Mark Sabalauskas
@marksab
Indie tabletop RPG designer, zine publisher I wrote Return to the Stars, a science fiction RPG, which helps players create their own stories in an optimistic space opera setting. #hopepunk
"He bets everything on the idea that the elements he finds interesting—the meticulous, tactile miniature work; ritualistic dancing; shimmering fish-scale diving suits; dryly witty secret agents—will be just as interesting to his audience." https://lttr.ai/AtcKK
"We jump into the past to observe the mother enduring the punishing physical and emotional toll of fertility treatments, culminating in a heavy, isolating decision regarding artificial insemination." https://lttr.ai/AsZ1y
And the protagonist's decision to reclaim her brother anyway is a stubborn act of love that reads as resistance because the system has priced grief out of reach Read more 👉 https://lttr.ai/AsZ1u
Contrast this with the monk, a man who cloaks himself in the rigid robes of intellectual Buddhism, yet is willfully blind to the desires that simmer beneath his surface. Read more 👉 https://lttr.ai/AqWL0
"To counter the cold, frictionless reality of a digital story, the filmmakers utilized stop-motion animation and tactile storytelling." https://lttr.ai/AtVQQ
While it fails as entertainment, Sanshiro Sugata offers something invaluable: a window into the nascent stages of a legendary career. Read more 👉 https://lttr.ai/AqWF2
” They would casually march right up to the cameras for a head rub, or abruptly halt a dramatic tracking sequence to groom themselves inappropriately in the middle of the frame Read more 👉 https://lttr.ai/As5fL
But Close Encounters earns that collective hush in a way few films do, and I want to explain why — right after a quick word on the premise. Read more 👉 https://lttr.ai/Aso54
We see flashes of a childhood spent “reading the room,” where Tim acted as a human bridge between warring parents. Read more 👉 https://lttr.ai/AsC9m
Identity and Illusion: A Deep Dive into Green Snake (1993): https://lttr.ai/Aqi6o
"He desperately judges the world rather than embracing the fluid beauty of what it is.Tsui Hark uses this seemingly righteous character as a foil to the snakes' compassion, a commentary on the destructive power of self-deception and rigid ideology." https://lttr.ai/AqWLo
Meanwhile, Chow Yun-Fat’s other hit, God of Gamblers, became the year's highest-grossing film in Hong Kong. Read more 👉 https://lttr.ai/AqfRj
It is a genre built on rapid-fire wordplay, jarring anachronisms, and a total evisceration of classical Chinese literature. Read more 👉 https://lttr.ai/ApDUj
It didn't just save a struggling animation department; it kickstarted the “Disney Renaissance,” a period of unprecedented critical and commercial dominance. Read more 👉 https://lttr.ai/Aohxi
While it didn't cross over to the West the way Woo’s gun-fu did, it launched a massive wave of gambling-themed cinema across Asia. Read more 👉 https://lttr.ai/An93d
Resisting will fail. You need a Bombidil style character who is totally indifferent to the Ring.
Megalopolis limps into #17 in the S&S pol. Not surprising, but disappointing. The film is a shipwreck. To which provocateurs dive, pull up odd bits of plunder--a cool scene, a scrap of production design. Pretending that these add up to great art. Moved not by the film, but their "cunning".
Name a TV show you’re positive no one remembers but you. (I, myself, only had the vaguest recollection of this unsuccessful Canadian sci-fi series, until I snagged a free remaindered copy of the Ellison biography at Readercon.)
People often talk about the ship of Theseus, but no one ever says who their OPT is. Ariadne, Hippolyta, Perigone? Someone else?
You've been kidnapped. The characters from the last tv show you watched are trying to rescue you. Who is coming to save you? I'm not entirely certain that it is ideal to have Talentless Takanko attempt my rescue. But perhaps the kidnappers will be in awe of her style and confidence? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Flights of Foundry is a free online global SFF convention. I'm running a session of Advertising and Antiheroes on Friday (hour 10 of the con, 9 CDT) Come play as a fascinating & flawed corpo sellout in a cyberpunk dystopia, in a prestige drama pastiche!
I'm also excited to bring @jasonsanford.bsky.social 's essay on AI in front of more people in the latest issue of the Stellar Beacon 'zine!
When My Light Reaches You is an original SFF story by @brklyndragon.bsky.social Rob is lead organizer for the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers, a former guest host and curator for the New York Review of Science Fiction. Daydreamer is his debut middle grade novel. Check it out!
Looking forward to connecting with and learning from many more people on Bluesky in the future!
The House Always Wins is adventure that mashes up noir cyberpunk themes with resistant hopepunk possibilities. Can the PCs sustain a beacon of hope in a city shrouded in darkness?
Powered by a Flower a solarpunk adventure, with the added fun of werewolves in space! It was designed by the noted science fiction writer @jolantru.bsky.social whose Star Pattern Traveler reminds me of the classic science fiction stories of Andre Norton and whose Fire Heart is releasing in Nov.
And now at last it comes. We would have given Jodorowsky the cult following freely! In place of the Lynch arthouses would screen quixotic surrealism. And it shall not be disturbing like Mulholland Drive, but as beautiful and terrible as Branded to Kill! All shall “like” on Letterboxd and despair!