An essay, a romance, two new podcast episodes, and a TweetFic!
Good evening!
I've just been chugging away this week as I've been really enjoying a videogame between other things called Kingdom Come.
It is, tragically, very heterosexual, but despite that I've been having a good deal of fun with it - it's a first-person action RPG set in Bohemia in 1403, heavily based off of real events, and prides itself on its realism.
When I first started out with it I had a lot of difficulty because it's intended to be a hard game and there's a steep learning curve, but once I got a hang of it I really got into it, and I'm enjoying it a lot! It's highly immersive, it gives you a lot of information about the context of the period and the culture around you, and I really enjoy a lot of the gameplay.
With that said, the game prides itself on its "historical accuracy", and while the broader events are contained, like... This is a white European gamer's idea of "historical accuracy". There's no queers, there's no POC, the gender stuff is very much based, again, in a white gamer's assumption of men versus women, etc. I'm very much enjoying it despite all these flaws, but the idea that it's historically accurate with no political slant to that "accuracy" would be very silly, lol.
I mean, just take the fashion alone - one of the context notes even mentions the different styles of clothing design based on things like gender, including the fact that fashionable men would often grow their hair out a bit... And then every man has the same 4 ugly gamer hairstyles, including two different styles of bad undercut, because longer hair styles would make this sort of man feel threatened and like his avatar looks too gay.
It's also a little bit janky and the visuals are not the best, with various bugs - if you enjoy Skyrim despite its fucky controls and flawed visuals, Kingdom Come isn't much worse than that! But they very much are there, and it's a little frustrating.
I'm gonna keep tipping away at it for the time being, and get all the juice out of it I can.
Media Recs
The chaotic reality of being a trans man on Grindr: From d**k pics to existential crises by Jackson King- I've obviously written about being a trans dude and cruising before, but Jackson's experiences as a big Black man are obviously different to mine as a white twink, and it's really interesting seeing where our experiences are similar and where they diverge!
Death Investigations: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver - This is an old episode of Last Week Tonight and John Oliver is not everybody's cup of tea, but I actually enjoy the show's dives and explanations into a lot of topics, and this one is so fucked up and Lewis even watched it even though they hate it when I send them videos that are longer than 5 minutes, so! This is a dive into the politics around death investigations in the US, the differences between coroners and medical examiners, the lack of regulation, etc.
My Beautiful Laundrette (1985, dir. Stephen Frears, wr. Hanif Kureishi) - So, this is a big movie from the 80s - I've recced a lot of Frears' flicks before, I like his work as a director, and this one is really interesting and pretty different from his usual biopics. It's a really interesting film in terms of its editing, its sound design, and its general presentation - it does a lot of creative time skips, a lot of details and context occur offscreen and make you fill in the gaps or infer the specifics, it's funny, it's emotionally complicated... Yeah. We saw it at the Palás and I just really appreciated it - it's been on my list for a while, and I'm glad I watched it!
New Works Published
Essay: Passing Privilege: Through My Eyes, as a Trans Man Who Passes
Second puberty and the waves we send through the spaces around us.
On Patreon / On Medium / On Tumblr
Romance Short: Very Well
A herbalist is dispatched to be the wife of a faraway priest.
Romance short, 7.5k, rated M. A herbalist is dispatched for his role in an arranged marriage of sorts with a priest of Aristaeus far from home. Adapted from a TweetFic.
New episode of The Story: Wild Country
Horror short. 3k, Gen, rated T. Originally posted February 16th, 2023. A young woman walks home on a foggy night. First person POV, originally posted on /r/NoSleep.
On Spotify / On Google Podcasts / RSS Feed
New bonus episode of The Story: Centre Pocket
Centre Pocket, originally published December 1st, 2022.
2.5k, rated E, cis M/M.
After teasing all day, a twink gets bent over the dive bar’s pool table. Public sex at a pub lock-in, size difference, age difference, humiliation and degradation, anal sex with condoms, dirty talk, multiple partners, object insertion, implications of a gangbang.
New TweetFic: Ordinary Love
suicidal artist who spends most of his time drinking heavily and getting high off paint turps who is obsessively in love with and keeps doing highly eroticised portraits of the local butcher who is literally just Some Guy but he is very flattered
CWs for suicidality, alcoholism, severe mental illness, past trauma, mentions of CSA and abuse. With those CWs in mind, this is pretty light, funny, and loving.
99_monochrome made some gorgeous art in response to this piece too! It's here.
That's all! See you next week!
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