fae of the seelie court

My goal with Indiepocalypse Roundups (as opposed to Double Features) is to present a collection of games around much broader themes such as this case with the very broad theme of a shared continent of origin. My last Roundup was an appropriately timed collection of games nominated in the IGF Nuovo and this time around it's games from South America!

Highlighting games from all around the world is a core goal of Indiepocalypse, and while far from comprehensive, having contributions from (a reported) 32 different countries is pretty good! (i think) The game industry focuses heavily on US (and some Europe) based events that are, to be honest, inaccessible to plenty of people who live in the US. But luckily this is the internet and you can (basically) publish things no matter where you are!

CONURBATION (@casa) - Brazil
CONURBATION is of the earliest entries in Indiepocalypse and one I go back to most frequently when I'm asked for an example of an "Indiepocalypse game" or a game to look at first. Singularly focused and intentionally abrasive, places you in the center of urban encroachment.

Distant Memories (Mer Grazzini) - Argentina
Applying the procedural generation so commonly found in games to poetry, Distant Memories presents itself as a self-styled "Procedural-poem-catch ‘em up™". Can you have a "run-based" game without a clear objective or fail-state? Distant Memories presents its own approach to both what it means to be a game and poem.

Available in both English and Castellano.

hlina (sukinapan) - Chile
It's a simple job, help someone by looking around their house for their lost pets. Just unfamiliar enough without being completely alien, hlina conjures a surrealist world much like our own but does so without an interest in explaining why. Art often exists in a non-literal world open to our personal interpretation (or even just feeling), and games are no exception to this. And with hlina, sukinapan provides a 5 minute jaunt into such a world.

GUACUCO (@futureruins) - Venezuela
A short exploration of a beach and memories. GUACUCO is self-described as an interactive diorama and was for a time, an actual live art installation. It's core of recollecting and discarding memories inside of seashells demonstrates beautifully the conversational heart of art that exists in art even in the absence of a mechanical challenge. Never underestimate the emotional challenge presented by art.

Skate RPG (Daniel Dante) - Brazil
As it's name implies, Skate RPG is beautiful introduction of a skateboarding trick system into an RPG framework. And with the skating comes a fierce anti-authoritarian attitude. As you travel though the city meeting it's residents and learning new skate tricks, you are also assured the rich do not exist to help you and probably shouldn't exist at all. Frankly more in-game shopkeepers ought to remind of the soul-crushing nature of the 8-hour workday befor presenting you with their wares.

Available in Portuguese and English

CONURBATION was featured in Indiepocalypse #3
Distant Memories was featured in Indiepocalypse #30
hlina was featured in Indiepocalypse #39
GUACUCO was featured in Indiepocalypse #30
Skate RPG was featured in Indiepocalypse #14

(if any of the other developers have cohost handles that i missed let me know!)

I did a scary thing today so you should be nice to me in my imo

in no particular order (and flashing images/lights warning for pretty much all of these lol)

• any time Sailor Chibi Moon's attacks fail to activate until it's comedically appropriate but especially this one

• SUPREME THUNDER DRAGON rules, i'd shit my pants if i saw this IRL. rad stuff. sometimes when there's a thunderstorm and it's making me anxious i just think "that's Jupiter up there she's practicing her Supreme Thunder Dragon"

• this is not an Attack Move but i feel like Tuxedo Mask's dorky fucking henshin is tragically underappreciated and it should have been in more than one episode. side note i also love the one from PGSM where he just gets dressed but dramatically.

• Akuryuo Taisan is neat and i like that Rei can just use magic whenever she wants. i have an Akuryo Taisan sticker i made on my knife robot and my printer so that hopefully evil spirits begone

• Mercury Aqua Mirage from the Ami's First Love OVA, i wish all the senshi had gotten their own Extremely Lovingly Animated short with unique henshin/attack scenes but if anyone deserves it it's my sweet girl Ami!!!!!!

• World Shaking is Bad Ass, just looks cool, no extra flourishes needed, would be terrified but honored to be on the other end of it.

• Sailor Teleport bc i think that all LGBTs should be able to hold hands in a circle with their friends/partners/polycules and teleport wherever they want

Copied (with grammar/spelling mistakes) from my twitter thread about it for posterity.

I was going to do this for Pride weekend but you know, life, so: I wanted to talk about a thing. I created the #pansexual flag, a thread.

Back in 2010, I was 20 and tumblr was my main social playground. I was active in various spheres, and I was learning.

I'd been IDing as bi since I was 13, but moved away from bi as an identifier and took up pansexual soon after discovering the term, bc I felt it fit better.

This is mainly bc the simplicity of pan being defined as attraction to any/all genders was extremely appealing to someone really coming into this new way of expressing their orientation like tumblr allowed. It felt right for how I wanted to relate to and express my orientation.

The bi communities I had access too often saw heavy discussion related to attraction parametres of "bi" - convos at the time I didn't really recognise for what they were: bi people working hard to define bisexuality on their terms, tackling intra-community transphobia, (cont)

(cont) and developing within a social space where more expansive gender experiences and identities were becomes more well known and understood.

My switch of labels was about finding something that felt truly right for me, but it would be dishonest to pretend the decision wasn't impacted by the politics and "discourse" I was involved in at the time.

There was no popular pan flag, and the offerings were frankly... ugly. To me. Various shades of purple, P letters, P symbols incorporating gender symbols, infinity symbols. They didn't feel consistent with the other pride flags.

So on a whim, I decided to design one. I designed it to be pretty, honestly. That was a primary function of it, to have s/t I liked to represent my identity. No point pretending I was trying to be super innovative and deep: I wanted something pretty to plaster on my blog.

Pink, yellow, blue. A strong magenta, a strong gold yellow, and a light cerulean. The pink not too purple, the yellow not too bright, the blue not too cyan. Hex FF1B8D, FFD900, 1BB2FF.

Pink and blue, because of their gendered traditions, and yellow, a generally non-gendered colour, to represent nonbinary folks etc.

I created it anonymously, on a side blog away from my main handle. I was already running LGBTLaughs which was proving very popular in tumblr and didn't want to monopolise queer blog space, I suppose.

I didn't expect it to take off. It proved popular on tumblr, and for a few years the flag kept getting added to the Wikipedia 'pansexual' page and then removed. Eventually it snowballed and ended up in use well beyond tumblr.

As I've got older I've realised a lot of people would be interested in knowing this part of modern queer history, and more about modern flag creation in general, and that it's worth documenting. Not for credit so much as for posterity.

So, that's that. The first time I saw a pansexual flag in real life at my city's Pride parade I may have had a little cry.

Twitter Drama

Best viewed on the original twitter thread, for the full documentation (I may update this with fuller documentation down the line) but here's a rundown of drama surrounding the flag.

First, to set the stage:

• posted about designing the pan flag
• said i was cool with bi/pan lesbians
• said i was cool with kink at pride

Thus followed, in varying intensity 2020-2022:

• misgendering
• suicide bait
• general harassment/pile-on
• "called out" on r/pansexuals
• blasted on sapphics for satan (fb)
• now sworn enemy of of lesbian kpop avi twitter
• claims the original pan flag was transphobic in meaning
• multiple "new" pan flags designed to displace the one i designed
• claims i stole the flag from a medieval indian kingdom, and subsequent vandalisation of wikipedia for the actual state of kerala
• vandalisation of the wiki page for the pan flag, resulting in it having to be locked