We just finished The Good Place, and I just…
Continue reading
Heyo, it’s a new year and a new decade!
By now, I’ve learned not to ever say a damned thing about how I’m going to write more or that I’ve got more blog posts waiting in the wings–that’s such a recurring theme in my writing that I made a tag for it here on the blog. So I won’t do that. Instead, I want to share a little bit about what’s been going on for me lately.
Continue reading
Becky ChambersWhen Rosemary Harper joins the crew of the Wayfarer, she isn't expecting much. The Wayfarer, a patched-up ship that's seen better days, offers her everything she could possibly want: a small, quiet spot to call home for a while, adventure in far-off corners of the galaxy, and distance from her troubled past.
But Rosemary gets more than she bargained for with the Wayfarer. The crew is a mishmash of species and personalities, from Sissix, the friendly reptilian pilot, to Kizzy and Jenks, the constantly sparring engineers who keep the ship running. Life on board is chaotic, but more or less peaceful - exactly what Rosemary wants.
Until the crew are offered the job of a lifetime: the chance to build a hyperspace tunnel to a distant planet.
Optimistic spacefaring sci-fi! Grounding the story in the idea of family was excellent, and really made the story sing for me. I loved the anthropological angle as we were introduced to different sentient species and their cultures. I would definitely hang with Aandrisks.
I thoroughly enjoyed this one.
See more of my thoughts here.
In this edition: the new online puritanism, capitalists continuing to do Bad Shit, building communities, engaging with our media, and rage as a superpower.
Continue reading
Over the last three days, I’ve examined the work of Project NISEI, the fan-run program to keep Android: Netrunner alive after its official cancellation. In the first post in this series, I shared a brief history of Netrunner and NISEI and highlighted the strengths NISEI has exhibited in their first seven months. In the second post, I switched to my critic’s glasses and pointed out areas for improvement in NISEI’s handling of their first spoiler season. Yesterday, I went further, criticizing what I believed were NISEI’s substantial weaknesses in their web communications, both on their website and social media. Today, I want to cap off the series with recommendations for ways NISEI could address the challenges I identified.
Continue reading
In yesterday’s post about Project NISEI, the fan-run organization to keep Android: Netrunner alive and thriving, I offered criticisms of their messaging during spoiler season. (If you want to return to the start of this series, click here.) In today’s post, I want to turn my focus to the ways in which NISEI is using–or, sadly, often failing to use–their website.
Continue reading
As I discussed yesterday in the first post in this series, clearly, Project NISEI, the fan organization dedicated to keeping Android: Netrunner alive, is doing a lot right. From my outsider perspective, it appears they carefully prioritized the achievements necessary to build a solid foundation in their first few months. NISEI seemingly identified where they needed to shine in this early stage of their project, and dedicated their efforts to excelling in exactly those areas.
But now that NISEI is solidly established, I believe their priorities must necessarily shift. Areas that were less critical in their first stage, and thus left with room for improvement, will become more important as NISEI moves to release their second set and beyond. NISEI is no longer trying to earn the trust of the established Netrunner community. They are the face of the game’s future, which means they need to pay increasing attention to a second audience: new players.
Continue reading
In June 2018, Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) announced the end of Android: Netrunner, their cyberpunk card game. Though I had only been playing for a year and a half, and was decidedly a casual “kitchen-table” player, I was devastated. Netrunner was, and remains to this day, my favorite board game, a unique asymmetric game of cat-and-mouse that drips with theme. I wasn’t alone. Netrunner had an active and passionate fan community which was left reeling by the sudden end of the game. On October 22nd, 2018, FFG pulled the plug, and Android: Netrunner was officially no longer supported.
Continue readingHoo boy, what a year, huh? It’s been… well, let’s just say that I am literally forcing myself to stop this train of thought because if I don’t, there’s a good chance I’ll get overwhelmed with despair and paralyzed by the anxiety of figuring out what to say and whoops it’ll be another year of unintended blog hibernation.
So instead, let’s talk about board games!
Continue reading
If you’re subscribed to Brainthoughts via email, you probably received about 10 different emails tonight about new posts that looked very adolescent and angsty.
I am not, in fact, dissolving into a 15-year-old angst monster. I’ve been transferring the last of my old posts from one of my high school blogs today, and I initially forgot to set most of them to “Private”, so they showed up on the subscription feed. They should be properly hidden now, where no one but me can witness their cringeworthiness.
Sorry ’bout that, folks.
In other minor site news:
- Instagram and Twitter sidebar widgets have been replaced with widgets that actually work
- Disclaimers added to footer, because I’m a professional now and stuff
- Category and tag pages now display descriptions for the category or tag, if it exists (see the Inkblots category or the Humanist Year tag)
- A few new default category headers added
- Cross-posted Writing for Joy, which I meant to do about 9 months ago but forgot
- Two new pages are almost ready to launch: About Brainthoughts and Support Me