A quick mid-month blurb out - Early November 02022

Greetings. Let's begin with the ways that language shapes the space and conversations people can have about gender. And the ways that language shapes the space and conversations people can have about gender.

There are historical examples of cis lesbians acting in solidarity with trans women, so those people who want you to think that trans women are a threat to women are wrong both philosophically and historically.

( The usual list of curiosities inside )

Last out for tonight, an extremely fiendish puzzle game from the vaults, now brought into our world and playable on the web: Chroma. kaberett introduced me to it, and I can say that I've successfully managed to get through the first two introductory levels. The difficulty with that is that there's still more to go, and also, many of these puzzles are the kinds of things where you stare at it for a while, thinking it's not possible, and then a solution eventually happens, but also it's the kind of game where you have to think about the consequences of all the actions that will happen, as it's very easy to think you have a solution to a puzzle, only for it to trap you from moving on, or for the realization to strike that you actually have to do a different puzzle room first before you clear the current one. Or that you might have to partially solve the current room so you can totally solve the one next door.

The site itself gives you minimal instructions on how to play and what the pieces themselves will do, encouraging you fail a lot before you learn the mechanics of the pieces and their mechanics. Here are some hints from my limited playing time so far:

• Things that move do so in a Newtonian fashion in the direction they are pointing.


• All of the objects in a puzzle room are important to solving it. Including the stars.


• Stars are solid and will support weight, regardless of how that weight is applied.


• The stack will always collapse in a way that will skewer the dot or block the exit.


• Remembering what will hold weight if it's pushed onto it versus what will hold weight when something is dropped on it is the key to solving some puzzles.

Have fun and try not to get too sucked in.

If that doesn't seem like a fun time, maybe the entries submitted in the Interactive Fiction Competition for 2022 would be more to your tastes.

And if not that, then perhaps Fill In The Blanks, which starts with a five-letter word, removes one letter, and then progressively removes one more letter at specified intervals until there is only one left. All you have to do is fill in the blanks with five-letter words. (More points for getting words in the more restricted spaces.)

(Materials via adrian_turtle, azurelunatic, boxofdelights, cmcmck, conuly, cosmolinguist, elf, finch, firecat, jadelennox, jenett, jjhunter, kaberett, lilysea, oursin, rydra_wong, snowynight, sonia, thewayne, umadoshi, vass, the meta_warehouse community, and anyone else that's I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)

A Q+A set about ficcing, plus a Doof recommendation.

Before I get into the question and answer session, I have to say thank you to cosmolinguist for introducing us to Chaos Emergency Doof Broadcast Network, a project that a couple of DJs are doing that started from the lockdowns in the UK and is still going on weekly. Lee Chaos and Duracell Bunny have some great sets, especially when they turn over a significant part of the show to requests that come in through their Discord channel that match a theme, like "Fruit Salad" (The song title, the artist, or a lyric must reference a fruit somewhere, which allows "Holla Back Girl" because there's a line about how "This is bananas") or "I have Paid Money To Put This On A Jukebox" or other such things. I'm having a great time with these three-four hour sets to listen to as I work my way backwards through the archives. (Plus, they play bangers, even when they're playing jokey songs or themes.)

Onward, to the question set! Via anneapocalypse via commoncomitatus, about various aspects of fic creation and the entity doing the creating.

( The Questions and their Answers! )