If April is the cruelest month, November might be the most contemplative. Today I played a little Solitaire, a little Snood, and several rounds of Shenzhen Solitaire, lost in thought.
I was finally firing up Kind Words: lofi chill beats to write to when a pop-up notified me that its sequel, Kind Words 2 (lofi city pop), had been released. I’d intended Kind Words 2 to be a day-one purchase, but time got away from me (it was released a little over a year ago, October 2024).
So I bought and installed Kind Words 2 at last, and I am very impressed with this sequel.
The original Kind Words, first released in the summer of 2019, is simple enough: your agender elven chibi avatar sits at a little writing desk in an isometric, box-shaped bedroom, like a dormitory room that kind of floats in the void of space. Lo-fi music plays in the background, riffing on the then-newish concept of “beats to relax/study to.” This idea of a dedicated, soothing virtual space for productivity or concentration has since appeared in standalone and web applications like Virtual Cottage and Spirit City: Lofi Sessions (for effective body doubling), as well as Flocus and Wonderspace. (Ghibli-pilled vaporwave cottagecore is the aesthetic of choice for tortured work-from-home university students, who tend to refer to this complicated audiovisual aesthetic as “aesthetic.”)
From the safety of isolation at your desk, you can anonymously reply to “Requests”—that is, anonymous notes seeking advice or support. Sending a ‘good’, helpful reply is only mildly incentivized: grateful recipients cannot continue the conversational exchange, but they can gift you a “sticker” in return. As your sticker sheet fills up, little decorative objets d’art—plushies or other collectible figurines—appear in your room.
On ‘down’ or ‘blue’ days I’ve never sent a request, but I’ve compulsively answered them. It’s a low-stakes way to feel useful, connected, without the investment or commitment of full-fledged friendship.
Sitting on a bench in Kind Words 2.
“Paper airplanes” also perpetually drift by, and you can click on one to unfold and read it. Paper planes are intended for transmitting one-off confessions or ‘deep thoughts’, but tend instead to contain adages or other general words of support.
This info is from September, but it only just reached Celebitchy: A.I.-generated R&B vocalist Xania Monet has charted five times on Billboard, mostly thanks to ‘digital song sales’ (a milestone that can easily be gamed, supposing you have the funds—just sayin’). In an interview with CNN’s Victor Blackwell, Xania’s rep Romel Murphy explains that the human behind Xania, Telisha Nikki Jones, has “been a poet for years” and is singing her lyrics directly into Suno. (Create stunning original music for free in seconds, Suno’s website reads.) Her voice is tuned and augmented—or replaced completely—using plugins.
“Society has a norm for singers,” Murphy goes on to tell CNN. “Your voice has to be a certain type, your look has to be a certain type.”
This made me feel ill. I have empathy for Telisha (supposing she is a real person and not just Romel’s invention, functioning as another layer of security between himself and the rest of the world). I know I gave up acting because of my weight gain; people give up on their dreams all the time because they don't ‘look the part’. Sure! Showing up as yourself is the hardest, most radical thing!
I became friendly acquaintances with Laura Albert in 2006 after writing a lengthy Internet comment (lol) defending JT LeRoy—a defense I’m not sure I’d type out twice—and I also went to bat for Nicki Minaj soon after she was caught shaving two whole years off her age. (Onika Maraj plays the role of Nicki Minaj, I’d argued at the time.) Oh, well. Short-sighted as I may’ve been, this is the central theme behind Jem, Hannah Montana, Batman: we use alter egos, avatars, in order to feel bulletproof. Isn’t that armor necessary when you are commodifying yourself? To shield the authentic, mushy core from being consumed entirely?
Consider even just the proliferation of VTubing: Individuals are acutely aware that if they have a single perceptible flaw, they’ll be mobbed over it, deplatformed over it, especially if they are already femme-presenting in some ephemeral way. It feels like the A.I. apocalypse will be driven by human insecurity—the insecurity over not being the perfect commodity, the perfect product.
Thanks to my last post, multiple people recommended Xenotilt to me. I indeed purchased Xenotilt at launch and had already played 3.5 hours of it. But for whatever reason, I just could not get into it at the time.
I owe Xenotilt a huge apology. It is a better game than Demon’s Tilt. There’s just so much more: more flippers; more player agency; also, a lot more chaos; more adversaries and visual clutter on the table; more movement; more strategy.
