Author | Lightnews

Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 3h

Bizarrely accurate simulation of what it feels like to switch between apps and channels during a real-life major news event.

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Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 7h

Too early to tell, but I reckon Electric Nebraska is better than normal Nebraska.

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Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 13h

Come join the space mafia, we have a sauna.

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Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 13h

It’s not too late. We’re not yet halfway in! discord.gg/FDJ7T4C2Sm

Join the OVER/UNDER Discord Server!

Mothership Month Massive Real Time Role Playing Game, come /join us or check out https://www.backerkit.com/c/collections/mothership-month-2025 | 1762 members

discord.gg

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Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 14h

I reckon if there were codified rules for it we’d be seeing *even more* romance subplots. Probably a good thing for station productivity that this isnt the case.

Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 1d

More #Over/Under stuff - I’ve acquired a logo for my imaginary bookshop.

(Credit to @tonytranrpg.bsky.social)

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Reposted by Calum Novak-Mitchell

Chaucer Doth Tweet @levostregc.bsky.social · 2d

EMILY DICKINSON, JEDI KNIGHT

Not so clumsy, nor so random -
As a blaster - in its rage

More elegant - the weapon
More civilized - the age

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Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 2d

bizarre how the last ten days have sufficiently rewired my brain, that my first thought on seeing this was “oh wow, famous celebrity Big Dog Beefstink”

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Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 2d

In games where the main mechanical lever is violence, people spend all their time doing violence.

In games where the main mechanical lever is money, people spend all their time hustling

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Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 2d

So despite this thing being authored by literally hundreds of hands, it ends up being a really interesting distinctly modern piece of 21st century science fiction.

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Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 2d

The modern internet as a hell party

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Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 2d

But it *does* feel like a reworking of cyberpunk for the 2020s: a vision of the future not as a unified aesthetic but as this crazed sensory overload, a hundred different stories and worlds fired at you at once, leaping between crassness and warmth, insincerity and sincerity.

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Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 2d

And this huge, chaotic melange is fired at you through single messages on a discord server: this huge writhing mass of instability blasted at different angles, too fast to read, too big to keep a handle on. And so no, this doesnt feel like classical cyberpunk, classical space horror…

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Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 2d

Except - with hundreds of active players it doesn’t feel like that. Everyone is running around their own genres: cosy romance, mob stories, corporate satire, memey jokey nonsense. And it’s full of anachronism and an unstable sense of what the setting even is.

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Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 2d

Bizarre thousand player discord rpg #over/under has been consuming my time recently, and I’ve been trying to work out the weird texture of it. Because, theoretically, this is set on a cyberpunk space station in an SF/horror universe.

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Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 3d

Haha yep that’s me!

We’ve got a good vs evil bookshop plotline going on. Which is not what I expected when I opened the pretend bookshop.

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Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 3d

“Charity attempts to maintain integrity while powerful forces attempt to co-opt and corrupt it“ is probably the most interesting/sophisticated story I’ve seen played out in an rpg.

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Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 3d

Hope it’s not too unpleasant to play - the scenes I saw were *fantastic* drama.

Multiple points when I considered wandering in, but it did feel like Mr Eyes would ruin the moment.

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Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 8d

Amazing! No idea if I’ll stick at this for the whole month (and I don’t know sustainable the fun is while staying outside the faction game) but for now it’s a delight

(if much more time consuming than I was expecting)

Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 9d

This game is insane. iver a thousand players. I’m running a bookshop on a space station. I’m an android. People are buying imaginary books off me with imaginary money so I can pay my imaginary rent. The bookshop is starting to get known in the android rights movement. It’s only been a day.

sam “over and under” sorensen @samsorensen.bsky.social · 15d

on Tuesday, October 14th, as a part of Mothership Month 25, I'm going to launch another real-time play-by-post wargame, open to the public, called OVER/UNDER. the server will open to players on Monday the 13th, but in the meantime you can read about it here: samsorensen.blot.im/mothership-m...

Mothership Month 2025 Wargame: OVER/UNDER - Sam Sorensen

Starting on October 14th, as a part of Mothership Month 2025—the annual group-crowdfunding campaign and general season of celebration for

samsorensen.blot.im

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Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 10d

(no disrespect to Mary Shelley, who - like Byron - is great)

Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 10d

The glib, reflexive, internetty dismissal of Byron (all that “ooh he was so annoying that Mary Shelley invented the horror genre” stuff) is a sign of cultural rot

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 11d

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

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Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 10d

I reckon that’s mostly true for me too

Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 10d

Only tangentially related, but re: gormenghast - I suddenly remembered last night that when I was a very young child, my parents had a print of this picture of The Hall Of Bright Carvings up on the wall. Must have spent hours staring at it.

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Calum Novak-Mitchell @calumnm.bsky.social · 10d

It was a bit bracing when I volunteered at a charity bookshop to find out that the staff had to make a call with each donation whether they’d get more money selling it in the shop or sending it to be pulped…

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