Things I Care About Right Now (2)
May 6, 2025
"Spending so much time looking at my one empty hand, almost missing everything filled in the other."
~Home Is Not A Country by Safia Elhillo
Late last month, after a little over a decade of submitting to contests, fellowships, and awards (usually in the hope that it'll lead to steady employment), I decided it's time to stop for a while[^1]. I haven't created just to create since I was in middle school, maybe. And it's ruined how I approach creating. It didn't click back then but it's probably one reason [[Zombies Where There Should Be Gardens]] came out and I'd like to stop creating purely from fear of scarcity instead of just because I want some shit to exist in the world.
The first day was the best. I watched two hours of a class and took notes and that was it. I made something that had nothing to do with anything else and it took me three hours and I could put it away afterwards and maybe I'll get back to it someday. I'm treating projects like I have time to finish them and that makes me want to finish them. I'm not pretending like this solves everything, that this is how it'll always be. But I like being a sponge for what I'll create. I like feeling possible instead of feeling next to hopeless.
1. Crips for eSims Bundle & MMIWR Week
Crips for eSims bundle is live! For $16 you get 237 items! I have a small thing in there but I especially want y'all to check out DIY Web Archiving zine by literaturegeek because we need more archives, Cartoonists for Palestine anthology because CARTOONS, and Game Assist for Palestine which I feel comes at a really good time if you also struggled with how cross-movement action works when you want to do the BDS boycott of Microsoft and want to support the black game devs of South of Midnight.
Also! Yesterday, May 5, was the beginning of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives Awareness Week and you can get more information and resources here and here.
2. Tinkering Around: Anything created is never wasted
Open source, experimental, and tiny tools roundup (if you don't want to use GitHub here is the regular link) which led to finally testing out Sprytile, which you have to get updates through ReSprytile to be compatible with the most recent Blender updates (as of 4.0+ versions).
![[Screenshot (156).png]]
This means I've been reading 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School by Matthew Frederick and learning a little (A VERY LITTLE) about orthogonal design and level design.
Also a good time to remind y'all that the Glitch jam Aldercone Studio and I are hosting is extended!
Since Youtube was down for me, I clicked on a class from gamedev.tv that I got a while ago and I'm pretty glad I took it. It's called Indie Game Dev Roadmap (I think), and though the latter part didn't really apply to me (I'm not thinking too much about marketing until after a couple of games), there were some parts that felt revelatory. Two of them were: stay with the medium/genre you picked, build small games out of the components you're learning.
I'd been working on learning Godot but fell off in March because mental health and school. I wanted to get back into it but found myself just procrastinating by watching tutorials and stuff instead of making anything of my own. And, inspired by handwriting my responses to this class I have a new mantra: "Anything created is never wasted", which helps! But, I also want a couple of finished things so I can be like, yes I can also finish creations.
So, I tried to think of the games I've finished instead of just played and never really saw to completion and realized (I knew this but kind of didn't want it to be true) that visual novels are really my jam and that I should focus on breaking down the parts of visual novels I want to learn more about and create little things around that before trying to tackle a huge project. I wasn't 100% sure of my decision until I happened to play Mediterranea Inferno later that day and I am STILL obsessed with it. I need to know how all that was done! What else can be done in this genre? I NEED TO KNOW. So that little journey is beginning and I'm pretty happy about it. It also helps that game jams can be used as a way to do something outside of my committed to learn genre and that gave me at least less panic around sticking with one thing for the rest of my life (that's not how this works but still).
3. Wednesdays, on itch
LudoNarracon is happening until May 8th and I have been WAITING for this. I love the games selected, the community I've found within them, and just have been having a really great time around all of this. You can watch the panels and talks from this year here.
Wednesdays is one of the games that reminds me of hard feelings, tough to talk about subjects and having a little time and space to myself this weekend--I decided to sit down and play through. I'm really glad I did.
![[Screenshot (172) - Copy.png]]
Something I might write about later is coming to this game after growing up with Law and Order: SVU, not as entertainment but as a lifeline. Like, I had to believe the somewhere some version of me would've been saved and for a long time, Stabler and Benson were the ones I imagined saving at least one of me. Now, understanding copaganda, it was hard to let go of that because I had to figure out new ways to comfort/save myself. Wednesdays is very much one of the new ways that I'm really glad came along.
