Tootfinder

Day 9: Eniko Fox
Edit: added a store link for Kitsune Tails.
We're back to videogames, and with another author who's on the fediverse: @…
Fox has developed a few games, but the one that I've played and love is Kitsune Tails. It's a sapphic romance take on Super Mario Bros. 3, and (critically for a platformer) it's got very crisp controls and runs smoothly. I think one thing a lot of indie platforms devs struggle with is getting those fundamentals right, because on the technical side they require very challenging things like optimization of your code and extremely careful input handling that go beyond the basic skills necessary to put together a game. From following her on Twitter and now the Fediverse, it's clear that Fox is a deeply competent programmer, and her games reflect that. Beyond the fundamentals, Kitsune Tails has a very sweet plot with a very cool twist in the middle, and without spoilers, that twist made both the levels and gameplay very difficult to design, but Fox rose to that challenge and put together a wonderful game. Particularly past the plot twist (but in subtle ways before it) Fox is able to build beyond SMB3 mechanics in ways that gracefully complement the original, and the movement in the game ends up being difficult but extremely satisfying, with an excellent skill/speed response allowing for both slower, easier approaches that work for a range of players and high-skill extremely-fast options for those who want to push themselves.
There have been plenty of people I follow with indie game projects that are kinda meh in the end, and I'll still boost them without much comment if they're decent. Fox' work is actually amazing, which is why if you've followed me for a while you'll know I tend to mention it periodically, and which is why she makes this list of authors I respect.
You can buy Kitsune Tails here: #20AuthorsNoMen

The Trump administration may have just axed the IRS Direct File program.
During a summit earlier this week, IRS Commissioner Billy Long said the free tax filing service is “gone,”
adding that “big beautiful Billy wiped that out
https://news.bloombe…

IRS Chief Says Direct File Is ‘Gone,’ Other Audit Tech Is Coming
The Biden-era IRS free filing tool, Direct File, is “gone,” IRS Commissioner Billy Long said.

listening to the Outer Wilds soundtracks and thinking what an anomaly that game is. the base game does something incredibly complicated and lands the ending. and then the DLC does something else incredibly complicated, and lands that ending too. I'm failing to think of any other game remotely similar

Abstract Landscapes
(Bernina range, on the approach to Lago di Fellaria, Sep 2025)
Everything about this place is so special: the road to the trailhead (with 1700m elevation gain), the scale of the majestic ~4000er (meters) mountains with their glaciated peaks. Observing the different levels/layers of this upper valley where the glaciers have already mostly receded, the parts which have been flooded with a reservoir (slowly drying out), the equally spectacular & tragic waterfa…

'The ball is flying five yards further': Are the new kicking ball rules changing the game? https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/46452926/nfl-kicking-balls-2025-rule-changes-field-goal-records-competition-committee

in the following days i'm gonna taste 8 gyokuros ordered from different shops. turned out, the shop i'm currently ordering from is a far cry in taste from a random sample bought in a b&m store. but also only half the price. this will be a (taste-bud-)exciting competition! #tea #gyokuro

Since St George was born in Turkey, died in Palestine and never set foot on Britain I find all of his flags going up around the UK a bit strange but am fine with it really. A nice international symbol of unity with all the other countries with him as their patron saint (Aragon, Catalonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Palestine, Portugal, Germany, Greece, Moscow, Istanbul, Genoa and Venice).
My worry is that in a year there will be really tatty flags everywhere, filling the air with microplastic…

For some time, I had the feeling that even the 9000 series may become irrelevant pretty fast. IMO, this move places the 7000 and 9000 series on the very long-term support list. But it's a bloody sacrifice, what they do to the 6000 series owners :/ Strangely, I feel for AMD having to make thеsе kinds of tough decisions. They must've absolutely stretched out their resources right now.
AMD Abandons "Fine Wine"- No Optimized Game Drivers for RDNA 1 and 2 - Daniel Owen

