cat denied

to be good at writing fiction you must first stop looking at it as an escape from reality but a mechanism through which to process it

Thank you, tumblr user catmask, for summarizing why a huge chunk of popular speculative fiction published in the last few years fell incredibly flat for me

• Squid Maids helped me put into words why the desire to be something is confirmation enough to seek it out
  • and helped me realize I was neurodivergent, whoops haha
• Cat Wishes started me down the long road of accepting that it's okay to be selfish when it comes to your own needs
• the beginning of Substitute Familiar was about my fears of complications from upcoming major surgery and learning how to trust the people who take me in their care (another really long road)
  • ...and if/when things go wrong, if you have support, you can still make it work
• and conversely, Feline Therapy was about how sometimes you're right and they're wrong and people trying to help you don't, in fact, always know what's best for you, even if their intentions are in the right place
  • ...but that doesn't mean you can't find a way to make up and work things out afterwards; we are all shades of greys
• the longest short story in Substitute Familiar Stories was born from my fervent, desperate desire for class solidarity and punishments other than exile within already fragile communities
• Plant Lamp was a big ball of feelings about (often self-imposed) isolation and what a giant mess I was when I started transitioning
• Cat Wishes Stories was about a lot of things, but primarily about how it's okay to change
• and Her Majesty The Prince is about all of the above and so much more
  • ...but has increasingly been a way for me to discover how freeing it is to write flawed characters, and through that, how I can learn to accept my own flaws and love myself regardless

The "public" game archive held by Japan's National Diet library, which currently contains 3,300+ games, has been accessed just 16 times in the last ~two years, owing to very stringent restrictions that limit access to researchers who've demonstrated a need for certain material and have outlined how they intend to publicise their research.

These restrictions are in no small part due to—and tell me if you've heard this one before—a signed agreement between the library and unnamed industry organisations who feel that unfettered access would cause untold damage to the industry and allow people to treat the archive "like an arcade"...

It's such an unusual experience to get to play in a famous painting. But that's exactly what this game is about: Loyal H. "Bud" Chapman's Infamous 18, a PC golf sim from 2006 that aims to replicate the dream courses painted by Bud Chapman in the early 1980s. Just added to the Golfshrine inventory yesterday, and the main subject of today's acquisitions update!

Update edit: I've also now preserved the game via Internet Archive - so, assuming they're currently up right now, you could experience it too.

This is one of the craziest sports game concepts I've ever heard of. A golf sim where the courses are based on paintings by an artist who exclusively did fantasy golf landscapes.

It's like if there was a beat-em-up that took place entirely in real Boris Vallejo paintings, but it's golf.

Please, Bob is my son's name. Call me Mr. Smith