Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Patrick Fiorilli @patfio.bsky.social · 22h

And, given today's sad news, RIP to the great Drew Struzan, whose work is as inseparable from the visual language of Star Wars as anyone's.

Mosaic of Drew Struzan's iconic theatrical posters for Star Wars, episodes 1-6. Portraits of the leads arranged amidst spaceships and swordfights.

Patrick Fiorilli @patfio.bsky.social · 22h

Many thanks to everyone at BW/DR and to @eccantwell.bsky.social, especially, for the exceptional edits.

1 1

Patrick Fiorilli @patfio.bsky.social · 23h

Beyond excited to contribute to Bright Wall/Dark Room @bwdr.bsky.social, and about Star Wars no less! A series whose heroic figures and iconic proverbs belie a simmering melodrama of teachers failing their students and students failing their teachers.

Master & Apprentice: The Failed Mentors of George Lucas’ Star Wars Saga

In Lucas' Star Wars saga, it’s not the teacher’s wisdom, but his failure, that drives the protagonist to his destiny.

www.brightwalldarkroom.com

1 2 9

Reposted by Patrick Fiorilli

Bright Wall/Dark Room @bwdr.bsky.social · 23h

New on the site!

Master and Apprentice: The Failed Mentors of George Lucas’ STAR WARS Saga - @patfio.bsky.social

Master & Apprentice: The Failed Mentors of George Lucas’ Star Wars Saga

In Lucas' Star Wars saga, it’s not the teacher’s wisdom, but his failure, that drives the protagonist to his destiny.

www.brightwalldarkroom.com

6 14

Reposted by Patrick Fiorilli

Pynchon Pals - a podcast about finally reading Thomas Pynchon @pynchonpals.bsky.social · 7d

Episode 02: In which the Pynchon Pals never resolve how to pronounce “Porpentine” (V. Chs. 3-4) is now live! Pic related. pynchonpals.com

Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992). Wearing a gothic grey top hat and great coat, with long hair, a thin goatee, and trademark blue-tinted spectacles.

1 3

Reposted by Patrick Fiorilli

Cole Wehrle @colewehrle.bsky.social · 9d

Alright, let's do it. Here's a little prospective reader's guide to every Thomas Pynchon novel. We'll take them in order of publication. This might be a long thread. Buckle up! 1/x

Image from the Simpsons of Pynchon with a bag over his head on a cell phone. He's standing in front of a house with a neon sign advertising it as his home.

7 70 220

Patrick Fiorilli @patfio.bsky.social · 13d

New newsletter! In a very Pynchonesque way, Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another really is a Looney Tunes riff, featuring Sean Penn as a kind of ethnonationalist Wile E. Coyote confounded by a cadre of revolutionary Road Runners. Read more: www.patf.io/pynchon-pals...

Pynchon Pals Podcast Producer Patrick Perceives Parallel Pursuits Populating PTA's Picture

We started a podcast about reading Thomas Pynchon. I also saw One Battle After Another. Thoughts ahead! Pynchon Pals—available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Podbean, and wherever else...

www.patf.io

4

Reposted by Patrick Fiorilli

Gamers with Glasses @gamerswithglasses.bsky.social · 15d

Check out this week's edition for a GwG triple play, feat. @srtrzinski.bsky.social, @mayorhere.bsky.social, and @patfio.bsky.social!

Critical Distance | Where’s all the good writing about games? @critdistance.bsky.social · 16d

This week: 21 articles on culture movements, maps, difficulty, dungeon crawlers, and much more. No Freddi Fish articles this week, sorry:

critical-distance.com/2025/09/28/s...

September 28th

Welcome back readers. We’re two for two on this recent streak of on-time Sunday updates. I’m hoping to keep this up as I adapt my schedule to accommodate a couple of new work commitment…

critical-distance.com

4 9

Reposted by Patrick Fiorilli

Blippo+ @blippo.plus · 17d

The first Blippo+ review to mention Marshall McLuhan *and* Emergency Broadcast Network!

Gamers with Glasses @gamerswithglasses.bsky.social · 17d

We've got it all, they've got it all, on BLIPPO+. See what YACHT, @telefantasytv.bsky.social, @panic.com, and more have been up to just a ways away in spacetime. New contributor @patfio.bsky.social has the review!

BLIPPO+ Asks If You Want to Get Bent — Gamers with Glasses

It’s time to tune in, turn on, and.. blipp out? Patrick Fiorilli explores the channels of BLIPPO+ and its blend of the televisual and interactive. It’s hypermediated, unabashedly queer, and remediates...

www.gamerswithglasses.com

1 4 27

Patrick Fiorilli @patfio.bsky.social · 17d

Incredible!

1

Patrick Fiorilli @patfio.bsky.social · 17d

New writing! Jazzed to contribute to @gamerswithglasses.bsky.social about such a cool project.

Gamers with Glasses @gamerswithglasses.bsky.social · 17d

We've got it all, they've got it all, on BLIPPO+. See what YACHT, @telefantasytv.bsky.social, @panic.com, and more have been up to just a ways away in spacetime. New contributor @patfio.bsky.social has the review!

BLIPPO+ Asks If You Want to Get Bent — Gamers with Glasses

It’s time to tune in, turn on, and.. blipp out? Patrick Fiorilli explores the channels of BLIPPO+ and its blend of the televisual and interactive. It’s hypermediated, unabashedly queer, and remediates...

www.gamerswithglasses.com

1 3 10

Patrick Fiorilli @patfio.bsky.social · 21d

One Battle After Another! Shadow Ticket! It's Pynchon Season, and we've got a brand new read-along podcast to help you plot the paranoia for the first time, or all over again, starting where it all began with V.!

