iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

We're trying something new(ish) over at UnderInk, reviewing and discussing writing and the publishing industry www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRk5...

youtube.com

We need to talk about this Jay Asher article

YouTube video by UnderInk

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I try not to plug my stuff too much good lord we're on an absolute tear with our coverage of Pluribus. The year and a half of apocalypse study truly bearing fruit of a great conversation youtu.be/oblvU2IJTC8

youtu.be

Economic Realities of Survival - Plur1bus (2025) Ep4-5

YouTube video by ZeroIndent

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

We are going live to play Firewatch with Danielle 10 years after we originally talked about the game www.twitch.tv/levelstory

twitch.tv

levelstory - Live on Twitch

Returning to a Favorite | Streaming firewatch.

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Nothing makes me feel older than seeing online drama of a particular niche community result in fairly unmeasured and reactionary consequences. When your timeline for choices is measured in days rather than years of course you are subject to betraying your own ideals. It's hard out here. Be goodish.

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alix e. harrow @alixeharrow.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

when we mourn le guin, we mourn one of our greatest writers & thinkers. but we also mourn one of our all-time greatest haters

All you do is take all the sex out, and use little short words, and little dumb ideas, and don't be too scary, and be sure there's a happy ending. Right? Nothing to it. Write down. Right on.

If you do all that, you might even write Jonathan Livingston Seagull and make twenty billion dollars and have every adult in America reading your book.

But you won't have every kid in America reading your book. They will look at it, and they will see straight through it, with their clear, cold, beady little eyes, and they will put it down, and they will go away. Kids will devour vast amounts of garbage (and it is good for them) but they are not like adults: they have not yet learned to eat plastic.

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Had an honest to goodness interaction with a "let me stop you on the street and convince you about the bible" person (shout out Wayne, nice guy). And it is perhaps the most adult I've felt in a decade. None of the analogising or metaphors survive first contact with the world

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Young men these days be talking about this or that, they should be talking about the fact they got the weird pinkness of mens' elbows right for my boy Logan

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Bar for bar I've never been so content in my life. Making The ZeroIndent Review every fortnight with Pat and J.M. and working on all of this extra content with James is peak creativity. Book 4 is nearly done. Life ain't perfect but compared to this time last year we're doing well

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

The Dog Stars contains possibly the most electric second half of a novel I've encountered in a decade. It is delightful, silly, haunting and impassioned. Humanity moored to nothing but questions of why we exist and the fact that weeding a garden is apocalypticaly irritating

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Seein' a lot of these comments, woof... headline not ideal but maybe read the actual article... it makes the same argument y'all are making by leveraging a popular topic to call attention to the issue which is a useful rhetorical move in journalism...

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

This year is my year of letting myself off the hook. We're sleeping more, we're working less. We're reading more, we're watching more films. We're in nature more. We're (trying) to get back into dating and meeting new people. Less phone, more reality

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

My cohost and incredible critique J.M. just dropped his magnum opus. Give it all the love y'all youtu.be/rsXSBp2brm8

youtu.be

Who is Tony Stark? | Why Shane Black's Iron Man 3 is an Underrated Masterpiece

YouTube video by TheFilmProtagonist

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

The most astounding thing about late-stage Rick and Morty is how consistently good the writing remains. Harmon and Co have clearly established a working sit-com production, something Harmon's entire career sought during the 2010's.

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

If we lived in an honest world Nine Sols would be as successful as Hollow Knight. *Except* for tone. Hollow Knight, and Silksong especially, marries cute // scary in such a culturally ablative aesthetic it's almost universal yet specific. Kind of the ultimate "listen, you know it when you see it"

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Perhaps the most true and cringe inducing fact of being an artist is that you have to live convinced that cutting yourself open is noble and necessary to the work. That there is a morality and ethics beneath and behind the art itself. For every element you commit to the process you commit yourself.

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

I've hit the "I think I know what the book is I just need to finish the edit" threshold for Maynard Trigg 4. The final phase of a developmental edit is always punishingly slow but seeing the full vision is... killer.

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

Margo's Got Money Problems is an odd show. Some of Margo's foibles (typos on a CV for example) are well rendered but some of the artifice feels... either discordant or perhaps just very American. No real person would behave the way the interviewer does in ep3 by dismissing Margo on face.

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

I'm not sure we need a Black Flag retool but it is curious that it is a retool in a narrative sense as well. Of a piece with Dead Space as a remake rather than remaster. Interesting decision from the dying Ubisoft...

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Wood absolutely devastates his contemporaries with this novel. A work of prosaic mastery that makes TikTok novels look like uncouth finger-paintings by comparison, calls into mind Mandel's early work in the best way. Rich, thoughtful prose that completely captures you. Highly recommended.

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

My brother did our new product photography and we literally did some author shots at the end for shits and giggles and they're awesome. The beard gravitas is only ramped up by the black and white, we have arrived

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Bad Hand Books @badhandbooks.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

When you use AI to do your writing, you are telling your audience: “I deserve your attention, but you do not deserve my effort.”

