"Homecoming oftentimes grapples with questions of how agency is constricted by societal notions of obedience." @phoenixwritesdown.bsky.social analyzes Silent Hill Homecoming's Scarlet and her story:

Open for nominations: RSA Renaissance Studies Article Prize! For articles published in 2025 on the topic of Renaissance ecologies - ecology in art and literature, humans and the natural world, resources and extractive industries, natural and designed environments, etc. www.rsa.org/general/cust...

stop what you're doing and let Amber Glenn take you to church #USPrevagenChamps #figureskating

Abolish and prosecute ICE. They did a murder in broad daylight today. Imagine what they're doing in the closed facilities we're somehow not even allowed to see.

If you haven't already, January is a good time to cancel your Xbox Game Pass in solidarity with Palestine. Read more about the boycott on our website and sign our pledge at nogamesforgenocide.com

Write for our Exploits mag in 2026! If you're new here, Exploits covers our micro-criticism on pop culture. $25 for a ~500-word meta essay and $10 for a ~375-word section essay. More info here: unwinnable.com/submissions/

Did you publish a book about or adjacent to #Shakespeare since the 2024 meeting of @saaupdates.bsky.social? Please fill out this Google form to provide information about your book and join us for a celebration at #Shax2026 in Denver on Friday, 4/3, from 10:30-11am. forms.gle/aTKJdQZniypr...

Porn and erotica are important and societally valuable forms of speech, and the defense of them, in the face of state and church attempts at repression, is a necessary political act.

🕯️Manifesting 🕯️

For any medievalists attending MLA in Toronto: All MLA conference attendees are encouraged to come to the LLC Chaucer Cash Bar on Saturday, January 10, 7:15-8:30 pm at the Fairmont Royal York--Manitoba room. One drink ticket per person and appetizers will be provided. We hope to see you there!

I've said it before but one of the most revelatory things about reading Marxist theory is seeing just how much genAI automation is just the same old business-as-usual capitalism. Here's Ernest Mandel's Late Capitalism in 1972.

Reminder as the new year begins that I head up GameSpot’s opinions section and would love to read your pitches! I’m always on the hunt for timely and thoughtful criticism and analysis on games and gaming/internet culture, so feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] if interested ☺️✨

I am utterly dreading tomorrow. I’ve cried, y’all. I’m not ready.

i am back at work today

Please seek help immediately: aftermath.site/please-seek-he...

Every time I see a news article about ChatGPT pushing vulnerable people to harm themselves and others, I want to know how the universities who have eagerly proclaimed their partnerships with this company intend to account for the increasing evidence of the harms of this tech

Capitol switchboard (202) 225-3121 Call your reps. Demand impeachment. No illegal war in our names.

Back on my 5 am writing nonsense. Do I like being awake at 5? No Do word get on the page? Yes!

Thank you all for your patience! Without further ado, it's This Year In Videogame Blogging 2025, complete with a bonus This Week In Videogame Blogging, December 28, 2025! critical-distance.com/2026/01/01/t...

this was 2025, as told by 91 writers across the world intothespine.com/2025/12/31/s...

this was an immeasurable effort from everyone involved. the list is packed with calls to action and donation funds. folks wrote about anything from games to movies and books. we didn’t include anything published or developed by microsoft, and avoided games with gen ai like the plague

I am especially mad at the people who sold trans people out Fuck you guys, really

Fucking disgusting behavior. What does this 23-year old shit know about childcare? How dare he demand to see these children? He is putting the workers of these childcare centers in danger as well as the children & families that they serve.

Years and years ago at an AHA, a reporter at the Chronicle asked me what I'd like to see from them in the coming year and I said "Try to go a week without quoting a professor from an Ivy league school." I am re-upping that request but I'd like to broaden the publications it applies to.

tomorrow

Sam Eng, the sole developer of Skate Story, discusses how his hometown of New York City influenced the game. www.avclub.com/skate-story-...

Enjoyed the latest episode from @mmapod.bsky.social on Early Global Insularities www.multiculturalmiddleages.com/post/early-g... #podcast

The next book in our recommended reads is Colonizing Palestine by Areej Sabbagh-Khoury which shows how, in the decades before the Nakba of 1948, Zionists settlements, including "left-wing kibbutzim," were integral to the slow displacement of Palestinians.

