Twenty Sided

Animal Crossing and the Missing Genre

By Bay Posted Sunday Sep 25, 2022

Filed under: Epilogue, Video Games 25 comments

I first played Animal Crossing when I was way too young for it. This wasn’t a case of being not ready for the content, like that time I watched someone play Doom when I was sevenThanks dad. 10/10. No, Animal Crossing required the player to read, which I could not yet do. I tried my best, but I can only imagine the endless stream of little-kid-voice shouting out ‘what does this say?’, ‘can you read this for me?’, and ‘what’s he saying?’ that I imagine my poor mom just loved hearing day in and day out. But, by the end of it, wanting to play Animal Crossing was one of the driving forces of my actually learning to read.

I have some really horrible learning disabilities and was a pretty late bloomer in that particular court. My younger brother, Peter actually learned to read before me (by a good few years) and at higher levels. So, it’s safe to say that my little animal friends were pretty integral to my growing up.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Animal Crossing and the Missing Genre”

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them

 Being TransparentPrevious Post

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Being Transparent

By Bay Posted Sunday Sep 18, 2022

Filed under: Epilogue 54 comments

 The Thieves Guild: Because ReasonsPrevious Post

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Some of you have noticed the issues with the site. The weird-colored user backdrops (or in Peter’s case, complete transparency.), the sticky post that blocks people from seeing the new content, and even before Dad died; the lack of updates to WordPress.

There are a lot of issues and reasons here, but I don’t feel confident making decisions on how it’s handled entirely on my own, or at least without talking about it first. So, let’s do that…

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Being Transparent”

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them

 The Thieves Guild: Because ReasonsPrevious Post

Next PostAnimal Crossing and the Missing Genre 

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The Thieves Guild: Because Reasons

By Bay Posted Sunday Sep 11, 2022

Filed under: Epilogue, Personal 46 comments

 Introduction: Guest StarPrevious Post

Next PostBeing Transparent 

I was fourteen years old and playing Skyrim for the first time. My poor, ancient computer just barely chugged through it, constantly crashing during loading screens or during important cutscenes; and I was in love.

I had played games I’d loved before (mostly Nintendo classics like Super Mario Sunshine and Ocarina of time) but Skyrim was my first real love in the video game world. There was something special about it, I would put on headphones and just vanish for hours into this little world, like a book I couldn’t put down.

Part of this was likely due to the fact that I played it during a tough part of my growing up. It was 2011, about the time in the Twelve-Year Mistake when we kids got the news; the house we grew up in was being foreclosed on, and there was nothing we could do about it. Being 14, or anyone, that was world-shattering, and Skyrim offered escapism from that whole mess.

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Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them

 Introduction: Guest StarPrevious Post

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Introduction: Guest Star

By Bay Posted Wednesday Sep 7, 2022

Filed under: Epilogue, Personal, Random 42 comments

 Disability and Video Games: Easy ModePrevious Post

Next PostThe Thieves Guild: Because Reasons 

(This post is written by Peter, the Author is set to Bay for the moment because of an issue with his user. Sorry for any confusion.)

So! It’s my turn to introduce myself. Some of you may have ‘met’ me if you watched the stream of my dad’s funeral. (Which is a hell of a sentence, but we don’t have time to unpack all of that) but for any who missed it, here we go.

My name is Peter T. Parker. The T stands for Telemachus which I’ve pronounced wrong (Tel-ehm-ah-cuss) since I was a child. I don’t plan to stop now and that is, unfortunately, everyone else’s problem. I’ve been mentioned a few times here, but under a different name that doesn’t bear repeating. I’m the middle child, aka the youngest daughter turned oldest son.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Introduction: Guest Star”

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them

 Disability and Video Games: Easy ModePrevious Post

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Disability and Video Games: Easy Mode

By Bay Posted Sunday Sep 4, 2022

Filed under: Column, Epilogue, Game Design, Video Games 51 comments

 Lost in Translation: Console-to-Console PortingPrevious Post

Next PostIntroduction: Guest Star 

As a disabled person, I spend a lot of time calling things difficult. I complain about how hard it is to get out of bed because my knees hurt. I complain about not being able to reach card scanners in stores because I’m too short in my wheelchair. And I complain about stairs an awful lot because wheels aren’t like, super compatible with them.

I also complain about video games. With diminished mobility on my right side, including my hand, video games can be more difficult for me than the average player. But even before arthritis decided to awaken in me like the world’s worst X-Men geneNo no, don’t bring up Rogue here, yes, I know she kills people she touches and all that jazz, but my knees hurt really bad like, often, so…I have it worse, okay? I was complaining about video game difficulty for other reasons.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Disability and Video Games: Easy Mode”

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them

 Lost in Translation: Console-to-Console PortingPrevious Post

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Lost in Translation: Console-to-Console Porting

By Bay Posted Sunday Aug 28, 2022

Filed under: Epilogue, Game Design, Video Games 67 comments

 Ding...51Previous Post

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A few days ago was my dad’s birthday and I wrote a post about a part of the dilemma I’ve been facing with this site. A lot of it is emotional slog, ‘what if I’m not enough like Dad’ and ‘what if I’m too much like Dad’. There’s also not wanting to face it yet. Because, while my dad and I did talk sometimes, he was a very online guy. It’s hard to feel properly like he’s gone because I’m not used to seeing him. He spent most of his time in front of a computer screen, making content, playing games to make more content, etc.

It feels weird to have no messages on G-Chat from him He refused to move from Google Chats. He wouldn’t text, Facebook Messenger, or even message on Steam. It was a running joke that for such a nerd, he could really be an old fart about tech., no YouTube links, no new posts here. So, because of that, posting here sort of solidifies it. It forces that god-awful acceptance. He’s gone forever and he’s not going to write more…Ouch.

On a much lighter note: The other issue I talked about was how we had very few games in common. So I, by extension, have very few games in common with his audience… Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Lost in Translation: Console-to-Console Porting”

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them

 Ding...51Previous Post

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Ding…51

By Bay Posted Wednesday Aug 24, 2022

Filed under: Epilogue, Landmarks, Personal 69 comments

 The future of this site and an update:Previous Post

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So, dad would be 51 today. Last year today he said this:

“The running joke is that every year I make a birthday post about how I’m getting old and I’m going to be dead any minute now. I try to find some sort of humorous way to joke about death or aging and then maybe follow it up with a sarcastic remark about Half-Life 3. It’s a funny traditionFunny according to the standards set on this site, anyway. YMMV. but I’m just not feeling it this year. So let’s have a serious conversation about my health. “

Well, he said a lot more than that, but copy-pasting the whole post word-for-word feels like a lot.

Here’s something you’re about to hear from me a lot; grieving for a funny person is hard. It might be why, despite leading the charge for wanting usMy mom, my two brothers and myself. to keep up the site…nothing much has happened so far.Well, nothing from me or my brothers, my mom is absolutely getting shit done Don’t get me wrong, we’ve moved across states, dealt with funeral arrangements, and all those other little things you don’t really consider until someone dies…At the time of writing this, when you Google ‘what happens to your Steam account when you die’ you get hilariously, satirically, wrong information. So this is why my collage profs didn’t want me ‘just Googling it’.
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