quantifica july

Hey team! Time to get digested monthily again.

PROGRESS REPORT

Did stuff this month! The stuff sure was did.

Regarding Debts: after spending a long-ass time troubleshooting with a tech-savvy friend, we finally regained access to my IRS account and have paid off 3 of the 4 overdue years of tax debt. The one remaining is the one I'm disputing, so I get to spend another 90ish minutes on hold til I get a human on the line this week so I can move forward. But that's about $37k of debt squared away, and the means to square away the rest when the time comes.

Regarding London: Games Transformed was amazing! I think my panel went pretty well, and I got to chat up lots of brilliant folks at the Symposium the day before. I will share the recording of my panel when/if it goes online.

Regarding Jams: oh gosh oh gosh here goes... my team and I completed our entry to the GMTK Game Jam and the results are here. It's a narrative Twine game where the primary mechanic is gossip. I think explaining more would spoil a few things, but get at me in the comments if you play it and wanna talk further. There is also, ever so briefly, some music I banged out in like an hour. If you like it, you can vote for it in the jam!

Regarding Interviews: my episode of Past Due is live! There is also some bonus conversation on the Past Due Patreon. This interview was surprisingly emotional and validating for me. It's the first place I've really talked about the backlash to the GoFundMe, the doxxing attempts and death threads and slurs getting yelled at me over the phone. Also gave me a lot to think about re: how to relate to my audience going forward, because I know the relationship needs to change but I'm still figuring out how.

And, as ever, there was another batch of Tier List vids, which you'll get your supercut of soon.

BINGO CARD

We'll talk more later, but: added a square for finishing six games from the Game Cabinet! Also a bonus square for the trip to London, that feels like a proper achievement. I almost gave myself two bonus squares because of another (private) achievement, but decided I can't be too generous with bonus squares. I know I'm going to count the jam game for this month, and three bonuses in two months is just too libertine. Gonna cap things at one bonus per month, max.

MINIMIX

Ditties. As ever, if you are not logged into Spotify, the app will pepper this with extra songs not of my choosing. Don't blame me if it gives you bosh and flimshaw.

Will Ye Go, Lassie Go?
ok I feel this needs to be addressed: I am and should be embarrassed to have one of the songs sung by the fake white allies in Sinners still in heavy enough rotation to top my minimix two months after the film came out. I don't have any excuse other than a) I loved this song before the film and b) I have loved Lola Kirke since Gemini and didn't know she sang. (her rendition of "Whip It" in that film notwithstanding.) I am part of the problem, I know. the rest of the soundtrack is also amazing! no one is disputing that!

Ghost Stories
"Fuck, you asked me a direct question."

PUT A LANDLORD iN A LANDFiLL
"It broke the second I moved innnnnnnnnnnn!"

pale horse
"I wear the necklace that you gave me when I made you mine"

my mind (now)
"I was strawberry picking, you were gathering ammunition"

Too Much
"Volume one, almost mute"

FILM RANDOMIZER

Oh dear, this... this is the first time in 20 months of doing this that I haven't watched a single film from the list. In fact, other than seeing Superman in a theater in London, everything else I saw was either on a plane or watched on a late night with insomnia.

I've commented before that I have four hobbies and can only keep up with two at any given time. But this month, pretty much everything but reading took a hit, because I was... working? It's weird to say that during a sabbatical, wasn't the point to spend more time on hobbies?? But I was traveling to London for a panel on games and radical politics, making THE HARD RECS, doing a game jam, making a dent in the debt. There are some tweaks to the Randomizer coming shortly, but, if this project ultimately fails because I was having too much fun doing things again, I will not be sad about it.

READING LOG

Finished Drive Your Plow... and took a big bite out of Exordia, which is very much my jam so far. Also, Drive Your Plow... was the first of my genre excursions, so I'm ticking off Thriller/Mystery from the list. Not sure how accurately it fills that role, it ended up more of a character study using the form of the thriller; like it's a little like calling Twilight a horror novel because it's about vampires. But I'm counting it anyway, cuz otherwise it'd count towards Literary Fiction and I have something else I wanna read for that! And it is still kiiiiiiind of a mystery? So... yeah. Yeah!

GAME CABINET

I gave up on Tonight We Riot after what I estimate to be a bit past the halfway point, which I have decided still counts towards my total. I announced I could quit anything that wasn't landing for me after 20% completion, but pondered I might only count such things for half-credit on the Cabinet. My executive decision is, at least past 50%, I'm counting it as full credit. Fight me.

Which means: success! Six Cabinet games! And in seven months, no less. Kinda wanna see if I can get through all twelve before the year's up. TWR was a game I enjoyed in theory but not so much in execution, which is why I scrapped the playthrough. The goal is, and always has been, to find games I love, so obstinacy is not the point.

A'ight, that's it . You'll hear from me very soon cuz I got more stuff for you. Meantime, happy August!

-I