Give Pynchon Pals a listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or elsewhere!

Pynchon Pals

Listen to Pynchon Pals on RedCircle

redcircle.com

1 3

Reposted by Patrick Fiorilli

Pynchon Pals - a podcast about finally reading Thomas Pynchon @pynchonpals.bsky.social · 21d

Pynchon Pals is live!

Seeing One Battle After Another? Pre-ordered Shadow Ticket? Had Gravity's Rainbow on your shelf for a decade? Or just a longtime fan looking to revisit your favorites? Read V. with us!

In this inaugural episode, we meet the Whole Sick Crew, who would have a podcast in 2025.

Pynchon Pals

Listen to Pynchon Pals on RedCircle

redcircle.com

1 1 5

Patrick Fiorilli @patfio.bsky.social · 27d

New post: I played the demo for Erenshor -- the single-player MMO --recorded it, and wrote about it!

Impressions: ERENSHOR (Burgee Media, 2025, Early Access, Demo)

Playing video games in front of a camera and then writing about it? Why, that's almost as novel as a single-player MMO! I log in to Erenshor with a username and password that don't actually exist. I ...

www.patf.io

1 3

Patrick Fiorilli @patfio.bsky.social · Sep 3

New post about Red Rooms and We're All Going to the World's Fair. Two movies about the abyss of the Internet and, oddly enough, the balding weirdo on the other side of the screen. www.patf.io/into-the-scr...

Left, Juliette Gariépy as Kelly-Anne in Red Rooms. Right, Anna Cobb as Casey in We're All Going to the World's Fair.

Left, Maxwell McCabe-Lokos as Ludovic Chevalier. Right, Michael J. Rogers as JLB.

1 3

Patrick Fiorilli @patfio.bsky.social · Aug 19

New newsletter up today about my recent one-page outlaw country RPG, THE HIGHWAYMEN, and the 16 year old World of Warcraft machinima music video that ultimately inspired it.

Introducing, The Highwaymen

Did you know that metrics show that Tuesdays and Thursdays are the optimal days to release a newsletter? What a fool I was to publish the first one on a Saturday! At least we're all on the same page n...

www.patf.io

1 2

Patrick Fiorilli @patfio.bsky.social · Aug 17

Inspired by the absolute banger and winner of the 1985 Grammy for Best Country Song that is "Highwayman" by The Highwaymen, I finally put together an idea I've been kicking around for years as my submission for the One-Page RPG Jam! Give it a look, or better, a play with some friends.

The Highwaymen by Patrick Fiorilli

An Outlaw country Role-Playing Game for a Dealer, a deck of 52 cards, and 1-4 Players by Patrick Fiorilli.

patfio.itch.io

1 5

Reposted by Patrick Fiorilli

Carlos Spoerhase @spoerhase.bsky.social · Aug 8

33 280 1.3K

Patrick Fiorilli @patfio.bsky.social · Aug 2

I started a newsletter! It's called "Critical Theorycraft," and I'll be writing broadly about games, literature, and media every two weeks or so. The first post is up today, and it's about how cool it was to play Nintendo 64 in a hotel room. Toss me your email and you shall be rewarded with posts!

Playing (With) Video Games

According to a famous anecdote about the origins of Super Mario 64—that is, about the origins of 3D platforming—before designing any levels, enemies, or objectives, the game's designers began with mov...

www.patf.io

2 6

Patrick Fiorilli @patfio.bsky.social · Jun 21

Jorge Luis Borges: In my book I invented Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote as a cautionary tale

Tech Company: At long last, we have created Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote

Erin Fogg says Free Link @criminalerin.bsky.social · Jun 20

So can most fanfiction writers and no one's giving them a billion dollars an hour

Study: Meta AI model can reproduce almost half of Harry Potter book

The research could have big implications for generative AI copyright lawsuits.

arstechnica.com

2

Reposted by Patrick Fiorilli

Duri Long @duri-long.bsky.social · Jan 13

Excited for my student Richard Zhang to present our paper “Beyond Content: Leaning on the Poetics of Defamiliarization in Design Fictions” this week at GROUP 2025.

dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Beyond Content: Leaning on the Poetics of Defamiliarization in Design Fictions | Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction

Literary approaches to design fictions, though previously theorized to be diverse in form and content, often fall within narrow stylistic and content boundaries such as speculative abstracts, memos, a...

dl.acm.org

2 1 13

Patrick Fiorilli @patfio.bsky.social · Jan 16

David Lynch sits in an armchair on the set of the chevron-floored, curtained "red room" from Twin Peaks

4

Reposted by Patrick Fiorilli

Kristin Grogan @kristingrogan.bsky.social · Dec 4

Did Elizabeth Bishop write this

4 12 95

Patrick Fiorilli @patfio.bsky.social · Nov 24

A proper intro for new followers! I'm Patrick, I have a PhD in Digital Media, I teach media and critical theory, and I'm working on a book about how video games are made of language. I'm on the job market and very open to freelance gigs: games, experimental/speculative fiction, digital culture, etc!

standing beside the Mothman statue in West Virginia

1 2 19

Patrick Fiorilli @patfio.bsky.social · Nov 24

nw Gilda (1946)

5