Day 30: Elizabeth Moon
This last spot (somehow 32 days after my last post, but oh well) was a tough decision, but Moon brings us full circle back to fantasy/sci-fi, and also back to books I enjoyed as a teenager. Her politics don't really match up to Le Guin or Jemisin, but her military experience make for books that are much more interesting than standard fantasy fare in terms of their battles & outcomes (something "A Song of Ice and Fire" achieved by cribbing from history but couldn't extrapolate nearly as well). I liked (and still mostly like) her (unironically) strong female protagonists, even if her (especially more recent) forays into "good king" territory leave something to be desired. Still, in Paksenarion the way we get to see the world from a foot-soldier's perspective before transitioning into something more is pretty special and very rare in fantasy (I love the elven ruins scene as Paks travels over the mountains as an inflection point). Battles are won or lost on tactics, shifting politics, and logistics moreso than some epic magical gimmick, which is a wonderful departure from the fantasy norm.
Her work does come with a content warning for rape, although she addresses it with more nuance and respect than any male SF/F author of her generation. Ex-evangelicals might also find her stuff hard to read, as while she's against conservative Christianity, she's very much still a Christian and that makes its way into her writing. Even if her (not bad but not radical enough) politics lead her writing into less-satisfying places at times, part of my respect for her comes from following her on Twitter for a while, where she was a pretty decent human being...
Overall, Paksenarrion is my favorite of her works, although I've enjoyed some of her sci-fi too and read the follow-up series. While it inherits some of Tolkien's baggage, Moon's ability to deeply humanize her hero and depict a believable balance between magic being real but not the answer to all problems is great.
I've reached 30 at this point, and while I've got more authors on my shortlist, I think I'll end things out tomorrow with a dump of also-rans rather than continuing to write up one per day. I may even include a man or two in that group (probably with at least non-{white cishet} perspective). Honestly, doing this challenge I first thought that sexism might have made it difficult, but here at the end I'm realizing that ironically, the misogyny that holds non-man authors to a higher standard means that (given plenty have still made it through) it's hard to think of male authors who compare with this group.
Looking back on the mostly-male authors of SF/F in my teenage years, for example, I'm now struggling to think of a single one whose work I'd recommend to my kids (having cheated and checked one of my old lists, Pratchett, Jaques, and Asimov qualify but they're outnumbered by those I'm now actively ashamed to admit I enjoyed). If I were given a choice between reading only non-men or non-woman authors for the rest of my life (yes I'm giving myself enby authors as a freebie; they're generally great) I'd very easily choose non-men. I think the only place where (to my knowledge) not enough non-men authors have been allowed through to outshine the fields of male mediocrity yet is in videogames sadly. I have a very long list of beloved games and did include some game designers here, but I'm hard-pressed to think of many other non-man game designers I'd include in the genuinely respect column (I'll include at least two tomorrow but might cheat a bit).
TL;DR: this was fun and you should do it too.
#30AuthorsNoMen

Okay, here's the promised follow-up with more authors I respect who didn't make it onto this list. I won't do deep dives but I'll list at least one work per author:
YA novelists:
- Randi Pink ("Girls Like Us")
- Louisa Onomé ("Twice as Perfect")
- Emery Lee ("Meet Cute Diary")
- Robin Benway ("Far from the Tree")
- Angela Velez ("Lulu and Milagro's Search for Clarity")
Children's book authors:
- Jacqueline Davies ("Bubbles Up")
- Freya Hartas ("Slow Down in the Park")
Novelists:
- Rimma Onoseta ("How You Grow Wings")
Graphic novelists:
- Linda Medley ("Castle Waiting")
- 🖋️Magsalene Visaggio 🖌️Paulina Ganucheau ("Girlmode")
- Ursula Vernon ("Digger")
- SJ Sindu ("Tall Water" w/ Dion MBD)
- Hope Larson ("Be That Way"; "Salt Magic" w/ Rebecca Mock)
- Lily Williams Karen Schneemann ("Go With the Flow")
- Maia Kobabe ("Gender Queer")
- Kay O'Neill ("Tea Dragon Society")
- Marjane Satrapi ("Persepolis")
Mangaka:
- Kaoru Mori ("Young Bride's Stories")
- Ryoko Kui ("Delicious in Dungeon")
- Natsuki Takaya ("Fruits Basket")
Anime writers/directors and/or Japanese light/fantasy/SF novelists:
- Nahoko Uehashi ("Moribito")
- Sayo Yamamoto ("Michiko & Hatchin"; "Yuri!!! On Ice")
- Mari Okada ("Ano Hana: The Flower we Saw That Day"; "Toradora!")
Game designers/programmers:
(Upon review I was pretty remiss in skipping over a few of these people, some of whom I wasn't aware of but most of whom I just didn't remember when writing my short list. Subconscious misogyny in action. Short & Thorson probably would have squeezed out some of the YA authors I included, although I have no real regrets.)
- Junko Kawano ("Suikoden")
- Elizabeth LaPensée ("When Rivers Were Trails")
- Momo Pixel ("Hair Nah")
- Zoë Quinn ("Depression Quest"; narrative designer on "Solar Ash")
- Kellee Santiago ("Cloud"; "Flower")
- Tanya X. Short ("Moon Hunters")
- Kim Swift ("Portal")
- Maddy Thorson ("Celeste")
- Andi McClure @… ("Jumpman")
Note: I haven't included composers or artists here, but there's a deep bench.
Games journalists/steamers:
- Tanya DePass @… (#/INeedDiverseGames; twitch streams)
- Anita Sarkeesian (Feminist Frequency)
Game/play scholars:
- Mary Flanagan ("Critical Play")
- Tracy Fullerton ("Game Design Workshop")
- Brenda Laurel ("Toward the Design of a Computer-Based Interactive Fantasy System")
- Janet Murray ("Hamlet on the Holodeck"l
- Susana Tosca ("A Pragmatics of Links")
- Jichen Zhu ("Agency Play: Dimensions of Agency for Interactive Narrative Design")
- Magy Seif El Nasr ("Design patterns to guide player movement in 3D games")
- Kate Compton ("Causal Creators"; also "Spore")
P.S. upon consideration I've decided not to include any authors who are men in this coda.
There are definitely others who probably deserve to be here that I'm forgetting...
#GsmeDesign #Authors