June Link Roundup
Jun. 10th, 2021 01:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aprilmarchAeons ago, I used to post links I found online and liked on my Google+ page. Since it has been cruelly culled for being too good for this rotten world, I've been a link orphan. When I find a link I like, I must trawl all my social networks to find the Discord channel, the Telegram group, the one person who I think will most enjoy it. And often, oh so painfully often - they don't.
This ends today. I'll now create a monthly post with cool links I've seen that month, and I get that sharing high without knowing or caring if anyone read this! Yay!
1992 Silverwolf
This is part of a project that aims to discuss 50 Interactive Fiction games, also known as text adventures, with one such game for each year. I'm a huge nerd, so I love that, but even if you don't, please, go read it. That article is, in many ways, responsible for this post, since I had nowhere to post it but I really wanted to share it around.
I've been reading a lot of stories about fictional media lately (as later links will show) and, midway through this article, I actually wondered if it wasn't one of those. A mysterious secret school, that eschewed modern technology but somehow developed several acclaimed computer games, and that was an arm of a radical political collective? That sounds too wonderful to be true. And, yet, it is, and I drunk it up.
Can Post-Revolution Yerevan Come to Grips with its Informal Architecture Epidemic?
Another article in the "I can't believe this isn't fictional" party. Yerevan, the Armenian capital, has shanty housed built on top of nearly every building. A combination of suprisingly laid-back Soviet policies and surprisingly friendly capitalist developments means that these rickety additions are found everywhere and have legal backing tying them to their owners. They're also a major part of the city's identity. Architects and politicians have no idea how to deal with them, but that doesn't mean they're a striking sight.
The Town that Went Feral
I actually read this some time ago, but it popped in my feed again recently and it was too good not to share.
It starts with a simple plan: libetarians move to a small town intent on muscling their way into politics and turning it into a model Libertarian project. It ends with bears. Lots of bears.
The Club
Fiction. Not a detective story as much as a story about a detective.
I'm going to talk about Agatha Christie's stories now, so if you don't want spoilers for Murder on the Orient Express, Cards on the Table or Curtains, skip the next paragraph. Yeah, I know the oldest of those books is from 1936, but I haven't read all books that exist, and maybe you haven't yet.
I love Agatha Christie's novels, and there's a lot to be said about her approach to storytelling. Christie's stories had the inescapable eye of a Christian god locked onto its characters; the culprit is always punished. The story in which this is more evident (out of the ones I've read) is Cards on the Table. Three murderers are shown; one of them is arrested; the remaining ones, through fate, die. In this way, Poirot's unstoppable search for justice is a mercy; the culprit he found in Cards is the only one to live. Murder on the Orient Express is the only book in which Poirot very deliberately decides not to execute the guilty part, but that is mostly because it transpires that it has been investigating its murder all along. This comes to a head on Curtains, when Poirot himself becomes the killer, and allows God to choose his fate; we of course know the God in this stories is not a forgiving one, so Poirot might as well have committed suicide.
But a more interesting issue has arisen in Curtains. Poirot says he's chasing a strange murderer who never seems to be guilty, but who seems to be around a lot of murders. Well, I know another character in this situation - Poirot himself, who cannot go on a train ride or plant some squashes without someone being mysteriously assassinated. Is Poirot a murderer himself?
I'm not sure this was the impetus behind this excellent short story, but it comes from a similar place - and takes place in a world free from Christie's faultless God, where some criminals do walk out. I usually don't think enough about stories that I can figure out plot twists ahead of time, and when I do I'm usually annoyed. Not for this one, though; when I figured it out, I was grinning like a maniac.
REPORTS FROM OSR LAND
Every once in a while, I start looking at OSR blogs and just get lost in them for a while. They should be anathema to me, since I'm very openly a fan of narrative RPGs over simulationist, but they often have a range of weirdness that I absolutely love. I suspect more stuff from them will trickle down to this blog in the future. (In fact, The Club, linked above, came from one of these blogs.) Here are the links that marked me the most.
Anomalous Media
These are just lists of weird media Meant for plot hooks on RPGs, pretty awesome as prompts, or just as weirdo mood pieces. As someone who loves apocryphal stories and secondhand descriptions, this is like catnip to me. Some of those media are anomalous in the SCP foundation sense, some of them are only weird. I'm currently in the process of writing a list like these of my own, but it might take a while because I do not have any restraint. (In fact, this item was meant to be one of the entries in my list, but it grew to become its own thing.)
d20 Anomalous Media (this is the original, as far as I can tell)
d20 More Anomalous Media
1d20 More Anomalous Media
d20 Additional Anomalous Media (CW: racism, anorexia, self-harm)
The Black Auction
Another collection of short story hooks.
If there's something I like even more than media that's just strange, it's objects that are just strange. Curiously, the opposite is also true. Add in a little context, and I'm in love. Happy Valentines' Day.
One | Two | Three
Hard and Soft Tools
I simply couldn't be expected to dive into RPG blogs and not dredge up some theorycrafting with me. I mean, why else would one read RPG blogs? Preparations for playing? Ha ha, what a delightful concept! As if anyone plays RPGs.
As a big proponent of the idea that system doesn't matter except when it does (or, in a more elaborate conception, that a gaming group can override shortcomings in a gaming system but a system that fits well better lubricates the interaction between players, fiction and mechanics) this article presents a very well-estabilished explanation as to how systems shapes play. It's well known that players tend to optimize the fun out of games, but they can do so subconciously, simply by trying to use their tools well. She gives a very believable explanation of why Vampire games tend to turn into 'supers with fangs' instead of the game of personal horror it was designed to be, and some time later she even made a better one.
Music this month is Feline and Strange's Pretty Please.
