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Sci-Fi Reality

By Bay Posted Sunday Oct 2, 2022

Filed under: Anime, Epilogue 35 comments
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The year was 2005, I was seven years old. Netflix was still sending out discs in little paper sleeves, tucked into envelopes for people to rent on a subscription. There was no limit to how many discs you could rent, for a monthly fee, provided you could get the thing into the mail fast enough for them to return a new one. Our family was on the ‘two discs at a time’ plan, Dad got one, and the kids got one Mom would get something occasionally but it was usually something to sit down and watch as a family. As a mom of three homeschooled kids, she just didn’t have the time..

The day we got to sit down and pick out our next run of discs was sacred. The library was huge, with more things than I’d ever seen as options in my tiny little life. I’d been in a Blockbuster before, and my library’s poorly-run disc rental section (which made one feel like a fugitive for checking out a movie), but Netflix’s selection…it was everything I could dream up.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Sci-Fi Reality”

 

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them

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Animal Crossing and the Missing Genre

By Bay Posted Sunday Sep 25, 2022

Filed under: Epilogue, Video Games 43 comments
Being TransparentPrevious Post
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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

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Being Transparent

By Bay Posted Sunday Sep 18, 2022

Filed under: Epilogue 61 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
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The Thieves Guild: Because Reasons

By Bay Posted Sunday Sep 11, 2022

Filed under: Epilogue, Personal 51 comments
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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.   

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Thieves Guild: Because Reasons”

 

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them

Introduction: Guest StarPrevious Post
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Introduction: Guest Star

By Peter T Parker Posted Wednesday Sep 7, 2022

Filed under: Epilogue, Personal, Random 45 comments
Disability and Video Games: Easy ModePrevious Post
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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”

 

Peter T Parker He/him

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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 65 comments
Lost in Translation: Console-to-Console PortingPrevious Post
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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 69 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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