What I Got Into - October 6, 2024
I’ve recently exited a particularly long phase of no new inputs: periods where my curiosity for the work of others is drained. It’s not always a bad thing - I’m often fixated on and being productive in my own work - but it eventually feels bad and must end. Following this I’m always ravenous. Here’s some of what I’ve enjoyed this week.
Movies
Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Tsukamoto, 1989)
Mike and I kicked off our October horror movies with this depraved metal fuckfest, and were not disappointed. One of those movies that creates a lot of “ah, that’s where [successive act] got it” brain synapses, but also pure enjoyment in its own right. Disgusting and mercifully short. Check it out!
The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (Argento, 1970)
Messy little giallo from early in Argento’s career, and (so I’m told, by experts) formative to the genre itself. Lots of babes screaming as the knife enters from a black leather hand. A few great “here’s what we think computers probably can do” scenes.
The Nightmare Before Christmas (Selick, 1993)
I was obsessed with this movie for a year in college. Then I lost my taste for it until I had kids in my life, and beautiful early-autumn nights to watch it outdoors. There are so many places the movie falls short, yet it’s so original and painstakingly assembled that it truly doesn’t matter, like the most wonderful kitsch object in your home. The image of the tubby corpse-child, eyes stained with tears, wailing “there goes Christmas!” got a howl out of me and the other parents.
Books
The Big Sleep (Chandler, 1939)
The right book removes the whole chore of reading and is pure pleasure. This is just what I needed in my slow start back to reading. Lawless mugs, conniving broads, and a classic 30s mystery, all painted on a sprawling California roadmap. I’d like to follow this one with The Long Goodbye because I like not making choices.
Games
Case of the Golden Idol: The Lemurian Vampire DLC (Color Gray Games, 2023) Just slurping up the last meager drops of this game before I sit dormant and wait for the sequel. The DLCs were diminishing returns, getting far too convoluted and requiring you to collect words like “to” and assemble essays from 50 different conversations and notes, but castaway-era Zubiri Kerra was my boyfriend and I had to see it through for him.
Judero (Talha Kaya, 2024)
Occasionally I buy a game just to hand it to my brother and watch him play, and Joe came through on this one. It’s such a joy to see a game of such blood and tears reach completion. Although I can’t comment on the gameplay, aesthetically it’s a strange and soulful return to the lost art of stop-motion assets, in the vein of The Neverhood. Wonderful voice acting and delightful movement.
A Space For the Unbound (Mojiken, 2023)
Been playing this with my son on weekends for a while. So far, lots of impossible-to-flub fetch quests and puzzles that have me feeling bored. For a point n’ click beginner though, it’s just what the doctor ordered. The graphics are beautiful and the UI is intuitive and fun. My son loves that you can pet (and name) every cat you encounter.
Starting a new paragraph to say: I’m trying hard not to blame every game praised for its “great story” for not actually having one; players’ expectations in this area are simply not high. But can I get a game with a good story ova hea?
Return of the Obra Dinn (Lucas Pope, 2018)
I’m a miserably inattentive player - especially at the end of the night - and it took me about 90 minutes of fumbling about before I actually understood the loop of this game. Now I’m freshly addicted and loving it, and already anticipating how sad I’ll be when the book is filled in.
Music
Dance, No One’s Watching (Ezra Collective, 2024)
On rare occasions I’m reminded that almost none of the dance music I listen to is made by physical instruments. Ezra Collective is the cure with their breath-hot rhythms, intimate coat room run-ins, and dollar wine-fueled manifestos.
Imaginal Disk (Magdalena Bay, 2024)
Bless these nutballs for such an ambitious follow-up to Mercurial World. I’ve only scratched the surface but this feels like another banger for me. This band does for me what Grimes did the decade previous, and Of Montreal the decade before that. You can’t predict where that love will come from, and isn’t that special?
Devotion (Jessie Ware, 2012)
Cracking this one open for pure nostalgia, it doesn’t dazzle like it used to but the pain is still exquisite. I love that Jessie Ware “went disco” after this one, those albums are lots of fun, but I’ll never connect with her like I did this one year, when I was looking for the desperate bargaining in songs like “Running” and “Still Love Me”, the furied grief of “Who Says No To Love?” and the troubled self-mythology of “Night Light” and “Wildest Moments”. Take me back to my sorrow, only briefly.