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

This has only grown more prolific. The novel (and books) is a medium, and it is so embarrassing to listen to people become hostile to words themselves. Article to come...

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

knocked a re-read out this weekend and one material difference in the TV adaption is that being a visual medium a huge amount of the recontextualisation of a moment through M/C's perspective is not possible. Instead they make the characters explain their the view of the past on-screen

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

This is such a strange book to read. Despite being written seventy years ago, On The Beach frequently contains these flashes of "here's a type of guy and has been forever" today presenting Dwight, the proto cinema sins art critique who only cares about accuracy

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

James and I are texting like 30 times a week but let's be honest: the pure antagonism of Hat Boys is our relationship. And ongoing argument with no winner youtu.be/Ga1JkipAa-s

youtu.be

Hat Boys: Coming down the mountain

YouTube video by ZeroIndent

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

A telling quality of LLM boosterism is a single focus on cost, never on value. A generation of lifetime executives proudly announcing they don't actually understand and never have what labour actually is, nor that there can be joy in labour and the doing of great things.

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Going through our clips folder and found this gem of @levelstory.bsky.social guiltily removing her earbuds to avoid spoilers for Inception, a film from 2010

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

We're entering the perfect four months of weather in Brisbane. Absolutely bosh to sit on the balcony and have a pint

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Anna Megill @annamegill.com · 03/04/2026

This applies to writing too. The struggle is where you learn the important stuff

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Luke Plunkett @lukeplunkett.com · 03/04/2026

the work is the work

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Me and a buddy are relaunching a new version of a show we did forrrrever ago and i just have to say: i have no idea which artist this stock image of a bear smoking a cigarette came from (i believe we added the hat) but he's great. I love him

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Ursula K. Le Guin Bot @leguinbot.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?

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michael lutz @ztul.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

So much AI stuff in general is clearly founded on a desire for not having to socially exist in any human way. Turn life into a prolonged flow state of game tutorials where you're constantly checking menus and following directions and none of it "really" matters because the menu won't judge you

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michael lutz @ztul.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

we're heading into my favorite LOTR shit, which is "increasingly weird metaphysical layers of reality designed to produce the worst things imaginable"

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The Midnight Society @midnightpals.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

instead of watching the new harry potter trailer, why not pick up some horror books by trans and nb writers for the trans rights readathon?? there are so many good options. For example, check out some of these writers:

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Leo Vader @leovader.com · 27/03/2026

so support our lovely MinnMax crew or just go buy the game directly, idgaf as long as you are consuming art that expands your brain and makes you feel! it's not hard or boring we're just out of the habit because of inflated external reward systems! store.steampowered.com/app/2088810/...

store.steampowered.com

Perfect Tides: Station to Station on Steam

A narrative adventure about the momentum and whiplash of young adulthood. Explore the big city through 18-year-old Mara's eyes. Collect items, nurture ideas, and experience complex relationships while...

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Jordan @jordanpfot.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Might be the greatest opening paragraph of anything ever.

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

I had a *very* weird experience with replaying the PS5 port of Red Dead Redemption. zeroindent.com/rdr/

zeroindent.com

John has killed a thousand men

Red Red Redemption is an emptied place, and John Marston is violent implement.

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Harper Jay @dreamcastaway.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

When I talk about why I approach them with a certain sheepishness, this is part of it. I know so many people who've been thinking about games and writing against this position. How do push back against this? I don't know if there's a remedy to this. The "culture" is broadly poisoned with no cure!

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Every few years a sci fi novel attacks the aesthetic concept of the novel in a way that makes a bunch of well-read-ish commentators lose their ability to talk about the book. They collapse into arch-homonym territory & swap words around until they convey some phenomenal version of book good

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A Big Old Skeleton @abigoldskeleton.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

To be clear, this is why I subscribe to @remapradio.bsky.social. There are so few places to find writing as fascinating as this, telling stories that both illuminate the history of the medium and also grapple with the question of what the fuck lore is, was, or if it is worth caring about.

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Harper Jay @dreamcastaway.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

I think this is disqualifying really; it fundamentally calls into question their ability to cover the field. If you want to know why games media sucks it's because it's filled with either grifters or... perhaps even worse.... cowards!

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

I wrote to the vital and talented Eric Anderson for 2 months about the role of art in the collapsing world we seem to inhabit, unbidden and beyond our control and Eric is in career best form in this letters series, a must-read zeroindent.com/delight/

zeroindent.com

To Instruct and Delight

As authors, what responsibility have we to curb that fear, and when do we owe our audience a reflection of the world, no matter how grim?

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cmrn knzlmn @ckunzelman.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

Meredith saying something I’ve spent a lot of the last couple years thinking about:

A blog post screen cap that reads:
But GDC took a chunk out of me, too. The expense, the scamminess, the
desperation. I have not quite recovered.
What I've seen makes me want to keep my life small and focused, make work by any means necessary on shoestring budgets and ignore the industry completely. I think for me, for now, that's how it needs to be. It's not like the industry has any answers or knows what is next.
It's not like I see myself in the majority of these quickly-vanishing roles. Maybe my small, focused world is all there ever was.

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