iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by ✨️Whitney✨️

United Wizards of the Coast - CWA @uwotc-official.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

As the workers behind Magic, D&D, Duel Masters, D&D Beyond, and more, we know how powerful games can be. We are proud to be Wizards, and our union will help make Wizards more sustainable for all.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Those are both games with narrative. Environmental narrative is narrative.

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Reposted by ✨️Whitney✨️

Matt Cohen @mattcohen.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Some authors say they didn’t *write* their books with AI, but they needed to use it for the *cover* because they couldn’t afford an artist. To prove that’s not true, I am offering authors FREE cover design by me, a former graphic designer. They probably won’t be great, but they’ll be better than AI.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Oh my god. This is what our jobs boil down to 🥲

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Watching the Mica Miller documentary and it was so easy to clock a narcissist at work. And of course, YEARS after her death, it shakes out that he sexually abuses minors. There's always other victims. I wish they taught us to identify these fuckers in school.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

AND Tim Curry?! Man, this week is devastating.

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Reposted by ✨️Whitney✨️

Banana Chan 🔜 Tabletop Oahu @bananachangames.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

I’m prepping to launch Sample on BackerKit, a solo journaling game set during Y2K about a musician who needs to create a song before he performs at the Times Square Ball Drop…so he makes a deal with a demonic muse to get over his creative block. Please follow before we launch! tinyurl.com/2af9nnte

tinyurl.com

Sample

Get notified when Sample launches on BackerKit!

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Reposted by ✨️Whitney✨️

Lis @thewritegame.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

A rundown on narrative playtesting by @stevebromley.bsky.social. I’m a big believer in conducting proper user research if you have the access and means to do it. Golden data.

gamesuserresearch.com

How to playtest your game’s story | Games User Research

How to safely approach testing both comprehension and appeal for the story of your game.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Yaaayyy!!! ❤️🩷🧡💛💚💜

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Gonna run some Tenra Bansho Zero 🥷

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Reposted by ✨️Whitney✨️

thisisstar @thisisstar.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

I've been working on something cool and it has a kickstarter coming up soon, so you may want to hit the notify button. There is also a free demo if you haven't already checked it out. Cats! Demons! Slime! Texas! www.kickstarter.com/projects/aco...

kickstarter.com

Coming soon: Slime in the Ice Machine: It's Your Inheritance, Kid

Kick open the doors to the greatest bars in the cosmos (and the worst) to unravel surreal mysteries in this PC/Mac/Xbox game.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

The audience has very, very exacting expectations. And again, with curiosity, why? Because it's one of the only places we can assert full control and agency? Because volitional choice is foundational to psychological safety and that safety is foundational to genre? There must be PhDs written on this

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

I think it's a whole bag. It is the evidence of us trying to work out how to have sincere, authentic, and desirable connection under patriarchy when its a structure that hurts us all.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

The sheer vitality of the genre cannot ever be denied. So far it's been a pleasure discovering for myself why, and what that means.

static.klipy.com

Elmo Smut in Flames

ALT: Elmo Smut in Flames

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Like, I read a Stockholm trope dark romance and I'm still chewing on what I think about that and how it fits into feminism or doesn't. How Twilight was a monster fucker book written by a Mormon who leans into patriarchal expectations and ACOTAR is a faerie fucker book that yearns for the opposite.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

That's probably one of the reasons why it gets so much hate. Anything that centers women's agency, women's embodied pleasure or desire (and thus, imagination), is anathema to the machine. The mere existence of the genre is defiance. What happens from there is more nuanced.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

All I can say is that the dark romance girlies are doing something important. Romance, as a genre, has so many function. One on of them is to have a safe space to poke at the patriarchy and speculate on how one can navigate and grapple with it, ameliorate one's own heart and spirit.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

You'd think, having co-written Bluebeard's Bride, I'd have a definitive opinion on dark romance. It is, after all, a rejection of the romantic metabolization of abuse. But my feelings regarding the genre have always been far more jumbled and only semi-examined.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

The most challenging sub-genre for me to grapple with has been dark romance. It is not understood well or treated kindly by dominant culture, and I came in with my own biases that I've been working through. Mostly I've just kept my lip buttoned as I've watched and listened and read.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

