yesterday night I finished The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez, and it was one of those books that I just had to sit quietly with for about an hour after wrapping it. Impossibly good, and profoundly sad in the way that only really good sci fi can be. Can't recommend it enough.

This year I've become keenly aware of how much people hate art and how important it is to me that I stay close to my love for it, especially as I take on fatherhood. I am tired of shallowness and surfaces. We deserve better. But we only get it if we know what it is when we see it.

Excellent, personal piece by @ashlikeadragon.bsky.social, written with a vulnerability that honors one of the medium’s truly transformative artworks. Thanks for writing it, Ashley

Hanif Abdurraqib's writing and Julien Baker's music have been constant companions of mine through the 2020s. Incredible to encounter both reconfigured as urgent backdrops to the options "you wish were made available" in this piece by @ashlikeadragon.bsky.social www.stopcar.ing/no-good-opti...

For years now I've been fascinated by the music and mysterious disappearance of Jim Sullivan. It's one of those cases where the ending of the story influences all of the art that precedes it... and lead me to muse on how the absence of an artist goes on to define them. youtu.be/GDBizlslWVU

one of those days im just struggling to see the path

Additionally, being overly dramatic over one another's discomfort is how you gas them up to be more hysterical. It's proven with animals and children and also adults. Sometimes you are made uncomfortable and just gotta brush it off and be an adult, especially online.

that's RIGHT

Don't forget to send invoices for your work!! (It says, months behind on sending mine...)

Doing that fun Thumbnail testing thing - trying to figure out if I should go surreal silly thumbnails or blunter, matter-of-fact ones.

Stunned my silly little Resident Evil article gets to stand amongst so much awesome writing!!!

This week: Palestine Skating Game, Pathologic 3, Kiwami 3, and lots more: critical-distance.com/2026/01/18/j...

I'll stand by my assertion that Luigi's Mansion may be Nintendo's most Perfect game.

Wrote about how Nightreign’s towering achievement in formal design is also maybe an existential nightmare for video games. First words of the year and first feature for @thisweekinvideogames.com

my latest and, genuinely, best work is out now 💜 this is the most personal piece i might ever write (related to games, at least) and i am so unbelievably proud of how it's turned out a massive thank you to artemis for trusting me with it. please give it a read we are gonna figure something out 💜

Okay so I got my covid booster yesterday and. I feel like I got shot in the fucking arm. Never had a shot make my arm hurt so bad.

"REVII’s unlockable difficulty seems to anticipate my complaint that you can only truly experience a horror game once." @jhensliterature.bsky.social digs into the rare horror experience Resident Evil VII's Madhouse difficulty offers:

Getting Over It is still a game that drives me nuts, in that I'm still struggling to understand my relationship with it... and that endless compulsion to keep climbing the mountain. www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT0A... My First Video Essay I actually feel decent enough publishing.

PUMPED PUMPED IM PUMPED

Scheduled my first Video Essay thing to be published tomorrow. Deeply fucking nervous. I know the editing isn't super great and I'm anxious about every aspect of it, but I know I have to start somewhere. How do you guys do this every month lol

SHAWN

Watching the news talk about the "rhetoric" on both sides bc obviously Jacob Frey saying "fuck" is an equivalent to murdering a woman in cold blood and wishing more than ever I could get the hell out of this dumb fucking country.

May this man never know a moments’s peace again

Wolfenstein TNC is still one of the craziest things I've seen a major studio put out. Not just because nazi occupied America but also it fully dives into being an audacious exploitation movie while correctly interrogating the politics that made America what it is.

Teach yourself first aid. Know how to throw a teargas canister back. Lift weights so you can carry someone wounded out of danger. I don't know what there is to do, but I cannot give in to despair and you can't either. We're all we have out there.

It's cold out here And the games being played ain't fun Landlord just raised your rent, Babe, get yourself a-

Started Lexapro at the end of last week (a very small dose) to try and help manage my OCD which can be quite crippling... Adjusting to it has been rough so far!

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.

My gf bought me @jacobgeller.com's How A Game Lives and I gotta say, the details about each essay's publication (what # essay it was) is actually really fucking heartening. Fuck it, I'll get there by my 25th. What are the first three beyond a dip into the water? Also just a beautiful book omg

thinking about this essay again for no reason in particular www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9Ay...

yeah okay Dune: Messiah is better and more interesting than Dune. Weird to think that it was "unpopular" (at least in comparison) when it first came out.

Starting off my year by reading through the Frank Herbert DUNE trilogy.

Any publications who would be interested in an anticolonial explication of XCOM 2?

you heard it here folks, my silksong review is one of the best pieces from the entire year. no one can call me a scrub now not even @dietdeitz.bsky.social :) thank you, critical distance, as always. i'm honoured 💜

Geese's new album is so weird to me because "Trinidad" is one of my songs of the year - Captain Beefheart meets something like The Blinders or KGLW, but the rest of the album seems so safe compared to it. I want more dissonant layered musical chaos in there! That song blew me out of the water!

Start Caring about Stop Caring <3 (What a fun sentence)

support stop caring right fucking now 💜

so funny that if you want good emotional folk you gotta go to the transgenders nowadays

if there are any sites looking for a freelancer to review/cover yakuza kiwami 3 who has also reviewed infinite wealth + pirate yakuza and wrote about the series at length in the past, i'm truly the girl for it 💜 aware this is a little early shares appreciated 💜

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.

One thing I haven't noticed anyone talking about in Fallout is the Semiotics of the Music in each game...

yesterday my Not-Online gf asked about why i'd started taking creatine in the mornings i said "okay this will sound insane but i read a DIY HRT guide that kinda snuck it in there" "oh yeah, katie tightpussy's right?" ????????? WHAT HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT

'for many of us, this is a threat we live with. to be trans in america is to constantly skirt the line between “human being” and something else, for instance. many people in my life still see my humanity but there’s always the threat that could stop.' god harper is the best of us

Finished the manuscript last night for another novel that is, most likely, totally unpublishable lol

fun fact! HRT will give u menstrual cramps. It is not a fun fact for me currently but

unwinnable.com/2025/08/15/a... I'm having an OCD flareup right now, and I can tell because I've been replaying games just to get achievements compulsively. Funny how writing this article actually has helped me catch on since it was published. I'll get back out of the mindset, but damn lol

i gotta get my fucking patreon up, damn

Thinking about PBG's Minecraft Hardcore series for some reason tonight. Weird how that is like... a defining artifact of my adolescence, now. Fuck I'm gonna have to write some shit on it aren't I that's the only way I'll get it out of my head

@critdistance.bsky.social Going to be a bit egotistical and promote what I think is my best piece of this year for the annual #TVIYGB25: "In the End, It Always Comes Back to the Old House." A piece that I think about almost weekly... only to realize I've already written it AND gotten it out there

Found a Jamiroquai CD and I'm listening to it and this version of "Virtual Insanity" has like... a whole second half I've never fucking heard before??