July has ripped on by (and I say that because I have been on holiday, and am writing this quite early in the month, truth be told). I could say any old bollocks and it’d just be seen as me being quirky. Actually, I shouldn’t joke because the current thing is a lockdown that I have seen referred to as potentially extended to Christmas and uh fuck that.
Anyway!
June had four Game Pile articles this month, which is the usual number. We have two text articles, and three, count ’em three video articles:
- I made a video of me playing (and failing to beat) Hurtin’ Hermits, a minigame from the Hermitcraft server.
- I considered the works of Raven Software in light of their 1992 game Shadowcaster.
- I reconsidered the blind eye I’d turned to problems in Shadow Warrior when I looked at Shadow Warrior 2.
- I got to talk about Familiar Alchemy, and complain about ‘semi-cooperative.’
- And then a video about the Buck Rogers: Battle for the 25th Century Game, but really, just a bunch of dumping on how messed up the history of TSR is.
While that happened, what about the Story Pile?
- Sk8 The Infinity. I liked this anime of hot boys that really, really should be making out.
- Mitchells Vs The Machines. Just out of Pride month, a disappointing thing that didn’t belong in Pride Month.
- Widget The World Watcher. A cartoon from my childhood that I wrote about in January and cast to this time in the month.
- Gen:Lock, a web animation anime that kind of has no right to be as amazing as it is.
This month I also started on the project We Are The Night, which I kicked off by making a post that just explained the idea. Part of the point of making in public is making sure that you’re aware of not just the things that are done, but the way things get worked on – and sometimes that just means things stop, and that’s okay. That also led to a followup post later in the month. We’ll see how regular those posts are. This public making continued as I worked on redeveloping The Botch for a print-and-play environment.
I wrote about Feeling Superman, and about my weekendless childhoods due to the Working Bees. I also made a Masterpost of my Netflix Marvel posts, bringing them together in a nicely easily read way, all for convenient reference. In my study posting, though, I took an opportunity to explain the idea of Caillois’ axes of play, through the medium of Transformers toys.
I wrote a sad article, because I don’t like being unduly negative about Magic: The Gathering about how I’m not interested in Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, which is a bummer to have written. While I was in a D&D mood, though, I also talked about The Hexblade back in 3.5, a class that’s kind of still misbegotten in 4e, and the Swallowers, a kind of jokey memey heritage of friendly non-evil Beholderkin.
As I write this, we are in extended lockdown. I had a PhD timetable written up in January, that was, based on the information presented by the government in that month, expecting that I’d have my COVID vaccine right now. This lockdown is being treated as if it’s the fault of dirty poors transmitting their viruses around, while rich people go about their days unaffected by the rules that the rest of us live under. It’s possible by the time this article goes up, things change.
But for now it’s going to be a darkly ironic note, since I’m seeing it more likely I get my vaccine in 2022.
If you’re, like me, in the Balance Of The Remainder category, you can pick up stickers or shirts and laugh hollowly.
Fingers crossed things don’t get worse.