I have been diving deep into romance genre conventions and structures recently, catching up to a very sophisticated cultural ecosystem and also reckoning (yet again) with dominant culture's portrayal of anything to do with women, which is more than half of us, as a reminder.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

But I love complaining about hitting my protein macros.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

It's almost perfect. If it had Signal I would be set.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

I have a smart phone too. I'll switch between what I'm carrying around. Local, my car has its own GPS, so I'll take dumb phone. International? I need the smart phone. I'm not brave enough yet to try travel like it's the 90's when everything is now built around assuming you have a smart phone.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Huzzah! I feel like stickers will always do something for us, given their sacred value in kindergarten.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

HMD Barbie phone. Hits my sweet spot of "just dumb enough".

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

LLMs are nuts. I can tell when someone has been interacting with one too much. Frictionlessness, endless scrolls, thoughtless subscription fulfillment, it was supposed to automate our drudgery, but it's muted our souls and turned us into smooth brained consumption automatons.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Intentionally adding friction into my life has helped me feel more human, grounded. I keep an analogue agenda and a dumb phone. Let me tell you, you really think about texts on a T9 setup. We're always trying to cram more in, but being forced to slow down has helped me be more present.

A dumb phone displaying the thumbnail for "Your Undivided Attention" podcast, sitting atop a paper agenda with the page turned to August.

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Reposted by ✨️Whitney✨️

Adam Rawnsley @arawnsley.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Today, August 4, 2026, is the setting of Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” about a fully automated house continuing on after the family who lived there and the world around it died in a nuclear blast.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Ah, I didn't realize we were both at GenCon or I would have said hi.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

He really expected that I was going to light up and twirl my hair or something. Good grief 😮‍💨

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Like do you understand we're in the airport taxi pool area? Where all the scams and kidnappings happen? No?? Must be nice to mince through life unawares while more than half the population has to walk with their keys between their fingers. The sheer oblivious entitlement.

static.klipy.com

Robert Downey Jr. Rolling Eyes

ALT: Robert Downey Jr. Rolling Eyes

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Some dude just yelled at my back, "I want to give you a compliment." I ignored him and stepped behind a pole. He chased me down and said it again. I said, "No, thank you," and he acted like I'd popped his birthday balloon instead of giving him a cookie. Man, just leave me alone.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

That is actually a new level of horrifying that I never considered.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

I really did not get the ugly-cute thing until I held one of these things in my hands.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

I couldn't help it. The new ones with hair are just too weird. I needed this precious gremlin in my life. Her name is Reina 👑 Also, she is technically not a labubu, but a mokoko, so I have still never bought a labubu 😉

Reina the Velvet Noon Mokoko has long pink hair. She is wearing a floral skirt, a white shirt that says "Kill Your Rapist" in Barbie font, and a silver crown with pearls.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

I taught middle schoolers how to make Twine games with the @clarionwest.bsky.social program hosted at @hugohouse.bsky.social. I declared them to be Official Game Developers when we were done and you should have seen them LIGHT UP. That will buoy me for the rest of the week 👾💜🎮

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Because I am kind, but actually have boundaries that I enforce 🥰

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

I've been told for years, "adapt, adapt adapt," with the implication that if you were a clever writer you'd figure it out. But I just don't LIKE them. They sap embodiment. They defang mystery. They make the world feel less lived in. I'm over it. It's not a skill issue.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Please tell me you've played the RPG Dialect.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Is it efficient? No. Is it cheap? No. Does it improve workers lives? No. Does it help heal the environment? No. Is it an attempt to steal capital from workers to solidify the billionaire tech oligarchy? Yes.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

I'm trying to imagine a way out of the moment we're in right now, into a future I like. Or at least one that is less numbingly dumb.

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✨️Whitney✨️ @brightwhitney.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

I think as a writer I'm emotionally hunkered down, fruitlessly hoping genAI will burn out and fade somehow, or else transform into something more interesting and useful and less incredibly dystopian. I think it's why I'm writing a lot of near future sci-fi and not contemporary fantasy.

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