I love Wandersong so much. I’ve tried to put into words what makes this game different to every other game. It usually goes something like this.

Nearly every game is about winning. Some are about plumbers leaping their way to the flag pole. Some are about gun-wielding heroes shooting everything. Those are pretty obvious examples of games where the primary emotion is Fiero (the feeling of pride after accomplishment). But even games about cozily pushing blocks, or doing skateboard tricks, or running a successful shop are also predominantly about fiero.

Now, I agree that not all games are about this one emotion. Horror games feature fiero, but are mostly about exploring fear. And there are lots of games that explore other emotions as their primary goal. But the vast majority of games are about winning and the emotion of fiero.

Wandersong is about happiness and not fiero. It makes that perfectly clear in its opening moments. The protagonist is made (painfully?) aware that he is not the hero. The Bard goes on to have several conversations with other characters about happiness. The plot largely revolves around increasing happiness. And, in terms of gameplay, in almost all the places a typical game would offer players chances to feel fiero, this game offers the player opportunities to experience happiness instead.

If you’re looking for it, it’s clear that the game is occasionally working to prevent fiero and present happiness in its place. The game frequently puts the player in situations where there is no opportunity for them or The Bard to “win”. Instead, they have the chance to help or to be helped. And sometimes even when things turn out well, it’s despite The Bard and the player failing at their goal.

It’s a unique game made with tons of love and I treasure it. I would recommend it to anyone with a heart.

I love these books!

I had so much fun reading The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty. It is squarely in the fantasy genre. Not SciFi like you’re asking for. But I can’t recommend it enough.

Amina is a very rare character: she is simultaneously an older woman, a single mom, a pirate, a lover, and a legendary hero. Chakraborty does an admirable job of balancing all these different aspects of her main character’s personality. The story is bombastic and fun, the supporting characters are charming, the setting is historical and fantastic all at once. This book is incredible, I could not put it down.

I have heard good things about the audio book. I read it in text form though, so I can’t confirm that myself.

Yeah, you’re honestly way out of line here.

Being correct is not a virtue. Other people are not impressed by how correct you are, or by how great a job you’ve done in correcting others.

Knowing more than others is not a virtue. Literally everyone knows less about some things than others; there is no super genius that is right or most knowledgeable about everything. For that reason (and many others), lack of knowledge is not a good reason to treat someone poorly.

You obviously care about the mechanics of clear communication. I believe that you can be better than this, that you can keep in mind why we communicate, not just how. You obviously know a lot about certain topics as well. I believe you can be better at how you demonstrate your knowledge. This time you showed off your knowledge to shame someone else. Maybe next time you could show off what you know by sharing it with someone in a helpful way.

Then people really would be impressed.

I’m honestly having so much fun getting out in my neighborhood and completing quests

Okay. A couple of others now that I’m thinking about them.

From The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente, a book about an Earth swallowed by rising seas:

MY NAME IS Tetley Abednego and I am the most hated girl in Garbagetown. I am nineteen years old. I live alone in Candle Hole, where I was born, and have no friends except for a deformed gannet bird I’ve named Grape Crush and a motherless elephant seal cub I’ve named Big Bargains, and also the hibiscus flower that has recently decided to grow out of my roof, but I haven’t named it anything yet. I love encyclopedias, a cassette I found when I was eight that says Madeline Brix’s Superboss Mixtape ’97 on it in very nice handwriting, plays by Mr. Shakespeare or Mr. Webster or Mr. Beckett, lipstick, Garbagetown, and my twin brother, Maruchan. Maruchan is the only thing that loves me back, but he’s my twin, so it doesn’t really count. We couldn’t stop loving each other any more than the sea could stop being so greedy and give us back China or drive time radio or polar bears. But he doesn’t visit anymore.