My favourite band Birdeatsbaby recently sent a bonus album to everyone who'd ever bought anything on their Bandcamp page. I'm not one to not enjoy free stuff, but in this case every single song in the album is an absolute banger. However, in my opinion, Pretty Please is the most banger.
This ends today. I'll now create a monthly post with cool links I've seen that month, and I get that sharing high without knowing or caring if anyone read this! Yay!
1992 Silverwolf
This is part of a project that aims to discuss 50 Interactive Fiction games, also known as text adventures, with one such game for each year. I'm a huge nerd, so I love that, but even if you don't, please, go read it. That article is, in many ways, responsible for this post, since I had nowhere to post it but I really wanted to share it around.
I've been reading a lot of stories about fictional media lately (as later links will show) and, midway through this article, I actually wondered if it wasn't one of those. A mysterious secret school, that eschewed modern technology but somehow developed several acclaimed computer games, and that was an arm of a radical political collective? That sounds too wonderful to be true. And, yet, it is, and I drunk it up.
Can Post-Revolution Yerevan Come to Grips with its Informal Architecture Epidemic?
Another article in the "I can't believe this isn't fictional" party. Yerevan, the Armenian capital, has shanty housed built on top of nearly every building. A combination of suprisingly laid-back Soviet policies and surprisingly friendly capitalist developments means that these rickety additions are found everywhere and have legal backing tying them to their owners. They're also a major part of the city's identity. Architects and politicians have no idea how to deal with them, but that doesn't mean they're a striking sight.
The Town that Went Feral
I actually read this some time ago, but it popped in my feed again recently and it was too good not to share.
It starts with a simple plan: libetarians move to a small town intent on muscling their way into politics and turning it into a model Libertarian project. It ends with bears. Lots of bears.
The Club
Fiction. Not a detective story as much as a story about a detective.
I'm going to talk about Agatha Christie's stories now, so if you don't want spoilers for Murder on the Orient Express, Cards on the Table or Curtains, skip the next paragraph. Yeah, I know the oldest of those books is from 1936, but I haven't read all books that exist, and maybe you haven't yet.
I love Agatha Christie's novels, and there's a lot to be said about her approach to storytelling. Christie's stories had the inescapable eye of a Christian god locked onto its characters; the culprit is always punished. The story in which this is more evident (out of the ones I've read) is Cards on the Table. Three murderers are shown; one of them is arrested; the remaining ones, through fate, die. In this way, Poirot's unstoppable search for justice is a mercy; the culprit he found in Cards is the only one to live. Murder on the Orient Express is the only book in which Poirot very deliberately decides not to execute the guilty part, but that is mostly because it transpires that it has been investigating its murder all along. This comes to a head on Curtains, when Poirot himself becomes the killer, and allows God to choose his fate; we of course know the God in this stories is not a forgiving one, so Poirot might as well have committed suicide.
But a more interesting issue has arisen in Curtains. Poirot says he's chasing a strange murderer who never seems to be guilty, but who seems to be around a lot of murders. Well, I know another character in this situation - Poirot himself, who cannot go on a train ride or plant some squashes without someone being mysteriously assassinated. Is Poirot a murderer himself?
I'm not sure this was the impetus behind this excellent short story, but it comes from a similar place - and takes place in a world free from Christie's faultless God, where some criminals do walk out. I usually don't think enough about stories that I can figure out plot twists ahead of time, and when I do I'm usually annoyed. Not for this one, though; when I figured it out, I was grinning like a maniac.
REPORTS FROM OSR LAND
Every once in a while, I start looking at OSR blogs and just get lost in them for a while. They should be anathema to me, since I'm very openly a fan of narrative RPGs over simulationist, but they often have a range of weirdness that I absolutely love. I suspect more stuff from them will trickle down to this blog in the future. (In fact, The Club, linked above, came from one of these blogs.) Here are the links that marked me the most.
Anomalous Media
These are just lists of weird media Meant for plot hooks on RPGs, pretty awesome as prompts, or just as weirdo mood pieces. As someone who loves apocryphal stories and secondhand descriptions, this is like catnip to me. Some of those media are anomalous in the SCP foundation sense, some of them are only weird. I'm currently in the process of writing a list like these of my own, but it might take a while because I do not have any restraint. (In fact, this item was meant to be one of the entries in my list, but it grew to become its own thing.)
d20 Anomalous Media (this is the original, as far as I can tell)
d20 More Anomalous Media
1d20 More Anomalous Media
d20 Additional Anomalous Media (CW: racism, anorexia, self-harm)
The Black Auction
Another collection of short story hooks.
If there's something I like even more than media that's just strange, it's objects that are just strange. Curiously, the opposite is also true. Add in a little context, and I'm in love. Happy Valentines' Day.
One | Two | Three
Hard and Soft Tools
I simply couldn't be expected to dive into RPG blogs and not dredge up some theorycrafting with me. I mean, why else would one read RPG blogs? Preparations for playing? Ha ha, what a delightful concept! As if anyone plays RPGs.
As a big proponent of the idea that system doesn't matter except when it does (or, in a more elaborate conception, that a gaming group can override shortcomings in a gaming system but a system that fits well better lubricates the interaction between players, fiction and mechanics) this article presents a very well-estabilished explanation as to how systems shapes play. It's well known that players tend to optimize the fun out of games, but they can do so subconciously, simply by trying to use their tools well. She gives a very believable explanation of why Vampire games tend to turn into 'supers with fangs' instead of the game of personal horror it was designed to be, and some time later she even made a better one.
Music this month is Feline and Strange's Pretty Please.
My favourite band Birdeatsbaby recently sent a bonus album to everyone who'd ever bought anything on their Bandcamp page. I'm not one to not enjoy free stuff, but in this case every single song in the album is an absolute banger. However, in my opinion, Pretty Please is the most banger.
