Hello everyone!

It took me so long to get to the August newsletter I figured it would be best to slam both of these together. Your regularly scheduled newsletters will resume starting in November.

I wrote a fair amount about Baldur's Gate 3 this two months. First up, some impressions of the game's first act, discussing its virtues and faults as an adaptation of the world's most popular tabletop game. Then, an exploration of the game's second act and how it expertly narrows the possibility space.

In both of these, I try to work through some of the big discourse points about such a culturally-significant and contested game. The common wisdom on games this big is usually suspect and I do a capable job of cutting through the noise.

On the blog side, I updated my website with a very large Mormon Studies bibliography. It's for my own use as I read essays and fiction about Mormonism, but I figured it is not much use if I'm not sharing it. I'm hoping to continue to add to it.

I updated the Patreon on some of the projects I'm working on. There's some exciting news in here, so if you want a sneak peak on what I'll be talking about in future newsletters, give it a look.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/september-2023-88859821?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

As for podcasts, I guested on Indiepocalypse Radio. For those not in the know, Indiepocalypse is a curated zine of indie games. It's an exceptional project, for which creator Andrew is endlessly enthusiastic. Really enjoyed hanging with them and developer Chloe Taylor.

Over on the Safe Room Patreon, we had the lovely Minovsky over to chat about the Junji Ito classic Tomie in August. We covered the first half of classic anime Serial Experiments Lain in September.

On the Shitposting side, Rose had Amr over to talk about handhelds yet again. We also had a sprawling and silly episode about breakfast, Knights of the Old Republic, and being ONLINE.

As for Safe Room proper, we covered cult classic Alan Wake and the playground action-horror game The Evil Within. These are both good games for very different reasons and we have some contested, but fun, conversations about them.

Once again I'm plugging Dia Lacina's excellent work. This time, her truly expansive review of Armored Core 6. Dia is unquestionably the best writer working in the space and this is some dazzling stuff.

Very much enjoyed this essay on Undine, a romantic, modern fairy tale with long segments about Berlin architecture. Director Petzold is (probably) a favorite and this is a layered reading of a beguiling film.

As always, if you don't already, you can support my work and this newsletter via my Patreon and Ko-Fi. You can read this newsletter on my Patreon, on Cohost, or get it in your inbox via TinyLetter.