Also by Valente, the opening for Osmo Unknown and the Penny Woods

Once upon a time, in the beginning of the world, a certain peculiar Forest fell in love with a deep, craggy Valley. The Forest was very dashing. For a forest. Full of tall, thick trees and soft meadows and thorny brambles and a number of clever, bushy animals. The Valley was quite the catch as well, full of great big blue stones and clover and fat black hens and orange flowers. The whole wide earth agreed it was a very good match. And so the Forest and the Valley decided to do as folk have always done and settle down together to see what they might make between the two of them. They put their heads together and tinkered with the stones and the sky and the moon and the autumn and the spring. They pottered about with mushy dirt and rainstorms and exciting new sorts of pumpkins. They went abso- lutely bonkers over mushrooms. They experimented rashly with a year boasting four hundred and seventy-eight days, rather than the usual three hundred and sixty-five. They dabbled in badgers; hedgehogs; raccoons; bears both giant and pygmy; red-, green-, and blue-tailed deer; jackdaws; owls; parrots; cassowaries; flamingos; coots; herons; and pangolins. Most of these weren’t meant to live anywhere near the Forest or the Valley, but they were young and rebellious then and cared nothing for anyone else’s rules.

I remember the book Feed by Mira Grant having an opening scene that 100% full throttle right away. I looked it up just now. It’s not quite how I remember it, but it’s good and it was a great book, so I’m commenting with the quote here.

It’s amazing what you can use for a ramp, given the right motivation. Someone’s collapsed fence was blocking half the road, jutting up at an angle, and I hit it at about fifty miles an hour. The handlebars shuddered in my hands like the horns of a mechanical bull, and the shocks weren’t doing much better. I didn’t even have to check the road in front of us because the moaning started as soon as we came into view. They’d blocked our exit fairly well while Shaun played with his little friend, and mindless plague carriers or not, they had a better grasp of the local geography than we did. We still had one advantage: Zombies aren’t good at predicting suicide charges. And if there’s a better term for driving up the side of a hill at fifty miles an hour with the goal of actually achieving flight when you run out of “up,” I don’t think I want to hear it.

It’s okay to disagree with people. You’re being a dick while disagreeing with people, though.

I get that you’re being practical here. You’re not technically wrong, and the people who are disagreeing with you really are arguing points of nuance.

But they aren’t wrong either. That nuance matters in certain contexts.

You can pick this hill to defend. Or you can learn something that you didn’t know about the people in your online community, and probably your IRL community too.

Embrace learning something new. It will almost never be a waste of your time.

I appreciate you.

Wow. Yeah, absolutely. I had forgotten about that game until you mentioned it. Thank you for reminding me. It’s entirely unique and deserves to be remembered. But yeah, I don’t think I have it in me to replay it.

Third vote for Silverbullet here. I’m really enjoying using it.

These are called “aptroynms” and Wikipedia has a great list of them and also inaptroyms. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym

Yeah, my time on Beehaw is almost always pleasant. I really love seeing people arguing in the comments of a post and inevitably after a few exchanges they go out of their way to de-escalate tensions and recognize each other as people. Real conversations, real differing of opinions, but maintaining respect for people.

Thank you for this

My coach used to tell the story of a really promising track and field athlete who might have had a serious shot on the world scene, but quit to play in his band called The Barenaked Ladies. I never fact checked that, so I have no idea if it was true or not. But it stuck with me because it made me think of all the people who might have been incredible in one field or another who just never gave it a shot.

That’s exactly what I did!

I think the important difference in this case is like the difference between a human enjoying a song that they hear being performed vs a company recording a song that someone is performing and then replaying that song on demand for paying customers.

Yeah, that’s exactly my first thought while reading this. If I rewrote the list of achievements above to sound like I was claiming they all happened to me, and then posted it to twitter, it would be indistinguishable from most other “🙄 that happened” posts.

People will be saying similar stuff about Taylor Swift in 100 years; by definition being legendary means being unreal.

I suppose it depends on how good of a writer you are.

Some writers can say things we all know so well that it’s like we’re finally understanding it for the first time. Some writers have a knack for delivering facts or prose with the perfect dose of humor; it’s not what they say, but how they say it that is valuable.

I suppose the question of what merits a book has is more complicated than just “does this book push the envelope of human knowledge”, huh?