iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

embhow @scribbledawn.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

haha I wasn't worried I promise! All in the spirit of exploration.

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lit_patches @litpatches.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath v1.01: Added some mythical dungeons, materials, and related temple quests

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embhow @scribbledawn.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

which of course you don't need me to tell you, looking at all the compelling ways Aliya is spiky or sideways to what the player might expect!! Love that our conversation keeps unspooling little threads -- for me too!!

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embhow @scribbledawn.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

maybe we worry that telling someone how they feel might be alienating -- of course we're still wrapped up in player-designer negotiations, getting a player to trust us with their body, we almost have to tutorialize it! -- but weaving a player character as invitation rather than cipher is the juice

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embhow @scribbledawn.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

but absolutely we've been sparking that same investment through character and cue; something i return to often is the depiction of a player character's embodied feelings in the prose, sometimes in whole branches of deciding how 'you' feel.

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embhow @scribbledawn.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

i think i cling to this idea that they don't have to be at odds, that thoughtful and context(genre?)-appropriate mechanics could concretize or enhance a player's feeling of tentativeness?

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Thew @amazingthew.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

god i love videogames. have you heard about "places"? they are called locations

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embhow @scribbledawn.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Agh, this sucks. Hope you're comfy enough to have some time to process and plan! Gonna play and wrangle pals for Young Suns extra good.

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embhow @scribbledawn.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

oh my godddd talk about social contagion -- this is from that one Mehrabian book that has its heart in the right place but essentially zero rigorous evidence why do people want to believe so badly that vibes are everything?

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Brendy_C @brendyc.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I love a thecatamites blog post. harmonyzone.org/blog/posts/a...

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embhow @scribbledawn.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

oh yeah i mean the post-religious belief that repression will keep you pure has wormed its way into a psychological prima-facie, i'm sure that won't have any consequences for our relationships to art or to each other at all

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embhow @scribbledawn.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

after singing in choirs for like fifteen years i can't deny christian myth does have a place in my heart. the most powerful moments for me are rarely in the spotlight; they come in laments, in tender human hoping, in imagining all the moments between

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embhow @scribbledawn.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

okay so i've been pagan my whole life but to imagine the summer before the lord's birth has such a texture; soft moments of miracle, before everything we know to come, in service of nothing more than a young mother's cravings. beautiful

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Coraline Jortay 喬海霖 @qiaoj.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Got a new google scholar notification, so I go check and find this very cool poem by Wang Jibing 王计兵, the recent Lu Xun prize winner, prefacing a PhD thesis on women migrant workers and the gig economy PhD students in all disciplines: more poems in theses please, we love to see them! ✨💫

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embhow @scribbledawn.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

yessss dialect is SUCH a good pull, deeply thoughtful text in there

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Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (You construct intricate rituals...), 1980

B&W photo of an apparent bachelor party or similar horseplay, with text: You construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men."

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embhow @scribbledawn.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

the world isn't ready for the Before Sunrise-themed Amtrak all-inclusive

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embhow @scribbledawn.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

it is such a blessing to be drawn into something, so captivated that in order to savour it, you have to resist the urge to tumble down into it. perfect tides: station to station is my thoughts now, and i intend to keep that running as long as possible

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lit_patches @litpatches.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

"The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe but now you can expect new abilities, animations, VFX, summons and cantrips, and unique voiced dialogue lines

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Cat Manning @catacalypto.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

obsessed with this comment on a reel of an opossum eating live crawfish in a bathtub

an opossum eating live crawfish in a bathtub, with the below comment:

You really never know what ppl got going on in their houses man

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embhow @scribbledawn.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

(not to mention the combined dialogue/tactics game i've been tinkering with for yeeeears)

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embhow @scribbledawn.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

oh we need the high-drama john wickiverse in here. can we also do context-sensitive goofy zingers??? "Looks like it's time to..." [the flying-knee defenestration of all time] "... air out our grievances."

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Dr. Nic Junius @quakefultales.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Narrative rarely gets to be the high level decision driver outside of very specific kinds of projects and a lot of what narrative ends up doing, especially on larger projects, is unpacking the implications of decisions on emotional engagement

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Chris Gardiner @chrisgardiner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

My go-to on this topic has always been Terry Pratchett:

So, instead, I give tips on how to be a professional boxer. A good diet is essential, of course, as is a daily regime of exercise. Pay attention to your footwork, it will often get you into trouble. Go down to the gym every day – every day of your life that finds you waking up capable of standing. Take every opportunity to watch a good professional fight. In fact watch as many bouts as you can, because you can even learn something from the fighters who get it wrong. Don’t listen to what they say, watch what they do. And don’t forget the diet and the exercise and the roadwork.

Got it? Well, becoming a writer is basically exactly the same thing, except that it isn’t about boxing.

