http://web.archive.org/web/20170829095822/http://elizabethstokerbruenig.com/2016/12/24/on-losing-faith/

( Read more... )

periodically-edited list of podcasts

will update periodically; just keeping all my podcast recommendations / anti-recommendations in one place

highly recommended

* Dead Genre Chronicles: A group of friends played a different JRPG once a month for like, 3ish years, and recorded a monthly podcast in which they discussed said game. All of the commentators are great, the discussions are delightfully in-depth (averaging about 2 hours per podcast), and they are wonderfully contrarian. I'm sad it's over but luckily the archives are massive so have a listen.

* worldly: are you bummed that you're one of those shitty americans who only understands what's going on in your own shitty country? FEAR NOT, worldly is here to make you globally educated, one week at a time. i am so sad yochi left the show but jenn is still there and jenn is the best

* more perfect: history of various Supreme Court decisions. highly enlightening. often features interviews with People Who Were there, etc. good stuff.

* every day's great: dude i didn't even like Persona 4 that much and never even finished it, but i find this duo bizarrely charismatic/hilarious/etc to listen to, almost unfairly so. i listened to most the episodes during two cross-country flights and they saved me from an otherwise dreary plane ride

* you're too show: by the same dudes as the Persona 4 podcast. i have probably played about ten minutes of Sonic put together in my whole life but i could still listen to these nerds talk about weirdo obscure Sonic cartoons like all day

recommended

* the weeds: quality took a hit after they switched to a twice-a-week format (there just ain't THAT much policy to discuss each week), but, i do love their more technical treatment of political / economic / policy issues. it is Vox so it has a liberal bias but you knew that, right

* the bruenigs: wow i don't know how to describe this one. the first episode i listened to just started with Elizabeth and Matt shooting the shit about The Walking Dead, right? and like, The Walking Dead is soooo 2015 or whatever, so i was tempted to turn it off, but they're just. a very cute couple. Elizabeth has really charming deadpan humor. i'm zoned out or whatever. when i went to the bathroom and when i came back they were discussing retirement policies and how practices encouraged for private investment accounts make NO SENSE when shaping larger policy goals and WHOA this is the sweet hot policy discussion i came for but what just happened??? and like, all their episodes follow this format. 50% pointless banter and 50% that Good Hot Policy Shit (though it's still not quite as in-depth as i'd prefer). it's kind of slow paced but they're so adorkable that i can kind of bask in their dorking out and be like yes #relationshipgoals #toocute #talkpolicytome #socialismforamerica etc. (btw have you read Elizabeth Bruenig's shit? you should, she is incredibly excellent)

if you have to on like a road trip or while falling asleep or something

* revisionist history: ugh malcolm gladwell. dude is kind of silly but, damnit, he does spin ok pop science / pop history narratives if you really want shit in the background while like cleaning your room or something (can you tell i'm saying this begrudgingly) (i am not very Fair when it comes to gladwell, i know, it's fine)

* ezra klein show: i don't really like ezra klein but this podcast isn't really about him, it's about his guests. unfortunately i don't really like his guests either (hello 800 variations on the theme IS DEMOCRACY DEAD post-2016-election, yawn sigh etc). except when i do! hearing jaron lanier, paul krugman, and kwame anthony appiah discuss their thoughts at length were all great times. worth tuning in if the person seems interesting. for god's sake don't listen to the one where he interviews Obama, he's basically humping the dude's leg the whole time

* the impact: is this coming back for a second season? was decently interesting on-the-field reporting for "how policy affects actual humans and shit"

in the to-listen queue

* farm to taber: first ep i listened to was v impressive, haven't listened to rest
* migration nation
* o11y podcast
* our opinions are correct
* welcome to nightvale
* our debut album
* one shot
* team human
* serial & shittown or whatever

personalities.txt

I'm sort of 100% a sucker for personality tests, personality typification based on arbitrary nerdy things, etc., so here's where I'm collecting my results. I will probably append to this periodically and just link it from my "semi-friends only" entry rather than spamming everyone's f-lists with this nerdery every time :P

• MBTI ¹: ENTP. I score really high on the P (perceiving) category in particular, and pretty high on E (extroversion).


• Enneagram ²: 9w8. Surprised me at first, since I was expecting 7w8, but yeah, overall I'm pretty chill/trusting/confrontation-adverse, it makes sense.


• D&D alignment ³: neutral good (which I guess makes me like the worst hacker since I'm pretty sure we're all supposed to be chaotic neutral oops)


• Magic the Gathering colors ⁴: Blue/Green.


• Avatar: the Last Airbender element: Air. I feel like people kind of misinterpret the air nomads as being all ~spiritual~ and ~deep~ and stuff, which they were... but they're also nomads, free-spirits, conflict-adverse (to the point where uh they kinda got wiped out for it)... I'm kind of flighty so it kind of fits :P


• Terra Ignota Hive: Most likely Brillist, though I might've been one of the folks who bailed when they decided to hand over their decision-making to TensorFlow++ (in which case I'm probably bailing for Greylaw or Humanist), or I stick around because I want to be Felix Faust when I grow up. But in general "extraverted nerd extremely excited about Humans as well as Science And Shit" is very Me, aesthetically


• Harry Potter house: is literally the dumbest personality question. Absolutely not Griffindor, too much of a lazy shit for Hufflepuff, most likely Ravenclaw though I could be a dark horse contender for Slytherin (I have some ambition locked away in my soul). But come on, I'm a nerd, the answer's Ravenclaw


• Greek Zodiac: the calendar says I should be Virgo but fuck that, i ain't that much of a control freak. I remember reading a bunch of descriptions once and deciding I fit Aquarius pretty well personality wise?


• Chinese Zodiac: the calendar says I should be a Horse, and goshdanged I am totally a Horse


• Humours: ⁵ sanguine (phlegmatic was runner-up)


• "If you were an animal what animal would you be": Gull. Three reasons: (1) They eat garbage, I eat garbage (even if mine is more of the prepackaged variety and less of the dumpster variety). (2) Whenever you see gulls, they're just chillin' in huge groups on the beach with their bros, havin' a good time, seem like they'd be crushing a few cold ones if they could, right? This is also my ideal state. I am kind of a ladyfratbro. (3) Get to hang out on land, sea, and air, which is more in the category of "perk" than "actual anthropomorphic personality correlation" but w/e

* * *
¹ http://www.personalitypage.com/html/info.html
² http://www.eclecticenergies.com/enneagram/test.php
³ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons)
⁴ Writeups on red, green, white, blue, and black, but if you're familiar with the game you can probably intuit how they align with personalities—blue is snobby intellectuals, red is firebrands and rebels, etc
⁵ https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/O4TS/