KUDOS DONE QUICK
By the time you read this, Awesome Games Done Quick 2023 will be halfway over. If you don’t know about Awesome Games Done Quick, here’s the TL;DR: it’s a 7-day video gaming marathon packed full of speedruns raising money for charity (for this event: The Prevent Cancer Foundation). Old favorites ranging from Super Mario Bros. 3 to Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, as well as newer games such as Stray and Pokémon Legends: Arceus, are beaten in record time to the delight of tens of thousands watching online, and all for a great cause.
For me, the joy of watching AGDQ isn’t so much about basking in the nostalgia of games from childhood, but of watching something completely new. There’s bound to be something you’ve never seen before at AGDQ. So far in the marathon, the biggest surprise was a game called Fashion Police Squad, a DOOM-esque shooter where a police officer fires a fashion gun and warrants justice to all the “fashion crimes” done in his city: Men wearing baggy suits and tourist dads with socks with sandals around the city, and so much more. The lighthearted and humorous gameplay made it an instant favorite of the event.
Of course, the most notable aspect about AGDQ 2023 was the brave and necessary stance of event organizers in response of two measures recently passed in the state of Florida, the seminal location of AGDQ for over a decade.
In a statement on the GDQ website, the reasons for canceling the live event in favor of an online-only format shortly before this year’s event were thus:
“While we would love to return in-person, we’ve determined that to provide a safe and welcoming event to all, it was best that we move away from our originally planned location in Florida.
Given the state’s continued disregard for COVID-19’s dangers (including anti-mandate vaccination policies) and an increased aggression towards LGBTQ+ individuals, including the law colloquially known as “Don’t Say Gay,” we do not believe it is a safe place for our community at this time…”
The full statement has since been removed from the official GDQ website due to the site’s overhaul while covering the event, but the full statement can be found on Kotaku’s website here.
It’s the kind of decision that makes me proud to tune into this event year after year. GDQ has always been a beacon for the gaming community and has since shown support through action that community matters more than politics and taking a financial loss. This year in particular, I’m proud to donate.
There are three days left to check out the marathon (outside of the quick uploads from the GDQ YouTube Channel in case there’s something you missed!), but here is a short list of runs I’m still looking forward to:
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CONSPIRACY THEORIES LITE
The more I continue this reentry into college, the more I dislike the idea of the English Major. I’m nearly through with this first week of classes of the semester and am reading from three different sources: A Norton Anthology, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, and a novella called Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli.
If that sounds like a lot, it is.
Not because of the reading (which, if you’re an English Major like I am, you better like it) but because I’m tired of this rapid-fire “Hey, diagnose this thing you just read! Immediately!”
After every thirty pages of a novella I haven’t read before, I’m asked to scour pages, looking for themes and symbols as though I’m Robert Langdon from The Da Vinci Code. Never mind the rest of the novel; we can’t be bothered to finish it before finding MEANING. And once we find MEANING, all will be right with the world.
Not really, but maybe the stakes in an undergrad course feels reminiscent to that. Personally, I’d rather finish a new novella and digest it for a second. This process of diagnosing a longform piece of writing every 30-pages feels like stopping a movie every twenty minutes, turning to the person next to you, and asking “What do you think the movie is about?”
How about we just finish the goddam movie first?
The art of literary criticism is very boring, and more than I’d like to comment on with this Weekly Post-Ed. And if you’re asking, “Then, why be an English Major?” Well, seeking a degree to read more stories has its downsides. It’s a bit like having children—you love them more than you can express…but dealing with shit is just part of the job. Literary criticism can be a way of better engaging with stories, but most often criticism is show-and-tell for academic types. Where else can a critic say without inducing comas in a public place, “Hey, I know the REAL reason the author wrote this book!”
Literary criticism, really, is just Conspiracy Theory Lite—less sugar and calories than the real thing.
Of course, if you informed the author or writer of your genius piece of criticism, they would probably shrug, smile kindly, and say, “That’s fun. Now, please go away. I have a life to live.”
I assume I’m one of those “real” writers when I leave class each day. I shake off the literary critic I pretend to be, put away the ceaseless conspiracy theories that are somehow college credited, and I go home to write something.
Hopefully it’s something good. Most of the time it’s not.
You just hope that, eventually, something decent gets on the page.
That’s my own working conspiracy theory, anyways.
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Wishing everyone as well as you can be. You’re not alone out there,
