June 19 Table of Contents

There’s a French term, l’esprit d’escalier (literally “staircase wit”), which refers to the experience of coming up with clever or insightful things to say hours after a conversation. For better or worse, the term perfectly describes many of my own social interactions.

Our games this month both consider a similar theme. In “Dead Lake Crossing,” by Hannah Powell-Smith, you travel across a wasteland at an ancestor’s behest, and “Replay” by Robert Dawson puts you in control of a device that gives you endless do-overs–but at what cost? Our cover, “Not Again!” by Laura de Stefani, portrays another all-too-relatable experience.

In our essays, Sharang Biswas examines the control (or lack thereof) authors have over their published work in “Dukes and Dumbledore: Truth and Canonicity in Stories.” We will also have an essay from Anya Johanna deNiro, on a topic to be announced shortly.

As a reminder: Patreon supporters and on-site subscribers get early access to all our content on the first of the month. We’re committed to paying our authors for their work, and subscriptions help us do that in a more sustainable fashion. We’re also committed to making great works of interactive fiction available to the public, so if you’re not a subscriber you’ll still be able to access all our content starting on the 15th of the month.

In mid-July, we’ll be running an original Twitter-based piece of Interactive Fiction from Nin Harris, with the same setting as her recent story “Dreams Strung like Pearls Between War and Peace”. (We’ll also archive the piece on our website after it’s run its course, if you want to check out paths that weren’t followed in our play-through, or if you don’t have Twitter.) This is something new for us, and we hope it will be an interesting experience for everyone involved, so keep an eye out for more news about that.

We hope you enjoy our games, essays, and art, and don’t forget to return to us in August for another issue!