Melissa Avery-Weir @melissa@irrsinn.life

I've been playing some truly awesome small indie games in the last few months. I archive my streams over at https://irrsinn.video/video-channels/melissa_channel/videos, and I work to get closed captioning on them within a week of uploading.

If you're looking for some game recs, I'd suggest checking them out. Just about all of them take between 10 min and 3 hours, so these are quite small games by conventional standards. You can subscribe to a Peertube channel w/ a Mastodon account, too.

#indiegame

An #introduction: I'm Melissa (they/them)! Some of my projects are in my bio, but in general I am and do:

#gamedev & #podcasting

#gardening #succulents #cacti

#asexual / #grayace / #queer

#polyamory #relationshipanarchy

I write. I #webdev. I play way too much Fallen London. I collect tattoos. I will not call posts "toots".

I like learning to be more imaginative in devising solutions to difficult problems. 🎊

I'm live on twitch! Come hang out with me while I play Oikospiel: https://www.twitch.tv/averymd #magic

This examination of Fight Club is so good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjLOFLE4JRw Maggie Mae Fish starts with the idea that Tyler Durden is the actual narrator of the story (not Jack) and takes off running from there.

There are too many good parts to highlight, but there's a discussion of monoform in the middle that I found fascinating. The idea is new to me, and seeing it as a distinct technique has me mentally revisiting a few movies.

Also: Sixth Sense and Fight Club came out in the same year. 🤯

I don't know how some folks are surprised about CAH being a company of shitheads? They literally wrote their racist thoughts down and sold it to folks for actual dollars. 💁🏾

I've always left a bit of space for marginalized folks who play as a form of catharsis (heard at a poly conf), but games and game design do come from real people with real thoughts, even if--and I'm being sarcastically generous here--the work is being """ironic""".

CAH has never been good or funny.

To be frank, though, it doesn't matter what the fuck comes off those body cams when the police have the "unlawful protest" policy that they do:

"This point is very important: Once a protest is deemed unlawful, it is unlawful for the rest of the night, no matter how the crowd acts from that point forward or how much time goes by without incident."

NC state senator Jeff Jackson did a pleasantly thorough review of the June 2 police attack on protestors here in Charlotte: https://medium.com/@Jeff_Jackson/review-of-incident-in-charlotte-on-4th-street-on-the-evening-of-june-2nd-2963d4598500

I trusted him to be thorough in his investigation, and while he's not the abolitionist (can we reuse that term now?) I wish he was, the incremental changes he suggests are a fine place to start.

#blacklivesmatter #charlotteprotests

I'm live on twitch! Come hang out with me while I play Dandara: https://www.twitch.tv/averymd #magic

I'm live on twitch! Come hang out with me while I play BioShock: https://www.twitch.tv/averymd #magic

Ugh, this is bad. I knew the money was terrible and that access to facilities and training was subpar, but the details are still striking:

https://victorypress.org/2020/05/10/behind-the-game-former-players-detail-life-in-the-nwhl/

For the NWHL's only response to be to call it a smear campaign is gross. It reads as if all they can see is their current squabble with the PWHPA instead of the substance of the piece or the feelings of players. Workers rights are important, and from contracts to facilities, they've been handing out table scraps.