iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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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Reposted by D.C. McNeill

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

I dunno man, homie was 54 and it truly felt like he'd not thought about the world seriously since he was 30. Anyway, was an enjoyable 30 min conversation with an aesthetically intelligent man who gave me a good beard oil tip. So, you know, not a complete wash

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

Wasn't even a "dunked on a religious dude with facts and rhetoric" in fact the opposite. Old boy used the classic "if you were drowning and someone offered you a life vest, wouldn't you take it" as the analogy for salvation and I just said no

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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

I'm an adult who lived through Prototype, gore does nothing for me, but the hysterical accuracy of "yeah he's of norse descent so he has the weird pink elbow thing" is the most post-modern BS shit of all time. The signified and signifier are just elbows now

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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

Especially in our current era of post-historical materialism the words on the page have an increased responsibility to not be shit, and even be good. So... I guess thank you to the authors and editors still giving a damn about style and diction

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

Heller simply can do the *damn* thing. Bar for bar writing novels well is achievable, but writing an exciting novel is almost impossible. Rarefied air that Heller shares with Benjamin Wood and McCarthy.

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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

Maybe not, but when things like this happen I'm always reminded that it's refreshing my comrades are engaged and thinking but goodness we could do with finishing a thought before replying to a post or article couldn't we

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Should this piece have included two sentences referencing the array of great indie games about mothers? Maybe. Would that have cut the legs out from the leverage of Trump 2 and the gender politics, and the fact Fey is white and played by the hottest woman on the planet DAW? I think probably yes.

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I'll never finger-wag criticism (that's kind of what I get paid to do) but shit like this is what I used to post on Tumblr when I was sixteen. Every single argument will have an exception or counter, it's unhelpful to progress if you think your personal injuries are why someone is bad at criticism.

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This is why I don't do social media anymore. Because this isn't discourse and if you think it is, ya gotta take a step back. The left doesn't win by sprinting into every perceived brick wall. We win because the ideas are better for people and better for the world.

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Is the headline unfortunate? Yes. Is it a valid headline reflective of the content? Yes. "Real" is doing a lot of useful, compelling work in placing the story in opposition to previous AAA representations of Mums in games that are fridged (shout out Max Payne's sitch) or ransom (shout out Abigail)

Kate's thesis is that during America's techno-fascist moment women are erased and reduced in specific ways, especially mothers in other specific ways, and that Laufey represents a break *because* it's triple A and focuses on a white woman. *That* is what makes it transgressive in the US context...

This reflects a larger issue in the intersection of media criticism/journalism that I see a lot in the comments of our Antagonist videos. Phones (and algos) have so thoroughly retrofitted people's brains to mistake the signified for the signifier that a headline consumes the argument.

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

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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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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I find the tonality of Youtube comments on my Matrix essays reflect a kind of antithetical lack of imagination that is similar to how people react to R&M. It's always "I like this, but you're reaching too far in places" as if that isn't... the entire point...

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An aspect that "silly cartoon" achieves that Community also achieved is the ability to revel in sadness or jealousy or arrogance or failure without some epiphany. The episode doesn't end with anyone learning anything. It was just a huge expenditure of human life and emotion for... well, nothing

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Say this or that about the "cannon" (like anyone gives a shit), the episode to episode writing of R&M is as strong as ever, if not stronger and more considered. It's giving Community Season 6 vibes (complimentary)

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"Ricks Days, Seven Nights" is a funny, ugly humdinger of an episode that takes an old R&M concept (Rick is BIG sad) and evolves it through the lens of Rick post-therapy. How does this "healing" Rick decompress? He farms it out and sci-fi dissociates. He literally does the "Simple Rick's" lie

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

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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On reflection I wanted more incisive writing about the custody question. As a child of 2 divorces the resolution feels a lil cheesed up given the context. I enjoyed the maturity of the conclusion but would've enjoyed a deeper exploration of the father's flaws given the narrative

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Occasionally a show manages to be complicated and uncomplicated about a big subject - whether this show does or not, they certainly swung for it. Unsettled on the result. TBC

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

At the conclusion of season 1 I think the directing and writing does the work and is the work. Whether Margo should have Bodie or not is not the point of the narrative. The crux is that this flawed support system is a support system. And a loving one at that.

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

Nine Sols instead goes "hey, what if we latched all those themes and ideas together with a neon-punk Samurai aesthetic" and works. Perhaps because the insane action is balanced by silence and music and "vibes" as much as gameplay. Though the gameplay fucking rules

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

Not just that bugs are cute. Instead that these bugs are cute *despite* the context of their horrible lives. Where Dark Souls ends dialogue with evil cackles, Hollow Knight dialogue ends with good nature chirps and hopeful smiles. Nine Sols is... at once both and neither

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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 · 16/05/2026

The allegory of Jinx's wrestling job (and subsequent addiction) and Margo's sex work to support her son do a huge amount of work to complicate what might otherwise be a morally complete judgement. Unfortunately Margo's mother's narrative feels like drama for drama. Hopeful that gains resolution

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

After a few more episodes the show definitely finds the quicksand of modern drama an answerable question: the answer is yes, sex work is work. And yes, like *some* work it attracts danger. And yes, the consequences of any given job are not immediately understandable in the moment of the work

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D.C. McNeill @dcmcneill.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

But the trick that is so hard to communicate to people who do not make things is that it each piece committed is as at the moment of commitment. These are stumbling, uneven pieces cobbled together over time. This is the work. The work is the work. You only have so many works in your life.

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.