Most important, there are many, many more pathways, more tracks around the table, particularly leading out of the lowest playfield. In video pinball games it can be frustrating to get ‘trapped’ in the bottom field, circling the drain; in Xenotilt, there is almost always a surprising avenue upward. (Pinball class mobility?) There’s seemingly more U.X. generosity, more flipper-collision forgiveness, as well. Which is good!, because the table’s attacks on the little ball are a lot more aggressive this time around.
There’s even more ‘monstrous feminine’! I love the theming of the original Demon’s Tilt, pitting the player against Lilith, who is sort of the voice of the ghost in the machine; in Xenotilt, the player’s ball is explicitly trapped inside the belly of the she-beast. Terrific. (Everything—everything—reminds me of the Jonathan Lethem novella This Shape We’re In.)
My aging gaming laptop is finally plugged in and charging again (I need it for work). Do you know how long software updates take when your computer has been unplugged for a full year? It’s a while.
Under “favorites” in my Steam library, only four games are listed: Capcom Fighting Collection, Demon’s Tilt, Dredge, and World of Horror. Incidentally, these are the four games I can be counted on to immediately start playing after a year of computerlessness, and these are also all horror-themed games.
Well, it is always Halloween in my heart. A little over a year ago I claimed I would “never be able to enjoy horror again.” Since then I’ve come to accept that horror is just a part of life—albeit not the genre I’d personally choose to be trapped in full-time. Superficially I guess I look and sound exactly like I did one full year ago, with the same favorite movies and video games and belief systems as before, just deepened and weirdened. Well, they do say growth is in the shape of a spiral. Anyway, the games:
The Capcom Fighting Collection contains I think every Darkstalkers release? It contains five Darkstalkers arcade games, that’s what I’m saying—plus Super Puzzle Fighter II, which, despite not being a fighting game, is a Darkstalkers game. I've already written about my love for Darkstalkers in the context of the “fighter guardian” trope, but I can’t stop mentioning it, apparently.
Demon’s Tilt is a video-pinball homage to the beloved title Devil’s Crush for the Turbografx-16, but way more neon and laser-blooded. It’s probably my favorite game ever?
Unless Dredge is my favorite game ever. Steam says I’ve played it for 91 hours, and that’s not including the time I’ve played it on Nintendo Switch. Anyway, it’s the Lovecraftian fishing game. You play a fisherman with a beard; your avatar is basically a boat. I will never shut up about this game. I keep opening it to F.A.F.O. while trying (again) to complete my Fish-o-Pedia. They added a bunch of new fishies in the Iron Rig expansion, and I’ve been sweating it ever since.
World of Horror is lit. When we were in mandatory lockdown in early 2020, I just sat at the kitchen counter and played the dick off this. In a time that felt absolutely unreal—do you remember the constant cuts to an audience that wasn't there on the Masked Singer?—this game was the only thing in an incoherent world that made any sense to me. I bought it three times: once from itch.io for macOS, once on Steam, once on Nintendo Switch. For legal reasons the Junji Ito references had to be toned down in subsequent updates, but the game is still good. Steam says I’ve played it for 1100 hours, which cannot be right. One time I downloaded an “all of them” usermod pack and installed them simultaneously (“just fuck me up”), and this game was a straight nightmare—unplayable, unintelligible, masocore, and also beyond pornographic, which for me is just the worst possible combination of qualities. Enjoy!
I wrote most of this on September 25 or so, then took a surprise flight to Florida. Now I’m back! I’m back! I feel like this link roundup is unusually video-heavy.
Lofi Girl Halloween – beats to get chills to (video link) - The streaming-radio YouTube channel has returned with its seasonal playlist. Update: The livestream restarted/moved; as of September 30 it’s over here, lol.
Normal Man (video link) - Nick Lutsko is at it again, posting one new song a week all season long (this one apparently went live when Ted and I were both on airplanes). The song itself is about pregnancy body-horror movie tropes, but it's also about a beloved family movie classic.
“Fear Street”: R.L. Stine’s Gruesome ‘Cheerleaders’ Saga is Full of Evil and Spirit - It's that time of year again where all I wanna do is reread R.L. Stine's Cheerleaders Trilogy (which contains, at last count, five books). The first three books are maybe Stine's best work ever. Spoilers at the link; read only if you think you'll need some convincing.
