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gracemachine.bsky.social
grace
@gracemachine.bsky.social
1.5K followers 380 following 630 posts
Writer, critic, co-editor @tier-review.com
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gracemachine.bsky.social
Betting this is the first time Rayne Fisher-Quann has been linked to on GameSpot, but would be pleased to be proven wrong.
It is easier than ever to find upsetting material and to extrapolate that upset to a fundamental societal ill. When the personal is political, everything is public. In her essay, "west elm caleb and the feminist panopticon," Rayne Fisher-Quann discusses the urge to hold ordinary individuals uniquely responsible for societal woes. She writes, "the crucifixion of these individuals is ultimately a system of smoke and mirrors that obfuscates true systemic change while providing us with enough satisfaction to stop aiming higher." Though the work of Collective Shout takes place in a different context, it is driven by a similar impulse. Most generously, Collective Shout chases the cultural and consumptive symptoms of patriarchal violence while doing little to stop its material harms or to aid victims. Founder Melinda Tankard-Reist's own ties to religious, right-wing politics bear this out. When you cannot address causes, you are left fighting battles that don't matter.
August 7, 2025 at 5:46 PM
gracemachine.bsky.social
Hey all, my friend Sibyl recently moved to Chicago and almost immediately was laid off. She just landed a new gig, but it doesn't start until later this month and her unemployment payments have been very inconsistent. Could use some money for groceries etc. Her venmo is @/Sibyl-Gonzales-17
Grace and Sibyl smiling at the camera. Grace and Sibye on a couch playing Guilty Gear.
July 2, 2025 at 6:28 PM
gracemachine.bsky.social
We are recording our episode on Pathologic 2 for @thesaferoom.bsky.social this evening! Send questions about staying awake by eating lemons, beating hearts under the earth, and talking to corpses to [email protected]
A screenshot from Pathologic 2, which depicts a figure in a skin tight black suit with a white theater mask pointing down a street.
January 5, 2025 at 2:55 PM
gracemachine.bsky.social
December 25, 2024 at 4:32 PM
gracemachine.bsky.social
Combat in Silent Hill 2 is not about danger or dodging, or any of the regular video game feelings. It’s aesthetic, whether it is intended to be or not. Most of the enemies (outside of iconic antagonist Pyramid Head and a couple of other bosses) are choked feminine forms, suffocating forever. Some are sickly figures trapped in bed frames. In every killing, James recreates the game’s primary trauma: His murder of his sickly wife Mary over and over again. (For a deeper analysis of this, please check out Astrid Anne Rose’s essay “Nurse With Wound.“) That ambiguity is baked into the game’s design, where, outside of boss fights, you don’t actually need to fight anything. There is a question of how much Silent Hill‘s monsters actually mean harm. The enemies don’t seem to appear to Laura, a little girl who also knew Mary, who moves through Silent Hill with total ease. Or perhaps they simply do not hurt her.
November 2, 2024 at 6:43 PM
gracemachine.bsky.social
I'm still really proud of this piece about Hellblade II's cinematography. bulletpointsmonthly.com/2024/07/01/a...
Long takes in videogames, in contrast, are fucking endless. Many end only upon player death or opening a menu. Others feel almost comical in their avoidance of a simple cut. Even films that are famous for using the technique, like Children of Men, rely on the tension of the long take that will at one point shatter. In the videogame mode, these images slide off of you. Because the camera cannot simply cut, it is always moving. We have to track away from a close up to a wide shot or whip-pan between two faces to approximate shot-reverse-shot. There is no promise that it will ever sit still, much less that it will ever hard cut. There is no rhythm to it and thus no art.
October 18, 2024 at 4:00 PM
gracemachine.bsky.social
In the first new essay for the Killing Our Gods book, I write about my past devotional understanding of Mass Effect, my current paranoid one, and bridging the span between them.
graceinthemachine.com/2024/03/18/i...
In fact, I understood Mass Effect primarily as a religious allegory. Shepard as a divine child, the inevitable conflict of flesh and blood beings vs. robots a kind of original sin. The reapers, true to their name, come to cleanse us of our simple imperfection. They make us Gods, but not as we are. They chop us up, use our blood, profane material for divine ends. Mass Effect's final choice, between control, synthesis, or destruction is a choice of salvations, even approaches to sin. We can control or curb it, attempt to eradicate it entirely, or integrate it with hope that sin itself is part of the divine plan.
March 30, 2024 at 1:52 PM
gracemachine.bsky.social
Today!!! We are recording The Safe Room’s episode on Alan Wake 2. Please write in to [email protected] (or reply to this post) with your questions about loops, spirals, and other things of that nature. (Please tag spoilers on here ty)
Alan Wake on stage with bright red and blue lights. He’s wearing dark shades that could never save the day.
November 30, 2023 at 3:03 PM
gracemachine.bsky.social
National Writers Union is trying to support media workers who have been retaliated against. Please share, especially if you know someone directly affected.
Are you a media worker who has suffered retaliation for expressing solidarity with Palestine? You’re not alone. The National Writers Union is documenting these incidents and connecting workers with support. bit.ly/PAL-retaliation-survey
October 21, 2023 at 5:43 PM
gracemachine.bsky.social
19. Jovial
19. Jovial He stood above your bed, bosom bare. You reached to him. You had never seen a man like him before. Naked, unashamed, like one before the fall. When he kissed you, and the words of god flew into you, Like light through a bashed in doorway, You felt like you would never sleep again, Never bask in darkness, but witness all. His dwelling though was darkness. As Dawn touched the wooden walls of your home, he vanished Some things belong to the night.