Just in time for the new year, my latest article in Medieval Feminist Forum is out! I am so grateful to the award committees for the SMFS Graduate Student Prize and the 2024 Debbie White Gender and Medieval Studies Essay Prize for believing in it. Read illicitly here: tinyurl.com/BAP-BADTRANS...

How I’m walking out of 2025

Crow Country is 50% off in the Steam Winter Sale! 🐦‍⬛❄️ Every copy sold, stream, video, piece of fanart or recommendation to friends or followers helps Adam and me make our next game, and hopefully another after that! store.steampowered.com/app/1996010/...

Remember: It ys okaye to be lonelye. It ys okaye to feel lost. It ys okaye to be sad. It ys okaye yf nobody ys arounde. It ys okaye to have no plannes or just small plannes. It ys okaye to have big plannes that seem exhausting. It ys okaye to be a mess. Take care of thyself. Thou art amazinge.

I'm currently working on a novel and at the end of an average day, I'm wiped out. The sheer amount of analysis, synthesis, making of connections, layering of prose, deepening of characterization, supplemental research... all the mental work is intense and exhilarating. Which is just to say, fuck AI.

It is. You can actually search visible text on the redacted documents and the completely UNredacted document appears in the results 😭

When you support @unwinnable.com you're not supporting a brand or a logo. You're supporting people with a legacy of bravely pursuing their critical interests. Plus, we have long stood by having those voices in the same pages as new and emerging ones. We're not the masthead, we're the writers.

60 minutes CECOT segment. Recorded through my browser. HD quality. Not phone. Spread it around. If you're press, it's yours. Go nuts. It's streaming on a Canadian website, but there is no telling for how long. www.filemail.com/d/wkcdttnacp...

I just uploaded @jasonparis.bsky.social 's recording of the segment CBS News pulled from "60 Minutes" to YouTube:

New this week on the site, @theautumnwright.bsky.social on Battlefield 6. bulletpointsmonthly.com/2025/12/17/i...

In Ruins. An unlikely game from me, I grapple with what all is there to say about war games during war. On Battlefield 6, destructible environments, and gardening:

Just in time for Christmas, I’m here to announce that I will be running TWO 4-week workshops on ‘The Fundamentals of Academic Grant Writing’ in Jan/Feb, starting the week of 12 Jan! Those who register before 1 Jan get one-on-one feedback on a draft in progress! Please share thread widely! 1/5

Friendly reminder that I'm selling a rather uncommon (for us) Russian release of Psychonauts to raise funds for @gamehistoryorg.bsky.social because I'm a bit nuts like that. One day to go! www.ebay.com/itm/32691470...

My standard response is "tell me, in specific detail, how exactly I'll be 'left behind,'" and to date not a single techbro has ever answered the question. "You'll be left behind" is a statement of religious faith, not business fact, and should be treated as such.

There is no AI used in Blue Prince. The game was built and crafted with full human instinct by Tonda Ros and his team at @dogubomb.bsky.social. It is the result of eight years of development, fuelled by imagination and creativity, and we are extremely proud of what Tonda has achieved.

I am so excited about more Lydgate! 2026 is the year of Lydgate!

The scholars yearn for more Lydgate discourse, and who are we to deny them? (Clint Morrison and I are co-organizing. Chris is presenting— I got this wrong in the first post— along with RD Perry, Taylor Cowdery, and Katherine Breen. Response by Bobby Meyer-Lee. It’s gonna be great!)

may every trans child grow into a trans adult

Post-doc positions: "Academic freedom is under pressure today. This requires rescue havens of free research. ... [we] invite early career researchers, whose work is restricted due to political pressure in the USA..." uni-freiburg.de/frias/call-f...

Reminder: “1% of the US population” is 3,420,000 people. That is more than the total populations of Nevada, Kansas, or Maine. Imagine telling yourself that it would be okay to criminalize the people of West Virginia because they’re “less than 1% of the population.” Fix your hearts or die.

Medievalist friends! Applications are open until end of Feb for a fully-funded PhD in Arthurian Literature with the brilliant Louise D'Arcens @medievalafterlives.bsky.social and myself, based between Sydney (Australia) and Groningen (The Netherlands). Please share widely! tinyurl.com/f7su6urv

damning