The Qudelix-5K DAC is an inexpensive EQ tinkerer's dream - Wish I'd gotten this DAC in the first place!! I don't know anything about hifi audio, but my cheap in-ear Sennheisers must've had higher ✨impedance✨ than my over-ear headphones, because I destroyed my Belkin adapter after one night of watching YouTube. I replaced the dongle with an inscrutable FiiO DAC.
The Qudelix 5K, by comparison, is effortless to use. I plugged it in and confirmed it was working, then opened the corresponding app to adjust the audio and to choose an EQ preset. I picked the preset someone had already made for my model of headphones. Easy! Done!
It's the Autumn Equinox [at the time of writing, anyway], the day of the year when day and night are equal in length! From this point forward, at least here in the Northern hemisphere, the nights will be getting longer. (inserting an edit: I mean, they were already getting longer… oh my god, you know what I mean.)
This week's links are all about, in some way or another, striving for simplicity.
First off, you can pry my Palma from my cold stiff swollen hands and, second, you'd follow similar steps if you just wanted to dumbify your iPhone for distraction-free focus. You could try it!
Somewhat related, a lot of the kids these days are using obsolete iPhones in lieu of iPods: a 3.5mm audio jack means the device is its own DAC, no expensive dongle required. (Man, using a decent pair of headphones has become pointlessly complicated anymore — I now have three DACs and an mp3 player, two bluetooth dongles, and multiple headphone jack adapters for my Apple devices. I’m so over it.)
Adventure Games Promo is Here! – GOG is running a major sale, with new and old classics like Dredge, Blade Runner, and Sleeping Dogs, selling for next to nothing. For the Halloween season you might dip into any number of chilling old point-and-clicks, including Shadow of the Comet, Waxworks, Realms of the Haunting, the Elvira games, Harvester, or D. (If point-and-click adventures are not your bag, there are like a gajillion other GOG sales going.)
Five nights ago before bed, I played Alien for Atari Lynx, a 10-year-old homebrew port of the 1984 computer game. It got me thinking about Aliens Roguelike; I’d really like to play it again! But I couldn’t get the Mac version started on my MacBook, or the Linux versions started on my Steam Deck. Not even the Windows version would launch in Proton or Wine! God (or Weyland-Yutani) doesn’t want me to play it, I guess, but if you have a Windows machine sitting near you, it is a pretty freaky game.
Speaking of pretty freaky, Frontiers of the Mind (Windows only, for now) launched up just fine on my Steam Deck. I’m super into multimedia/Macromedia slideshow edutainment from the 1990s, so this presentation style was right up my alley. I toyed with the cursed software for a long time before looking up the British TV show “Knightmare” (video link), and how can this even be real. I left the show playing on my iPad Thursday and, as I was typing this sentence, I glanced up to see a child standing inside an animated undulating meat room (s1e4). Anyway, there’s some secret Easter Egg material in the game; Ted found the first two, while I have found nothing.
Today I installed Minesweeper and Poker Poker Magic on my Playdate. The latter is a Puyo-like falling-brick game, but it uses playing cards instead of color-matching as its primary mechanic (for obvious reasons).
I'm also very slowly downloading the Windows horror game Frontiers of the Mind on the strength of this write-up (via @juv3nal.bsky.social) and will try to install it on the Steam Deck using Lutris (I guess??). In other thrilling news, the new Analogue Pocket firmware came out today. I updated my device and was delighted to be alerted about an Atari Lynx core, finally ported from MiSTer! Hurrah!
I wrote this, about Cohost and for Cohost, in the aftermath of its cofounders’ amazing co-talk at XOXO 2024. Today I opened Cohost to learn that the platform’s future is in pretty explicit jeopardy. With the understanding that what I wrote there will likely fall into the sea and dissolve, I am reprinting it here.
So here’s something I was talking to the Cohost co-founders about a couple nights ago, because I think it’s kind of interesting: About a year ago I joined Spacehey, a revival of Myspace, because I still had all my old assets from 2007 and was excited to slap up a facsimile of my profile as it had last existed.
One of the first things I did as a Spacehey user was to take part of a day to figure out how to get music to loop and autoplay in the background. It wasn’t too hard to figure out, since pretty much all the info I needed about embedding was already well covered in Google's API documentation.
Satisfied, I posted the code snippet as a “layout” in the community blogs, where other users share their CSS and layout hacks. I wrote a little preface about the cultural importance and legacy of annoying visitors to your profile with background music they can’t turn off, then overexplained what a bunch of the different variables or class tags do.