October 20, 2023 at 4:57 AM
gracemachine.bsky.social
18. Cimiter
18. Cimiter The world operates by some fundamental rules. Push and pull, slice and dice, life from death, death from life. Know that when you treat me like a man And I slice your face clean off That’s just physics.
October 20, 2023 at 4:57 AM
gracemachine.bsky.social
17. Melchizedek
17. Melchizedek Indulging myself to get words on the page. I think little of Melchizedek, though his was one of the names I bore. Jesus, Joseph, Aaron, another one of those old patriarchs All symbols of god rather than men I shook off these names, dust on my shoulders And gained pagan power, to leap over trains, suspend myself in air, stop bullets. Being trans is fucking magic
October 18, 2023 at 4:26 AM
gracemachine.bsky.social
15. Sanctified
15. Sanctified I know it’s selfish, But I wish you lived here. If you did, I’d buy you your fifth copy of “On The Road” (I would sign this one so you would have to keep it) And some film theory book neither of us had heard of, Un-famous even by the standards of film theorists, Just so I could bring them over to you, Just to hear you go “awh” and hug me. Instead, I dance to songs I have memorized in some dazed, hungover ritual to summon you. I take pictures of spiders, resisting the shriek rising low in my throat. Here is where I’m at my witchiest, indulging magic to conjure shades of you. Do you ever think, that if you are a man, you’re the only one I’ve ever loved.
October 16, 2023 at 4:25 AM
gracemachine.bsky.social
14. Wheel
14. Wheel Put your shoulder to the wheel, push along Push along Aren’t we all part of some divine project Infinite settlers in infinite holy lands Swaddled in to-do lists, placed in career paths. How many Mormons have been called to be accountants or real estate lawyers? How many poindexters do we need in the kingdom of god? Maybe he needs them to run statistics on hell’s tortured. Do you think in heaven, they can hear the damned? Do they even care? Put your shoulder to the wheel, push along Push along
October 16, 2023 at 4:24 AM
gracemachine.bsky.social
13. Flaming
13. Flaming One day in October, I’ll write one of these poems before 10 PM One of these days, The flame in my head will purify me Instead of just Burning Burning Burning One day they’ll be world peace if enough of us go to Coldplay concerts Or read the New York Times At least now there are some days when I don’t hate myself. Fix my life Today Today Today Today Today
October 14, 2023 at 3:30 PM
gracemachine.bsky.social
11. Palmyra
11. Palmyra If God can visit here God can visit anywhere A poor farmer’s boy, asking questions, Receiving fire. Drenched in the sweat of temptation, Exalted in holy water. Earthly matter made divine and the promise: It will happen again. If God can visit here, God can’t be everywhere else. He forgot those ancients, by whose mounds Joseph must have walked. Why are God’s chosen radicals always slutty white boys. Why couldn’t He give voice to the dead, the broken, instead of the merely meek? The last stay last. The first stay first. It will happen again.
October 12, 2023 at 3:33 AM
gracemachine.bsky.social
10. Carpet Walls
10. Carpet Walls I never want to be alone with a man again. Never want to wait for him to call me in, to feel the weight of god’s unwieldy eyes on his fingertips, to know that he knows things no one else knows. I never want to be told that women can’t have power because they are too good for it,
October 11, 2023 at 4:12 AM
gracemachine.bsky.social
9. Devilish
9. Devilish They grinned, churlish, bored, Took a deep breath, and coolly exhaled. The smoke curled at the edge of the streetlamp A tower of babel, suspended twixt heaven and the joint between her fingers.
October 10, 2023 at 3:39 AM
gracemachine.bsky.social
8. Laurels
8. Laurels I imagine her, girl I would have been. Crested petals, crowned with grace, fervent love I stand beside her, dark-suited, bleak twin Flower turned in, stretched, tied, chosen above We both wear titles, one only marks age The other imbues me with grave duty Neither of them have any space for rage Nothing to feel but cold, endless beauty I feel myself, standing between, behind In front, inside, around, never resolved A map of selves made real, all intertwined A fever broken a question absolved I wonder why god chose him over her For how many versions I will recur
October 9, 2023 at 4:24 AM
gracemachine.bsky.social
6. Nephite
6. Nephite Mama’s boy to an unnamed mother You too are nameless, like your brothers When blood stained your gleaming chest Was its color so different than your lovers So when you say you’re not like the rest Not so cruel, not so strict, not so pressed But you still sing the hymns and crush the wine All we’ll remember is your grave, stone in stone, equally blessed
October 7, 2023 at 4:13 AM
gracemachine.bsky.social
2. Deacon
2. Deacon His hands quivered on the metal Radiant, solemn boy in hold His white shirt still creased on the fold One soft sign, his tie, a petal Only after his hands settle Can he sit back down and feel ache The burden of god’s atonement Being one or all, you are bent Water not wine, no fruit only fakes
October 3, 2023 at 3:57 AM
gracemachine.bsky.social
Archtober thread: writing poems and other things.
October 2, 2023 at 3:42 AM
gracemachine.bsky.social
Starfield Lady.
Image of the character creator in Starfield with a gray haired woman in black make up. The same woman, showing her background as a combat medic.
September 6, 2023 at 3:07 AM
gracemachine.bsky.social
My wife and I have been watching the television show “Nashville.”
Will Lexington, a cowboy-styled country singer, standing and yelling before a doorway in a concert venue. Subtitles read “I may be gay, but you are insane!” Will exiting the aforementioned doorway. Subtitles read “[country music playing]”
September 1, 2023 at 1:19 PM
gracemachine.bsky.social
THIS MONTH: We are covering ALAN WAKE.

HE IS A WRITER.

Send in your questions to [email protected]
Alan Wake looking down in despair. He is a writer.
August 7, 2023 at 2:34 PM