4. Marlon Wayans said it took him a week to go from denial to complete acceptance of his trans son
Seeing black parents accept their queer and trans kids is always going to make me tear up (Dwayne Wade and Gabrielle Union-Wade were the blueprint for me) and I will obsess over it for the rest of my life. This article about an interview with Marlon Wayans has me WRECKED because:
"Wayans joked that although he believes “only God can judge… If that’s a mistake and we get to heaven and God don’t let my child in, I’m going to shave a beard and sneak them in through the back.”
“I’m going to love my baby… I’m a father, and I’m always going to defend them,” he continued. “I’m always going to protect them. I’m always going to respect them. And there’s nothing anybody could ever tell me.” ~ them.us
As someone who has come from a deeply traumatic religious upbringing, this shit has me in my CHEST.
5. Deeper Than The South: How South of Midnight is Weaving a New Path in Southern Gothic Media by Brown Girl Gamer Code
I finished playing South of Midnight two days after starting it which is unheard of for me when it's not a short game. I stayed up all day the second day to finish because I was worried I'd forget the combos to get to certain parts of the game and even though I absolutely wrecked my sleep schedule, I had a fantastic time. I've been thinking of it every day, multiple times a day since and especially with seeing Sinners (which I simply will never have enough words for how much it means to me), it's been clawing and tunneling and seeping and rearranging so much of me and I feel like I need to read more books, watch more movies and shows, read more articles and interviews, visit more museums, talk to more people just so I can better explain the depth of what it does and gives to me.
Anyways, this is a really great video essay by Brown Girl Gamer Code about the video game (with minimal spoilers) and I always want to see black people ESPECIALLY BLACK WOMEN at the forefront of discussion for this game, so please check them out!
Odds & Ends
For Sudan’s war-torn communities, crowdfunding is a fragile lifeline by Mohamed Suliman
Dead Man's Switch: "This is how this works. You write a few e-mails and choose the recipients. These emails are stored privately until they're sent. Your switch will email you every so often, asking you to show that you are fine by clicking a link. If something were to... happen... to you, your switch would then send the emails you wrote to the recipients you specified. Sort of an "electronic will", one could say."[^2]
We Have Rights [^3]
kool.tools: a series of tools and things of interest by game and tool creator, candle
Operation Blazing Sword educates queer people about firearm usage within the US
How to Distribute Radical Shit: Don't Trust Your Printer: I really loved this (especially because I was putting off reading it and it turned into special interest fuel) and am especially holding onto:
"These are all fun things to do, and what good is a revolution if you can't enjoy the world you're fighting for?"
The Spectrum Soup by splitpainter is a game about autism by an autistic creator and I really like it
Back Market is where you can get refurbished tech and I recommend them (I'm typing to you from refurbished tech!)
Six One Indie has composed of an ongoing list of independent game journalism sites you can follow! Regarding layoffs, it's important to watch out for how we get our information. I often think of Nathalie Lawhead being traumatized by game creators and further traumatized by game journalists reporting on that trauma. So, just want to have that link here.
Destroy the systems that seek to destroy you!
Stepford Wives
It's times like these when you love the internet because I got to watch Stepford Wives for the first time a few weeks ago on Youtube (followed by Revenge (2017) which is a GREAT combo in my opinion though that's on Shudder and please be aware that rape is a huge part of that story).
[^1]: Perhaps sadly for yall that means im gonna be proofreading even less depending on the brain factory's floor management situation
[^2]: This has been on my mind a lot because I'm about to travel and there are a lot more things I have to worry about this time around with that. I have one less support than I usually depend on and I didn't realize how much I did until it was gone. I am anxious and terrified and have been for a couple of weeks now and I know we can't plan for everything but it feels like everything I'm doing just isn't working and it should. I've done the therapy, I went to groups, I talked to people, I'm putting one foot in front of the other, and it feels like I'm just running in place while what I'm trying to hide from gets closer and closer. Anyways.