I ran into Nate, and then he ran into one of his friends, and introduced me.
“Oh, is your last name Stivison?” Nate’s friend asked.
“Yeah, it is.”
“You reviewed my game!”
I’m always so terribly nervous when that happens, and I was extra nervous, because I has no memory of this game when he said the title (No reflection on the quality of the game, more a reflection of my own awkwardness), but he pulled it up on his phone, and fortunately, I’d written good things about it.
IndieCade is a good reminder that people actually read what I write.
Part of my work involves creating video content, managing the creation of video content from others, and building a friendly fan community around games, all for students ages 8-14. Sometimes, working on gaming videos really highlights how inappropriate and angry YouTube gamer culture can be. It ranges from telling everyone who doesn’t love a favorite game that they’re clueless noobs, all the way to telling specific women who don’t love a favorite game that you’re going to rape and kill them. Of course, #NotAllYouTubers. (I’d really like to be wrong about this, though, so if you know the secret password to find the polite and clever vloggers, do share it, ok?)
I definitely don’t mean that every single person who chooses vlogging as their outlet is toxic, clearly. But it’s difficult to find thoughtful games commentary in a sea of hostile vloggers, being loudly nasty about liking the wrong games, engaging with those games the wrong way, not being an arbitrary level of good enough at an arbitrary list of games, not deserving to be a gamer, etc., performing for a community who regularly appear from the ether to swear at each other in the comments. Sometimes I wonder if there’s so much of this angry and hostile content because that’s meeting some horrible inner need.
But then one of my students will send me a game strategy video where he opens by saying it’s only his best strategy, and viewers may have another one, and theirs is probably good too, and I don’t feel so completely hopeless.
I went to an IndieCade talk yesterday, on Subverting Toxic Let’s Play Culture, from Matt Albrecht of the Fourplay show. All of IndieCade makes me feel like I’m among My People, from facemeeting my internet friends and meeting so many creative and brilliant strangers, and like I’m the little kid tagging along with the grownups, just from the sheer talent around me.
This talk was no exception, and I felt both like YEAH SOMEONE FINALLY SAID WHAT WE’RE ALL THINKING! and Man, I would never have figured that out… in rapid succession. You can get Matt Albrecht’s presentation here, and if you’re interested in games criticism, or gaming communities, or building spaces to shares thoughts on games, it’s really worth looking at this presentation. I kind of want everyone to read it. Although, I tweeted the slide in which the Rooster Teeth community managers asks female fans what they’d like more of, and the ladies respond (predictably) with requests for more female talent and fewer rape jokes, and I was (predictably) told off for policing games…. Lots for me to think over after this presentation, as we work to make a fun, safe, and age-appropriate gaming community for our students.
This presentation, and the talks afterwards, have also given me a lot to think about to improve my own language when I write, since there are many small ways to be more inclusive of all readers and viewers.
This is Maeve Binchy’s last book, Chestnut Street. It’s a collection of short stories, most of which I read about an hour after I got it, but there are a couple left and I really don’t want to read them because then I’ll be finished.
I’ve started using MyFitnessPal, an app to track food and exercise. I’m aiming to lose about 5 pounds before summer, but more importantly, I want to make sure my stressful-day fries and my just-this-once candy don’t become everyday food. The process of recording my food is helpful in itself. I’m more mindful of what a portion is and of which food is for everyday and which are for special occasions.
MyFitnessPal says I should be eating under 1200 calories per day, which is not difficult as long as I skip my special-occasion treats.
But.
At the end of the each day, when I tap to say that day’s diary is finished, MyFitnessPal responds with an alert, tells me that I am likely not eating enough, and I should aim for 1200-1000 calories a day. Yeah, I’m supposed to eat under 1200 calories for my 1/2 pound/week weight loss plan, so I eat ~1150, so it tells me that I’m not eating enough, and should be eating between 1200 and 1000. Which EXACTLY what I’m doing. There is literally no way to get it right.
On one hand, I don’t like one aspect of a free app. Wah wah wah! On the other, this is EVERYTHING so screwed up about women and food and weight and body image in one screenshot. Every possible amount of food intake is wrong.
So, this was blatantly stolen from Alice at Reading Rambo, who stole it from Emily at As the Crowe Flies (and Reads). Although, I only answered the questions I felt like answering, and I waited until weeks into 2015 to do so, because you can’t tell me what to do! You’re not the boss of me!