Food
At the risk of this being a lifestyle blog, I’ll try to document some of the great meals I’ve had. Food is so much more ephemeral than anything else here, so why not savor it however I can? (Note that if you see it here, it is most likely vegan.)
For our 9th wedding anniversary Mike and I had dinner at Soda Club in NYC. Fantastic pasta tasting menu, including 3 filled pastas that put me out of commission before the last bite. The final dish (the one I sadly couldn’t finish) was my favorite and by far the richest: a ravioli with lemon curd and ricotta. A great experience that I hope to repeat, but I’ll order off the menu next time. Not wanting to make choices gets me in all kinds of trouble.
It was a busy week, and we didn’t manage to cook a special dinner on Rosh Hashanah. Fortunately NY’s Orchard Grocer provided matzo ball soup, Russ & Daughters had the pickle hookup, we picked up a great loaf of challah at Crust back in Philly, and some pomegranates and apples given by a houseguest went great in a salad. Add a few cans of diet Dr. Brown’s Cherry and we were feasting Friday night. Shana tova!
Scattered Thoughts on Being Seen
Today Cohost goes read-only, and as of writing this its users are still playfully grasping at branches before they’re scattered to the winds. I meant to write something else on there before the end, but I’ve said what I meant to say, and - thanks to the ethos it helped to instill in me - I have no further need to be seen there. My post from a few weeks ago is more truthful than anything I can say now under the pressure of the moment.
It has me thinking about being seen vs. being remembered, and how, in our current landscape, the former is almost solely designed to conflict with the latter. It was strange to be remembered on Cohost. As a micro-famous personality of the indie sleaze web, I vaguely felt like I didn’t belong. It doesn’t feel entirely genuine to approach people who already (to a limited extent) know your deal. Cohost users shared so much of themselves - so much that I carried through my days - and I lurked more than I posted or commented (which I may end up regretting, now that it’s too late).
It was also lovely to be remembered, as if I’m seeing a return on an investment that no longer requires my attention. It was a balm in a present reality where being visible is not a given for anyone. In my daily real-world interactions I am, by and large, my son’s mother, a role I’m quite proud of but only a fraction of my being. (I’m working on this, slowly forging a local games community, but boy does it take time.) In my online life I am locked in a years-long struggle for visibility that no game developer is free to neglect.
Being familiar to someone for years of comic-making work that was once central to my life, but over time has flattened, is like drinking a mild tea. I get a little kick - nothing strong enough to hook me - and it does my heart well.
That was the beauty of Cohost, and the thing I’ll be looking for in the years ahead. To be something worth remembering means imbuing language and images with power, and somehow, against the odds, reaching others. It’s easy to scream into a crowd and let eyes brush over you. That’s sometimes all our world seems to offer. But we have more to offer each other - not just immediately, but in the long timeline of our lives and our collective memory. I’ll continue to imagine a world where we can know that.
Dev Log: September 24, 2024
It’s been 2.5 years, and where are we at? Here’s the latest update on Perfect Tides: Station to Station.
mom cooks.
The latest playable iteration of Act 3 has been finished, with Act 4 underway. It’s been a demanding but fruitful few months getting everything into shape for internal testing. If I keep hitting planned milestones, this stage wraps in November and I move on to systems, wrestling the trickiest bits of code, and making everything [redacted]-ready.
feature packed, isn’t it?
I hesitate to use the word “alpha” since there are apparently many definitions of it these days, including games that are fully for sale to the public. I want to stress that there is still at least another 8-12 months of work. There is so much unfinished artwork that I have to block it out of my mind. But I know that won’t be the hard part. Aside from a couple of minigames that remain in shambles, this is no longer a vague assembly of parts. This is a fully playable game built around a complete story, and I am getting very close to letting people (the ones who aren’t closely working on it with me) test it out.
this bitch wears a dress??
I continue to be very happy with the game. These waves of optimism about its near-completion come and go. It’s possible that tomorrow I’ll be sinking into misery again over the scope of it. But that happens less and less these days as its features and scope lock in. The game is in the pot, and I’ll be hitting “simmer” before long.
If you’re interested in playtesting the game, keep your eyes glued to this blog! I will be offering that information as soon as I have it, hopefully by the end of this year.
And in the meantime, please wishlist the game if you haven’t! Developers rely on building these wishlists for a successful launch, and every little bit helps.