On Larissa Glasser’s F4
Larissa Glasser’s F4 is filthy, bizarre, ultra-violent, and hyper-(trans-)sexual, and I’m sure it’s meant to be all those things.
Category: Gender & Sexuality
Self-love #1: conquering ‘narcissism’
A requiem for a man that’s not in my life anymore.
The List
There’s a list, and on the 20th of November, that list gets read (aloud) by many trans people around the world, in remembrance of their departed siblings. #TDoR2018
The Pseudo-Hysterical Female Man
The Female Man wants very badly to be a hysterical novel, but by design, and not spontaneously, it flails about in its confusion, hurting not just itself but the reader as well.
The Symbolic Order of Life and Manhood
The circle of manhood is at the center of the circle of life, which is bound by death.
Too Political
I was banned from my local trans organisation for being too political. As you might expect, I have some thoughts on that.
Transformations
On mental health, the discovery of being trans, and reclaiming my writerly self.
Back to where we began in Quake
In which I ramble a tiny bit about Quake’s symbolic world and its mommy issues, along with a tenuous comparison to Dark Souls.
Future Nostalgia (A Fictional Review of Bientôt l’été)
[From a friend who wishes to remain anonymous, I received the original version of the message below, which was picked up using radio observation of signals from outer space. For the reader’s convenience, I have rendered it in contemporary English, rather than the early modern English in which it was written.]
Archive: Desbaresdes belt > Giraud γ > Orbit of Giraud γ 3 > Wreckage of Sigil, orbital torus space station
File: Anonymous journal entry, textual, untitled, dated 2321/12/16
Description: This log entry, retrieved during the salvage of Sigil station in 2456, appears to be an assessment of a particular type of interactive experience available to users of the station at the time through use of holocommunication transmitters. Remnants of the software which is referred to in the entry have been found in the data logs of Sigil station, and various other stations throughout the galaxy; see > T. Beach Projector.
Time for a Story (On Papers, Please and Gone Home)
Two recent indie release (Papers, Please and Gone Home) inspired me enough to pen a little article last week. Today the piece found a home on The Ontological Geek.
In the article, I explore how Papers, Please simulates the way in which bureaucracies can force us to treat people like cattle, like numbers, like items on a list. Through insidious systems the player — inhabiting the mind of a border official — is forced to spend as little time on immigrants as possible, while still following all the rules imposed by your government. I contrast this to the experience of Gone Home, where we can take all the time we want to dig into the personal lives of an American family, and experience their touching stories.