Number Of Books You Read: I stopped entering my GoodReads at 80 because, well, I can read 20 novels in about a week and it was way more than a week before the end of the year, so I definitely had time to hit my 100-books goal. But I am way better at reading than record keeping, which is no surprise to anyone who has ever spent 10 minutes with me, so naturally I never finished writing them all down.
Number of Re-Reads: I reread most of Maeve Binchy, Pride and Prejudice, all the Harry Potters, The Hunger Games trilogy, and One Fifth Avenue, some of these more than once, because those are the books I reread when I am sad.
Genre You Read The Most From: I recently noticed that female-authored historical fiction is classed Historical Romance, while male authors are under Historical Fiction, WHETHER OR NOT THERE IS ACTUAL BODICE-RIPPING, so I’m starting to think some of this categorization thing is a crock. So, fiction. I read a lot of fiction.
Best Book You Read In 2014?
This is either Anita Diamont’s The Boston Girl or Menna von Praag’s The House on Hope Street, both of which are contenders to be added to my rereading collection.
Book You Were Excited About & Thought You Were Going To Love More But Didn’t?
I’d heard really good things about Divergent, but it narrowly missed being my worst book of the year. It’s basically all things people hate in YA (dumb-dumb two-dimensional adults don’t know anything, only kids are smart, there’s a Tortured Love Interest, but they can’t be together because of, uh, reasons, I guess, also the protag is good at everything), with all the things people hate in scifi (this world makes no sense, there is no reason for society to work like this, plus there are blatant ways it isn’t working like this, and also the protag knows everything). I love YA and science fiction, and it was pretty painful to get through.
For a while I used to be pretty obnoxious about having really low expectations going into bestsellers, and this kind of book is exactly why.
Most surprising (in a good way or bad way) book you read in 2014?
Pear-Shaped by Stella Newman and Pretty In Ink by Lindsay Palmer were both billed as fluffy candy chick lit, but neither one really was. Also, I read Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale. I tend to like Hannah’s stories about imperfect relationships, but this one was amazing, a WWII epic adventure, with those human and imperfect relationships, and it brought tears to my eyes.
Best series you started in 2014? Best Sequel of 2014? Best Series Ender of 2014?
I discovered these Doctor Who short stories, which are basically a nice Doctor Who episode in text. I read Doctor Who: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Time Traveller by Joanne Harris, and Doctor Who: The Bog Warriorby Cecelia Ahern. Both of these had cheerful scifi and internal consistency in a bizarre world, just like a good episode of the show, and plus you can tell yourself you’re being an intellectual for reading an entire novel(la) instead of just flopping down in front of the TV.
Favorite new author you discovered in 2014?
Menna Praag of The House on Hope Street. I just received The Dress Shop of Dreams, and I’m really excited to read it.
Best book from a genre you don’t typically read/was out of your comfort zone?
Unsure if Paul Strohm’s biography of Chaucer, Chaucer’s Tale, counts as outside my usual, since I don’t typically read biographies but I do always like Chaucer, so… I liked it as much as Terry Jones’ Who Murdered Chaucer?
I guess if I have two favorite Chaucer biographies, it might be a genre I read. On to the next question!
Most action-packed/thrilling/unputdownable book of the year?
Megan Abbott’s The Fever. Could not stop reading. Teenage girls fall ill of mysterious malady that has something to do with contaminated lake water, or social media, or divine retribution in Salem witch trials kind of way, or maybe they’re making it all up for attention.
9. Book You Read In 2014 That You Are Most Likely To Re-Read Next Year?
The House At The End of Hope Street, The Boston Girl, An Etiquette Guide To The End Times, also all of Harry Potter, Maeve Binchy, and Pride and Prejudice. Like I do.
10. Favorite cover of a book you read in 2014?
I don’t really notice book covers, partly because I do a great deal of reading on my ereader and partly because I don’t really notice covers anyway. Besides, I think there’s some adage about covers, books, and the judging of.
Most beautifully written book read in 2014?
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
I’ve started to review this one several times, and I can’t do it justice. Amazing characters and amazing imagery.
Favorite Passage/Quote From A Book You Read In 2014?