A quote from Terry Pratchett, in A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-Fiction

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michael lutz @ztul.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

I will be honest that was one of the most interesting few minutes of you guys watching sports that I've ever read

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Richard Kadrey @richardkadrey.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Happy birthday, Franz Kafka. This is the tattoo I got while I was in Prague. It's a Franz quote inside one of his drawings.

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us

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Dr. Jonathan Foley @globalecoguy.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

I especially love this diagram.

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Tyver Foucault @thedoorthedoor.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Everyone thinks the vegetables are the garden. But the garden is the soil and the garden is the the trellises and the garden is the insects and the garden is the sun. Remember that when you look in the mirror. You are more than what you see in the glass

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Erin Kissane @kissane.myatproto.social · 19/06/2026

HOLLERING START TO FINISH this is so good

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Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Last and least, FWIW, my current AI policy for students. Subject to revision. Recommendations welcome.

Artificial Intelligence and Creative Writing: A Policy of Sorts
This is a course for those interested in writing not as means to an end but as an end in itself.
Recently a friend and I read a cover story in New York magazine titled, “Everyone is Cheating Their
Way Through College,” by James D. Walsh. My friend has also taught writing. He likes to tell his
students, “If you want to be a writer, put on a cool hat and go sit in a bar with cheap beer. If you want to
write, write.”
I didn’t think AI would be a temptation for writing students. “Everyone is Cheating Their Way
Through College” persuaded me that for many it’s not a temptation but a condition. You sleep in a bed,
you wear clothes, you don’t scream at teachers. Just the way it is. Maybe AI is becoming that, too, part
of “just the way it is.” Maybe it is that already.
My mind raced through ideas about how to “beat” AI. The article dismantled each one of them.
Then I thought, “That’s not my job.” I’m a writer and a teacher. I’m not a cop. If you want to work with
me on writing, we can do that. If you want to cheat, you have the ability to do that, too, and the truth is,
I probably can’t stop you. Per Dartmouth’s policy: “Students may not use GenAI tools for submitted
coursework unless expressly permitted.” I do not permit it. That’s my part. Now, about yours.
I’m interested in working with students for whom writing feels, somehow, good, even if
sometimes it’s painful. Who seek that feeling anyway. A feeling of being, of alertness. Of purpose; of
intention. Of practice.
This is a course for those who are interested in using writing to experience some variation of
this feeling. Sometimes it comes in a moment of clarity, sometimes in the making of a lyrical
juxtaposition. There are so many more emotional, intellectual, and spiritual possibilities that arise from
the act of shaping language. I live off the aftermath of that act—the recognitions, financial and
otherwise, I earn from the results—but there is no payche…

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JP @jpbrammer.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

the phrase "lipstick on a pig" has always inspired a deep sadness in me. I think of the pig, looking forward to her big night out, and I bring myself to the verge of tears.

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Wendy Xu @wendyxu.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

it's warm out

little daoist falls asleep while meditating

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Jennifer Adcock @jenkatwrites.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

happy pride, shoutout as always to the 1978 gilbert baker pride flag which had pink and turquoise stripes for SEX AND MAGIC AND ART, and in this house we support gay sex and gay magic and gay art

Baker pride flag with the explanation of the symbolism of each color.

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Mike Elgan @mikeelgan.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Now you can keep track of how many billions the AI companies are losing on AI. (Red is spending, green is revenue.) isaiprofitable.com

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Derek Yu @mossmouth.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Genuinely, this concern about AI is one of the reasons why I think having friction in video games is good and why it's increasingly important to have games that simply exist instead of catering to our expectations. Reposting this message from Kojima about "pre-digested" art:

And he said, "If everyone likes it, it means it's mainstream. It means it's conventional. It means it's already pre-digested for people to like it. And I don't want that. I want people to end up liking things they didn't like when they first encountered it, because that's where you really end up loving something."

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embhow @scribbledawn.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

anyway RIP to the best glowy-shooty ever to do it

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embhow @scribbledawn.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

honestly doesn't need to be triple-A, we definitely don't always need to build entire worlds -- in fact i think we sometimes think of playspaces as something to consume rather than places to build a relationship with

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embhow @scribbledawn.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

from the production angle it's such a no-brainer to rework AAA areas and content styles with new contexts, building emotional beats over the radio, encouraging the player to keep their eye out for anything different. it's cool to see that style is spreading, but i hope it becomes less transitory!!

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embhow @scribbledawn.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

no one would believe me, but the writing got really shockingly good. I put it down when the story ended in Final Shape, but riding the peaks of seasonal storytelling for a couple hours each week was really special, and I hope somebody somewhere is able to preserve or recreate that for posterity

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embhow @scribbledawn.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

as a couple of contracts wind down and a bit of time opens up to work on personal stuff, i am once again forced to decide if i want to be comprehensible or if i want to have fun

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Jill Walker Rettberg @jilltxt.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Here’s a video from the same podcast as linked in my previous post where you can hear the audio too. I love this because it really lays bare how LLMs fool us - but really they’re just slotting words into linguistic patterns that we’re familiar with. Genres like a podcast or LinkedIn post.

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