Unwinnable

For Unwinnable’s Sex Week, I did not, as others did, indulge in ‘method’ writing, as I am currently as about as sexually active as a nun who has sprained her crotch. However, I really wanted to make a ‘dating sim’ for the Pulse Pounding Heart Stopping Dating Sim Jam and instead of making it about weird and wonderful sexual experiences I wanted to make it about the heart stopping drudgery of being heterosexual in a world where heterosexuals are conditioned not to talk to each other, or listen to each other, or really have any idea what they are doing. So I made this Twine game. However, I famously have somewhat manic-depressive tendencies, and therefore it takes place in a red-hot club atmosphere where your eyes are being singed and music is forcing its way into your skin and you love every second of your descent into hell. (more…)

A TL;DR History in Hypertext (more…)

The turkey has been eaten. The belt has been loosened. Some folks are working off their food coma in front of the TV, watching a football game or a movie. Some folks are on the computer, looking at their favorite websites. To you, we say, “Welcome!” Team Unwinnable is off with family and friends, just like you, but every year we leave behind something to help pass your idle hours. Now that you’ve fed your stomach, here’s a menu of sixteen favorite pieces from 2012 to feed your brain. Bon appetit! (more…)

I can’t remember thinking The Smiths were a miserable band until I started listening to them when I was miserable and then I became…well, a “Girl Afraid.” (more…)

Imagine a sweat-packed meat club full of electric-veined twenty-somethings raising their arms to fluorescent lights like a million little joysticks, bellowing joy at a projected moving image. The bass vibrates from the stage, filling the bodies with animalistic desire and rage, every bit as one with the fleeting hero in front of them. The hero grits teeth and cries tears of concentration, his fingers slip wet over WASD, and his every movement provides pain and ecstasy and an explosion of colors.

Projected onto the wall, huge and pulsating: Hotline Miami.
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“It wasn’t any of my business. So I pushed [the door] open and looked in.”

-  Farewell, My Lovely

There’s a reason that Jason Schwartzman’s writer character in Bored To Death is reading Farewell, My Lovely when he decides to become a private detective. Since I’ve started writing for money, I have come to identify much more with Raymond Chandler’s enigmatic gumshoe, Phillip Marlowe. Or rather, that I have started to wish I could be him. In my mind, Marlowe is not only a detective, but a freelance writer for hire, someone who investigates stories for a living. And of course, that is what Raymond Chandler is doing: he is using Marlowe to explore a mythical, violent LA – and Chandler commits it to paper. (more…)

I am running home.

I am nine years old and I am running, the frost cutting into my thin, pallid cheeks, the winter wind searing my ears raw, the sneering Scottish sun throwing its Vs at me from the red horizon. As my uncomfortable school shoes pinch, I imagine I am in the opening credits: I spring down the steps of my chosen shortcut, my books a shield on my arm, my schoolbag the knapsack of yore; the hood  obscuring my view is that sacred helm. Knightmare is on in 10 minutes, and there is no way on earth I am missing the opening gambit. (more…)