I wrote a vulnerable 2,000 word unedited essay about my childhood and now I'm trying to get strangers scrolling by to read it because that's how hard we roll over at Lit Stack. Happy Friday y'all! open.substack.com/pub/tacobell...

Today, my family is grieving. We are sickened by the actions of Gandalf the Grey and Gandalf the White and Monty Python and the Holy Grail's black knight and Benito Mussolini and the Blue Meanie and Cowboy Curtis and Jambi the Genie, Robocop, The Terminator, Captain Kirk, and Darth Vader, et al.

lol. lmao even.

The intro of the original Prey is so fucking good.

I know I'm connected to some people this fits!

Videogames can teach us humility in the face of absurdity, if we let them

Cat’s out of the bag: I reviewed Resident Evil Requiem. What did I think? Maybe give that there link a click and see for yourself: www.startmenu.co.uk/home/review-...

I made this happen.

"When tasked with representing the human interests of your own people, perhaps you cannot be afforded the luxury of separating your personal and professional lives." Unwinnable Feature Excerpt: @coledone.com draws parallels between Suzerain and real-life governance:

“'Get comfortable, Mr. President,' the commander says as he finally switches the radio off. 'This room will be our tomb.'” @coledone.com plays Suzerain and muses on politics and the pace of change.

you have to read to write. a lot. Like you have to read way more than you write for your writing to be worth anything. there are zero exceptions to this

This CAN be art. You CAN be an artist. Think of yourself like one. Write like you care about the craft of writing as much as the media you want to cover. Be earnest, but thoughtful. Be like water: flexible but still flowing.

Stop focusing so hard on zeitgeist that your work becomes ephemera. Consider what your body of work says in a week, a year, a decade. Write to spite time, not to serve it.

Whenever a non-games person reads your piece, they should be able to comprehend and appreciate what you're doing without having the game directly explained OR having played it themselves.

Here's some shit that if I see it in a games piece, I get unreasonably upset: love letter, nostalgia, floaty, cozy, jank, reliance on jargon. We need to learn the same thing prose writers do. If you put down an idiom, extrapolate. Turn it into a full thought and don't take the shortcut.

When someone only played NES Ghosts n Goblins so you put them onto the Arcade version

I have some things to say about how things are run and @unwinnable.com let me say them! It's an indictment and a meditation, thanks to the fine storytelling at the core of @torporgames.com. (Also thank you to @thegladdestthing.itch.io for encouraging me a long time ago to write about Suzerain.)

We got a new piece up on Stop Caring. @coledone.com makes their debut appearance on the site with a personal essay on Planescape: Torment. Less straight-up videogame criticism, more narrative-focused, David reminisces about a man without a name and a woman draped in layers in longing.

I legitimately feel so much gratitude to @stopcar.ing for allowing me to tell a story in a way I felt I needed to tell it. I am not a critic, I am a storyteller. This piece was one of the hardest things I've ever written and it wouldn't have been possible without Artemis.

You have long heard stories of the Sensorium, where the emotions of others are kept. Accessible just by placing your hands on a cold, indifferent orb. Deep in the basement of this place, a particular orb calls to you. You observe it, eyes falling to the dusty plaque. It reads, simply: ONLY YOU.

Pretty sure Ghost Babel basically opens with a line like "Life is worth living even if it hurts you, even if you hurt through it." and DUDE.

Found an additional graphic that gets even more of these quotes together. I've kept "I hate myself, I hate clover, and I hate bees" pinned above my desk since I first started studying evolutionary biology as an undergraduate. So relatable to get extremely frustrated with your study system.

Ring: We collect footage from our networked cameras and feed it to our AI. America: 🤔 Ring: It's to find puppies! America: 🥵

When the edible has you spending 30 min workshopping a joke about Taizo “Dig Dug” Hori being unsure if he is more mad at his therapist for probing about him being an absentee father or that they used the phrase “let’s dig into that” to do so.

Please read my poem about a dominatrix.

appomattox court house parking garage (28 mins) www.noncanon.com/comics/2026-...

In ON:3 we want to showcase and mentor 6 new voices in 1000 word features. We champion long form videogame journalism, the future of print and give freelancers a fair deal. Email [email protected] by the 8/2/26 with an example of your writing and your experience to apply. www.on.games #GamesJournalism

I'm going to get into Swatch Internet Time™️ and tell people it's for doing business but actually I'm just following the lead of 1999's hottest computing experience: Phantasy Star Online.

So many of the jobs are actually gonna be so, so safe. Holy SHIT.

Super Monkey Ball for the iPhone may be bad but it is the only entry in the series endorsed by the late Lou Reed

PSO is dope.

It's Christmas, the perfect time to learn to play Caravan.

Always been a big dot pack guy myself.

"Much in the way that the musicians move collectively, your journey with the Calicorns is one of careful choreography. You direct the animals not with a conductor’s baton, but a shepherd’s staff, setting the pace and steering them away from danger." @kellymerka.bsky.social 4 @startmenu.bsky.social

Up for a short writing challenge? Join me in the @nycmidnight.bsky.social 250-word Microfiction Challenge on December 5th! Learn more at nycmidnight.com/250

The End of Evangelion (1997)

This sequence still goes so hard. You get your lil guys looking back over the prelude to their adventure and that SONG picks up? Fuhgeddaboutit.

Nite Computer™, using the computer at night; A Sexy new trend among 30-somehtings.

Whenever I think about IF in the 2010s, I always notice that game designers were interested in retrofuturist takes on computer desktops. The first one I encountered, Digital: A Love Story, was even designed by someone who didn't grow up with the interfaces central to the game, namely the BBS.

If you wrote an SF/F/H story that was published in 2025 (or read a story that you thought was great), tell me about it in this thread! Authors, also send your story to me here: johnjosephadams.com/basff-submis... (Please read the guidelines before submitting.)

It's a beautiful day to support independent criticism Consider throwing Stop Caring a couple of bucks so I can keep paying guest writers

The Gnawty, much like the horseshoe crab, is the perfect organism. After time enough for them to be on the fossil record, evolution has dictated there is no need for change.

What a great day to be a bisexual.

Bedtime Story