Fix your hearts or die

@xanatastrophe

Compromise with those who want to exploit and dehumanize you will never save you Bereft of ducks and defender of gay Workers must control their work Xana (she/her) | 30s

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Bluesky

gay

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Fix your hearts or die@xanatastrophe· Jul 6

Bike fall comic/meme

First panel: a person bikes with a rod in their hand
Second panel: the person sticks the rod in the front wheel of the bike
Third panel: the person is lying on the ground holding their leg in pain

Fix your hearts or die@xanatastrophe· Jun 8

Fix your hearts or die@xanatastrophe· Jun 2

As much as possible! Here's some cereal having a good time

The front of a cereal box where it appears two pieces of cereal are having intercourse whilst a third in the background watches

Fix your hearts or die@xanatastrophe· Jun 2

Taking the opportunity this pride to post from my saved gay images folder

Screenshot of an ad with two people and text in front of them that reads "Die Straight"

Screenshot of an ad with text that reads "Die Regular"

Fix your hearts or die@xanatastrophe· Jun 1

If anyone wants to use this as a banner or something for their gay trans self

Text that reads "It is gay, it is suuuper gay, it is worse than gay it is TRANS."

Fix your hearts or die@xanatastrophe· Apr 4

Really tired of all these reboots when the originals were already bad

Screenshot of a YouTube video titled "War With Iran Full Episode: Fri. Apr, 2026" by ABC News

Fix your hearts or die@xanatastrophe· Mar 15

Thanks Following timeline!

Just above A.R. Moxon's post on my timeline is a post by Riley MacLeod the reads "Oh, OK" with a link to a New York Times article and a screenshot from it that includes "And Mr. Bezos pitched his strategy: Reduce the newsroom's budget by half and double the productivity of those who remained, all while protecting some core parts of The Post's coverage, like investigative journalism."

Fix your hearts or die@xanatastrophe· Mar 7

The 9 games that make up me as much as I can figure

A 3 by 3 grid of 9 video game covers. From top right to bottom left, the games are Outer Wilds, Xenoblade Chronicles, What Remains of Edith Finch, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, Alan Wake II, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Hollow Knight, Control, and Warframe

Fix your hearts or die@xanatastrophe· Feb 3

Been cooking and eating good the last couple nights

Chicken cutlet and Japanese curry with rice

Fix your hearts or die@xanatastrophe· Jan 1

The quoted post screenshotted stopped on the word "kind-hearted"

Fix your hearts or die@xanatastrophe· Oct 8

Small brown bunny standing with its front paws on either side of its head, eyes closed

Fix your hearts or die@xanatastrophe· Sep 9

3. This all leads me to a part of Hultner's piece that I think are a couple of my favorite paragraphs I've read recently. I love this not only because it applies to games media/criticism but because it also applies so acutely to game development. We need workers' solidarity and independence.

Hultner: "This isn’t to say that no good criticism gets done in the mainstream, there are of course incredible writers all over the space in spite of the present moment; but we could do to take a page or two out of games media’s outskirts’ book. Because if games criticism is going to die, it’s going to be the people out in the wilderness who rebuild it.

What might that page-taking look like? Well, maybe it looks like a turn away from the embargo system, a refusal on the part of outlets and critics to engage with games given to them early for free. Maybe it looks like longer deadlines, a commitment to less crunch imposed on freelancers or staffers, or an increase in pay (and overtime for salaried workers!) if crunch must happen. Maybe it looks like conversations between writers at a given outlet, or between outlets. Waiting, moving slowly, collaborating, not being the first with a take, no longer participating in quid pro quo; these are all avenues available to mainstream critics and the outlets that still employ them—if they’re willing to take that kind of risk. The death—and life—of games criticism is a labor issue, and it’s one that must be addressed by games media, not the studios and publishers it covers."

Fix your hearts or die@xanatastrophe· Sep 9

2.b. Hultner also, I think accurately, points toward what/who *is* truly to blame for the slow motion apocalypse of game criticism: capitalist forces. The status quo is crumbling because it was an unsustainable capitalist wet dream designed by games industry and media industry corpos/execs.

Hultner: "By nature of our calling, critics are inextricably linked to the art we’re critiquing in at least one relational sense; without the art, there would be nothing to critique. But beyond that fact of our existence it feels strange that we should be beholden to the capitalist forces that produce some of the art we appraise, just because by letting them have that control we get a little bit closer to both the art and its—and our—audience. It’s like we’re all jockeying to be tour guides at the world’s most extractive museum for a day rate of less than $100. And, ironically, the more control we give those forces the easier it is for them to destroy us, if they wanted to."

Fix your hearts or die@xanatastrophe· Sep 9

2. Putting so much of the onus on developers, in this instance Team Cherry, to uphold the crumbling status quo seems like such an odd choice by Benfell as well. 2.a. Kaile Hultner points out that nobody is going to be done talking about Silksong any time soon.

Hultner: "As far as Silksong is concerned, it’s going to have a long popular—and critical—tail. People are going to want to know how others felt about it, and they’re going to engage in that conversation, and critics of all sorts will be engaged in it, for weeks and months to come. Just because it’s not happening this weekend doesn’t mean games media writ large is doomed, even if every other piece of news about the state of media does."

Fix your hearts or die@xanatastrophe· Sep 9

1. This is the simplest question to call out what baffled me in Benfell's original piece. She did little to support the very large presumption she bases her piece off of that a day one review/critique is somehow necessary to games criticism.