Surprise List of Links

It has been a long time, yadda yadda, here’s a list of links I enjoyed while being confined at home (which is my day to day anyway, not much change here as a freelance translator) :

• Scratches my Sleep No More itch to the point of reopening the wound: The virtual tour of Punchdrunk’s decors for the immersive show The Drowned Man http://tour.templestudioslondon.com/
• Zach Weinersmith (SMBC) has put his books as free PDFs online and we love him: https://www.smbc-comics.com/covid/
• Luchie did the same with her wonderful „Hot Milk Digital“:
  https://gumroad.com/luchie
• The amazing shortfilm (34 minutes) Pear Cider and Cigarettes by Robert Valley
• Not tested yet (and not sure if I will find the time to do so, staying (more) at home makes for a surprisingly busy time in my case, with work and moving) but if you fancy an escape room at home, this looks very cool: https://www.millersvilleescaperoom.com/loxstone-manor
• The National Theatre have put both their 2011 productions of Frankenstein with Jonny Lee Miller and with Beneduck Climberbetch as the creature. I have only watched to former as of now, a matinee in my living room, and it is a very, very impressive production. I had read and liked the book a few years ago, and it made me think back of all the wonderful questions it asks about life and morality. If watching a two hour long play on a screen is your thing, the National Theatre is putting Antony and Cleopatra online in a few days. Edit: They actually replace the upload by a new play every… two weeks or so. More plays!
• Incredible Longread about Marcus Hutchins, who put a stop to the Wannacry virus a few years back.

I’m going to keep updating the list with more links the next days. In the meantime: Drink tea and enjoy that pile of books waiting for you since forever.

Inktober: Roasted

They’re laughing so hard at you that you feel your face turn bright red and hot. That’s it. That’s all I can think of. Not much to start a story on. Led Zeppelin is blaring through my boombox and October is long gone. So much has happened since October, it seems to be a lifetime ago. Baby baby baby, chants Robert Plant. Was he ever roasted? I wonder how funny he is, if he would take it with humour, to be publicly roasted. I feel like I know nothing about that character, only that he had glorious hair. And a thing for Middle-earth.

You feel your face turn bright red and hot. I often feel that way, even if no one is laughing at me. People are rarely laughing at me though, fortunately. It’s not something they do, the people I know. They are nice, in general. I can’t think of anyone being innately not-nice, now that I think of it. Mostly, if someone is, it’s because their day was shit.

The bit of tea still in my mug is cold, and there are leaves floating around in it. I love how tea leaves unfold and grow when they’re plunged in boiling water. Not so much when I accidentally taste them in my mouth when I take a sip of cold tea. Baby baby baby. It feels gross, chewing on that leaf. I’m going to make more tea and I read the Wikipedia page on Robert Plant.

Inktober: Tranquil

2nd of October 2018: Tranquil

„Oh yeah, like the darts.”

„The darts?”

„You know. They make you sleepy. Like some kind of poison. I often feel as if I’d been hit by such a dart. Suddenly sleepy. Like in the middle of the day, I feel my vision go blurry, I have a hard time focussing. I should be working or something, and instead I just lose all strength and go numb.”

„You mean tranquilliser darts?”

„Yes! It’s in their name. They make you tranquil, isn’t that what they do?”

„They’re used to stun and sedate animals, not calm you while you work.”

„Oh, like I’m so excited at work I’d need to be stunned.”

„That’s what you are saying!”

„No, I’m not. Sometimes I just feel like I’ve been hit by one of those guns. I find myself staring at the wall and my thoughts float away into the distance. All zombielike, you know?”

„I think you need more sleep.”

Inktober: Poisonous

Yep it’s a drawing challenge, but writing needed ink too, originally. And I don’t need an excuse to write.

1^st of October 2018: Poisonous

The day dies slowly, fading away like liquid being poured over the horizon and seeping into the soil. Heaven dissolving into the earth, yielding to the night. Close your eyes for too long and you miss it. Blink, and you won’t notice anything happening.

Poisonous, toxic. Harming in small doses. The aim of poison is to not be overtly detrimental, that would defeat its purpose. It has to pass, to be mistaken for something else, to be untraceable. Tainting from the inside. From where you feel safe. Strike at the heart of familiarity. Contaminate once, in a moment of fragility—and then again, if needs be. If no action is taken, if you don’t fight it or stop it, then that’s it for you. Blink and you miss it. Close your eyes for too long, and you’re dead. You don’t expect it, you can’t detect it, and then it’s too late, it’s taken over.

You die slowly, fading from that trust being poured into your heart, your soil. Dissolving into the other, yielding to them, seeping into the night.

Games games games

Da fragt mich ein Freund, ob ich ihm ein paar hübsche und günstige Games empfehlen könnte, und down the rabbit hole I go. Wer sich das Ganze anschauen möchte und sich nicht vor ein wenig Französisch fürchtet, voilà:

https://jecraquemonslip.wordpress.com/

Eines Tages mache ich eine kleine itch.io Liste auf Deutsch. Und was zu meiner Steam-Wishlist, die auch nicht kleiner wird.

Jetzt aber habe ich eine kleine Liste gemacht mit allen Spielen, die mich an der E3 irgendwie angesprochen haben. Auf Englisch, weil es einfach so gekommen ist, und ohne zusammenhängende Kommentare, auch, weil es einfach zu gekommen ist.

Neo CabBeing a Uber driver in Blade Runner, count me in.

Night CallLooks like the same game, but grittier, losing the Blade Runner aspect and adding a darker look. Count me still in, I think.

Morning Star

I have NO CLUE what this game is about, but the trailer made me all excited for meta-gameplay and depressing reflexions about society.

Tunic

1. Cute graphics, 2. Fox!

Death Stranding
Someone on twitter mentioned how nobody has any idea what this game is about, but everyone is excited to play it. That’s fairly accurate, except I already know that I’ll be a huge scaredy-cat and just stream it.

Ooblets

I MEAN COME ON how cute can you make a game? Is too cute a thing?

SableIt’s beautiful and there’s a very obvious but very welcome inspiration from Moebius (pic) and it reminds me of Journey.

Beyond Good and Evil

I just want Ubisoft to make a movie right now.

Cyberpunk 2077A Witcher-like game in a Cyberpunk universe, I’m so so so happy. Let’s just try to get those hopes back down to earth before the game gets released, better to be overwhelmed with happiness than shattered by expectations.

Skull and Bones

Okay, the gameplay did look kind of boring, but the cinematic trailer was magnificent. Also CUSTOMIZING YOUR SHIP HOW RAD IS THAT

Sea of Solitude
I will never be able to play that, not even during broad daylight.

I’m not counting the Bethesda games nor The Last of Us because those games are too big, too spoilery, too far away and it’s too obvious that I will want to play them all. I haven’t even finished the first The Last of Us yet, nor Dishonored 2, now to think of it. But soon I’ll have a PS4 and will catch up on all of those big games.