James is scared about his work. Every time he finishes a piece, he’s scared he won’t get another one. When he gets another assignment (he always does, but it doesn’t make any difference), he’s scared he won’t make the deadline. When he makes the deadline, he’s scared his editor (or editors-there are always faceless editors lurking around in dark little offices at magazines), won’t like the piece. When they like the piece, he’s scared that it won’t get published. When it does get published, he’s scared that no one will read it or talk about it and all his hard work will have been for nothing. If people do talk about it (and they don’t always, in which case he’s scared that he’s not a great journalist), he’s scared that he won’t be able to pull it off again.
Four Blondes, Candace Bushnell
I went to the house of Caius Julius Caesar, whose wife, we were given to believe, must be above suspicion.
Favorite Book You Read in 2014 From An Author You’ve Read Previously
All the SPQR novels that I hadn’t already read. Oh, I guess some of those should be on my reread list, too. I restate my earlier point, that reading is fun and record-keeping isn’t.
Best Book You Read In 2014 That You Read Based SOLELY On A Recommendation From Somebody Else/Peer Pressure:
Game of Thrones. My Epic friends applied group pressure, but I’m not sorry they did!
Newest fictional crush from a book you read in 2014?
I have no new fictional crushes because I will never look at another man the way I look at Mr. Darcy.
Marry Smart by Susan Patton. I knew I wasn’t going to like it going in, but I was strangely compelled to see what she said. It was kind of the worst, describing how women have a sell-by date and we better get our hooks into a man with good earning potential, and that the way to do that is through weight loss, highlights, a couple of homemade meals, egostroking, and sexual withholding. But the actual soul-crushing part was the number of reviewers on Amazon and GoodReads saying how true it all was and thanking the author for her honesty.
Book That Made You The Most Mad (doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t like it)?
his is a screenshot, of sorts, from Porpentine’s With Those We Love Alive. I discovered this game through friends on social media sharing photos of their own symbols. I immediately wanted to play it, but put it off until I had real time to devote to it. I’ve got mixed feelings about how my gaming is more in short bursts nowadays (I miss long stretches of Civilization, and how I resent fitting that thirtysomething female player demographic, with my playtime hemmed in by all my adult responsibilities! Still, those adult responsibilities are for work I love, so…) but I would absolutely recommend waiting until you have enough uninterrupted time to play. This isn’t a gameworld for alt-tabbing in and out.
WTWLA begins by letting players know that no choices are wrong, and by offering some choices that seem mainly cosmetic. Pick a birth month, for example, from a list of twelve strange worldbuilding names. Good sci fi presents a world that’s both familiar and foreign, like the vague geography of the Hunger Games’ Panem, or the way Arthur Clark describes future tech, and WTWLA does this from the beginning.
A gross and creepy empress rules a world of dead people and dream stealers. The player is tasked with crafting things for the empress, a role I liked because, well, if you’ve read this blog for a while, I like to make things and when I’m not thrilled with my life and my surroundings, I make more thin, in my visitsgs. (Hey, did you see my story about liiving in the south plus magic, or my story about living the south plus aliens?) I also think being a craftsman is a great hook for a game protag, while being between two worlds usually makes an intriguing novel protagonist.
In the game, I could make small choices, but no large ones. When tasked with crafting something for the Empress, I could choose the least-gross of the material options. I could walk to the lake or to the gardens, and confirm that the descriptions hadn’t changed, except for the occasional dead person appearing. But I couldn’t leave my home in the palace or talk with any friends.
I crafted a telescope immediately, and then wondered endlessly if reading expat blogs while I was stuck in this terrible area was helping or hurting me. Oh, man, did I say reading expat blogs? I totally meant looking through my pretend telescope in this game! How did that slip out?
When I slept, I’d often wake up to a note or a summons from the Empress, so after exploring the permitted areas several times (Any self-respecting point-and-click adventurer investigates carefully), I found myself sleeping a lot in order to progress the game. What a terribly depressing mechanic, sleeping and sleeping in hope of something good happening next.
Sometimes we talk about whether interactive fiction games are fiction or gameplay. I like this conversation better than the one about whether games can be art, because it’s about whether we enjoy IF as reading or as gameplay. But when we talk about message games, about whether Twine games are game experiences if they’re novels you click instead of turning pages, and, geez, when we talk about meaningful game mechanics in general, we should mention this game mechanic in which players sleep days and days way with the hope of something good happening.
Every so often, I’d be told it was time to reapply hormones, but I didn’t want to. Partly because there were some odd things going on with gender and femininity in this game, and partly because I’m an exploratory players, and I wanted to know what would happen if I didn’t. But, since I wasn’t able to sleep without reapplying hormones, and I wasn’t able to advance the plot without sleeping, I just wandered around a lot hoping something would happen and I wouldn’t have to. Spoiler: I had to.
