I didn't expect to love Silksong this much! 🩷 What a beautiful and haunting game. I am not usually into difficult platformers but this has the satisfaction of a Dark Souls game and I am here for it. PS: I just reached Lace and what a shock for an early boss. Hope to defeat her soon...ish... 🤭

This book is an instant buy for me and thought you might like it to!

This looks like an excellent new issue of Game and Culture! From Dark Souls and esports to videogame translations #gamestudies

Disney: capitulating right away when the core idea of your major franchises is creative resistance.

Creative workers fear ‘that clients, managers, and even consumers will deem AI art “good enough” as the companies that produce it push down their wages and corrode their ability to earn a living’ www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/artists-ar...

New Transformative Works and Cultures is out with interesting articles on the impact of AI on fandom among others #mediastudies #fanstudies journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc

Town to City is an extremely cozy, voxel city builder with a beautiful atmosphere. It's in early access now, have a look! #indiegames

Have been waiting for someone to do this! A fun quick read between other work!

I really like the way Kpop Demon Hunters represents fandom, both the good and bad. (Your Idol, anyone?) So that's why I wrote a short read about the songs, Rumi's burn-out and more. Enjoy! #kpopdemonhunters nicollelamerichs.com/2025/09/15/r...

Reading the special issue on Fans in M/C Journal. The essays are very accessible and readable and diverse, do have a look! #fans #fandom journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mc...

One of those stay at home all weekend occassions!

Started rewatching Buffy after years and love how Willow's special skill is using the internet 🤓

Hear our requests, magical library deities!

Love Mechademia! I was so happy once I had an article in that journal, since it's been so helpful for my work. I never went to their conference but I really wish I could! If you study manga, anime or media culture in general, consider going 💜 #cfp #mangastudies

From Darkness to Hypervisibility! A one day symposium on the promotional and creator cultures of social media at UQ in November. CFP and details here: hass.uq.edu.au/event/sessio... @bradyjay.bsky.social @antmandan.bsky.social

I've been thinking about this lately - about the difference between when someone genuinely wants to tell you you fucked up, and when they want to use you as a soapbox to stand on so they can proclaim how right they are. The internet encourages the latter, and it sucks! But the former is valuable.

Stayed in The Netherlands this summer, a curse really

You guys told me years ago Celeste was a masterpiece and you were not lying! #gaming

Peer reviewers are exhausted. It's common to spend *months* inviting reviewers, getting refusals, inviting more, maybe 12 or more, then 2 agree but 1 doesn't complete, so you go again. That's why your paper is in limbo. I'm very sorry, it's awful, but it's also an untenable academic labour issue.

BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT! @mahliann.bsky.social, @marcuscarter.com, and myself have combined our collective brains and written a wide-reaching introduction to the complex and interdisciplinary field of Game Studies in this forthcoming book for Polity. www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b...

Update to this chart that I share a lot. Not breaking news: Game design teams are still OVERWHELMINGLY all men. About 7% of the top 500 games have a woman or non-binary person credited as a designer. A 🧵of related charts: (1/6) 🎲✂️

Uh-oh, be warned about this one.

‘Strikingly, even among women who spent more than five hours a day playing games, only 16% identified as a “hardcore gamer”. Our results suggest that many women feel excluded from video game culture’ #gamestudies theconversation.com/nearly-a-thi...

Sometimes with funding bodies it really does feel like: Can I get funding to say that games will be a magic cure for complicated systemic issues? “Sure!” Can I get funding to critically engage with games and understand them as part of a wider context? “Hmm. No.”

Interesting thread about the many partnerships, agreements and licenses at today's universities. They are complex business models for sure by now

Ah yes let's combine this tech with predictive policing and even more surveillance. What could go wrong?

So let me get this straight. ChatGPT coached a kid through suicide attempts while validating his ideation. The response from OpenAI is, "yeah, turns out if you talk to an LLM long enough the safety features stop working." Guess the usage patterns of people who most need safety features!?!

Journal of Fandom Studies 13.1 is out now! 🖖 Articles include: A court of theories and world-building: The expansion of Sarah J. Maas’s fictional worlds through fandom culture By Victoria Henry-LeMaster doi.org/10.1386/jfs_...

This meme started to circulate during the first covid lockdown, a memetic response to the uptick in Warhammer engagement, both from new and old players alike. It stands to reason that now, in 2025, when we don't seem to have anything but a crisis going on, this meme gets a second life.

Super moving read on loss and vampire fandom, highly rec! 🖤

Its true. I haven’t met a Snuffleupagus in years

Can't wait to read!!! 🩷🩷🩷

things were better when the computer lived in its own specific room and you only went in there sometimes

Few, glad I am not the only one. What's up with some of these interfaces lately

Please read, and if you support independent research in the BBC archives, please consider signing.

The humanities aren't only a/b mastering content, they're also a/b developing certain habits or dispositions: critical thinking, close reading of texts, sensitivity to context & complexity, etc. Like learning a musical instrument, these habits can only be attained when one *does the work themselves*

'We simply cannot keep making videogames for people who aren't paying attention, because it won't change anything for them—and it's making the rest of us bloody miserable.' www.pcgamer.com/games/we-can...

Me having a deep conversation with my labubu

Do you have an essay that contributes to our understanding of the literature, history, and culture in the Anglophone world, 1660-1700/the adjacent periods? Or tracing Restoration texts, ideas, and culture anytime up to our current moment? Submit! blog.umd.edu/restorationstudiesjournal/submissions/

I often write disparagingly about the internet’s slide towards video but YouTube has also educated me in poetry, philosophy music and art Here is a YouTube education - a list of videos which form a kind of curriculum in the humanities and the sciences jmarriott.substack.com/p/a-youtube-...

'The characters were not merely assets to be protected, but persons to be defended' Very interesting article on the unfortunate incident around the Sexy Tanaka-san adaptation, diving deeper into authors, characters and IP www.tcj.com/who-killed-t...

Can't wait to listen to this one. You'll love this podcast in general if you are into critically deep & funny takes on films. 🩷

“In some ways, the AI hype cycle has to be out of hand. It has to justify the ferocious level of investment, the uncountable billions of dollars in sunk costs… massive environmental consequences… seemingly keeping the economy afloat & threatening to crash it. There is so, so, so much money at stake”

What movie have you seen an unhealthy amount of times?

I am not deep into season 3 of SNW yet and this is why. I am usually a happy Star Trek fan - loved Disco, Lower Decks and Prodigy - but I don't understand what SNW is going for at all right now. 🫣 I'll stick with it though despite the current eps. I hope it evolves! 💜 www.yahoo.com/entertainmen...

tell me about it, tiny aloe plant on the counter at the cafe near my house

So much this. The publication pressure / fast research culture in academia is not a good thing. Beside stress, it also leads to specific studies (e.g. small-scale, co-authored, spin-offs). That's not per se wrong but the deep solo studies can't always be done because of time and resources 😟