Another journal

Okay listen, I have way to many links open on my devices, and not because I am not dealing with and bookmarking and reading them but because I was like, “Ooooh, I want to share this.” So, let’s get going. Find all these link dumps on the tag “tab cleanout.”

Who drew the comics on the back of Topps baseball cards? from The Fan Files. It’s what it says it is, THAT link though is just a summary and links to the four posts of the actual guy (a Dr. Eric White) who is doing the research, which I repeat here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.
status: shared

Founder of Dwarf Fortress and Caves of Qud publisher Kitfox Games says its procgen sims for sickos are ‘giving storytelling tools back to the people when games and passive media took them away’ over at PC Gamer. This is some interesting talk about procedurally generated story and what it can give us as players, this is the meat of it for me:

“These games force you to have to sit with what you’re seeing. Whether it’s because the graphics are lo-fi or Dwarf Fortress’ feed being very non-descriptive, it allows you to fill in those gaps in an interesting way,” Orlando said. “The heart and soul of it is sitting with your dwarves and figuring out how you see their personalities interact with each other and different situations. That’s where the player stories come from.”

status: moved to WIP/REF: Gamewriting

The Bearded Vulture as an accumulator of historical remains: Insights for future ecological and biocultural studies at ESA. The sum of it is: some bearded vulture nests are mega old and when scientists started poking into what they were made of, or what litter from previous meals of generations was there, they found amazing stuff. Like, the expected bone remains and hooves and whatnot (which is a cool way to see the history of other animals in the space) but items made by people from the local esparto grass, cloth, a crossbow bold, a shoe. It’s like a core sample of the history of people and creatures and the world that the nest has existed alongside for hundreds of years. From the study:

More interestingly, the abundant and well-preserved anthropogenic elements brought to the nests, such as the extraordinary historical manufactured items made of esparto grass: such as alpargatas (esparto sandals), ropes, basketry, horse tacks, and slingshots, have an ethnographic interest. These artifacts can gain significance when considered alongside nest altitude, which influences the availability of remains and the type of ecological zone represented.

status: shared

The Spooky House by SPOOKYSOFT on Itch. A very delightfully chunky-pixel looking game that links to a fun soundtrack to listen to while you try to escape said spooky house.
status: saved in Itch.io to my to play list

Word building over at Words and Things. A really easy to understand breakdown of how you can build words that feel right, even if you’re not building a whole fake language for your pretend world. It’s a short piece but one that gets the brain going on why some words in a genre piece work and why they don’t (and why some names scan and others feel like Scrabble tiles spilled out).
status: shared

So You Want to Write Iambic Pentameter at Azhdarchid. What it says on the tin. This is neat and I’m still trying to wrap my brain around it but I LOVE system-based approaches to writing and crafting so I am going to keep picking at it.
status: moved to WIP/REF: Ref & Writing

And now here are three stories that are perfectly suited to the season, and none of them are in your standard story format:

• A Wayback Machine link to “Crampton”, a spec script for an episode of The X Files by Thomas Ligotti and Brandon Trenz from 1998. It’s good stuff.
• ‘Scrow by Michael Lutz, a forum-formatted creepy story about scarecrow hobbyists.
• Unwindr, also by Michael Lutz, a sequel of sorts. This story is done as reviews for a corn maze.

Whew, okay, my poor old phone can breathe again.