Finally, I met an old friend, and got to make large choices (that were still small choices, in a way). I wasn’t entirely clear on whether this person was a friend or a lover, but I don’t think it much matters. With Those We Love Alive blends careful and unusual language choices with carefully creative IF gameplay, and built to a satisfying storyline conclusion.
Oh, right. The screenshot. At points throughout the game, players are asked to draw a symbol of what their character is experiencing. You’ll be asked to draw symbols of burial or rebirth, loss or connection. There’s no wrong answer, no gameplay mechanic punishes you for poor art skills. I used glitter eyeliner for mine, and painted each symbol carefully on the side of my forearm. I’ve written a lot about about how we as players tend to empathize most with avatars who look like us or avatars we’ve customized and personalized to be more like the way we see ourselves, and actually drawing on my skin to connect with character experiences was an extreme example of both.
Then, of course, it felt weird washing it off immediately, so I found myself scrubbing a green glitter burial rune off my arm before work the next morning.
So I didn’t post a Wednesday picture last week, and today’s screenshot is pretty much the reason why. I’m doing some new things at work (like always!), but this newest assignment involves facilitating creative content from others, both setting in editorial expectations, and in enabling creators to produce quality creative work, making sure they are what Lloyd calls “set up to succeed”. Managing others is not really my favorite thing, which is why I am telling myself this is an editorial position and not a management position.
Since Google knows pretty much everything about us, I can’t wait for it to apply what it’s learned from our checkins and sleeping hours and steptrackers to answer our medical googling. “Google,” I might ask it, “do I have that horrible flu that I recently read about people dying from? Or did I pick up some dread disease eating streetcart food in Beijing?”
And Google would remind me that it saw me watching Downton Abbey at 4 AM, and then check in at work at 9AM, via a tweet about a breakfast donut, so if I’m not feeling my best, I’m probably suffering from direct consequences of my actions, and not from a rare and terrible disease.
“Yeah, thanks, Dr. Google. That’s probably right.”
“Would you like to try GoogleLabs’ beta version of PreDoctor? Our new service will use predictive patterns, and warn you before you engage in risky and destructive behavior.”
“I’m a writer and programming teacher, Dr. Google, I don’t exactly encounter a lot of health-related risks.”
“In your case, after the third unusually late clockout from work*, you’ll be on yellow alert. With the addition of a second risk factor, like excessive Kindle rereads of Harry Potter, a missed checkin at yoga, or increased impulse shopping, you’ll be on red alert, until you have checked in at a fitness location or Instagrammed a healthy meal.”
Anyway, maybe this isn’t so much of a silly app that needs to exist, more something that’s definitely coming. What would your red alert look like?
*I automated my phone to clock in and out at work because otherwise I would forget.
Carolina Blogging’s first skillshare and blogger meetup will be this March, and I’m going to be talking about review blogging, specifically about writing on books and games. But I totally described it in a professional way!
Fangirl to Influencer: Turn Your Love of Pop Culture Into Review Copies and New Readers
As more and more media companies understand the power of popular bloggers, it’s a great time to use your awesome blog and your love of TV, fiction, comics, or games to become an influential reviewer. Strategies for getting advance review media, new readers, press invitations, and more as a review blogger.
ran into Nate, and then he ran into one of his friends, and introduced me.
Number of Re-Reads: I reread most of Maeve Binchy, Pride and Prejudice, all the Harry Potters, The Hunger Games trilogy, and One Fifth Avenue, some of these more than once, because those are the books I reread when I am sad.
by Joanne Harris, and 
by Cecelia Ahern. Both of these had cheerful scifi and internal consistency in a bizarre world, just like a good episode of the show, and plus you can tell yourself you’re being an intellectual for reading an entire novel(la) instead of just flopping down in front of the TV.
Menna Praag of The House on Hope Street. I just received The Dress Shop of Dreams, and I’m really excited to read it.
Unsure if Paul Strohm’s biography of Chaucer, Chaucer’s Tale, counts as outside my usual, since I don’t typically read biographies but I do always like Chaucer, so… I liked it as much as Terry Jones’ Who Murdered Chaucer?
Megan Abbott’s 
This is why I steamed a dish full of radishes. The Internet made me do it.
