What if horror games are actually driven by banality? Is Call of Cthulhu best when it’s mostly full of the everyday?
Continue readingMonthly Archives: May 2023
Losers (Netflix 2019)
Another snippet, like last week.
Losers might be the wrong title for this series. But I think that’s the point, and I think it’s a point worth making. Where sports narratives often feel caricatured or inevitable, this feels more human. It’s good.
Continue readingGhosts, a tiny post
This is just a brief one, but…
I’ve been reading A Lesson in Vengeance, been part way through it for a while. The combination of that book, plus my own meditations, has left me musing on the nature of ghosts and how they work in stories. I don’t think I’m saying anything revolutionary when I say that, while ghosts are often said to have unfinished business, they can also be interpreted as the unfinished business of those they haunt.
Ghosts make a neat device for unwelcome and intrusive thoughts.
Continue readingWorldbuilding: leave room for later
Leave yourself room for later. If there’s anything I’ve learned from doing lots of worldbuilding—for my own linear fiction and for the collaborative fiction of RPGs—it’s that trying to fill every last nook and cranny of a setting is a daunting task. And actually filling up everything is choking, stifling. Don’t fill up everything. It leaves no room for the future, and it leaves no room for anyone else.
Continue reading
Fistful of Wits 