Friends

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/06/actually-playing-games-in-my-steam-library-dave-the-diver/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58151

If you’re anything like me, you probably have a huge stack of video games that you’ve bought and never played. In my case, I have 400+ games in my Steam library, and I’ve played maybe about twenty of them. My dad has also played about twenty of them, and I’m not sure how much our lists overlap.

Point is, we have a lot of games, and it’s high time I start getting back into a hobby I have long been neglecting: gaming. In fact, in my new house, I plan to have my own gaming room, so hopefully this post is the first of many. (Also, thanks to everyone who commented on the last post about my house, I appreciate all the congratulatory exclamations as well as the tips and advice!)

For this new segment, I wouldn’t exactly call them full game reviews, as I’m not necessarily planning to complete these games. The point of this is to make me try new games instead of just playing Fortnite all the time, and blow the dust off the games in my library. Really all I’m trying to do is try a new game, play for just a couple hours, see if it’s mostly fun, if I like the vibe, and if it’s worth continuing to play.

For today’s game, I’ll be talking about Dave the Diver. Though it was released in 2023, I had never heard of this game until about two months ago when I saw it in a Tik Tok over some cozy games to play during the fall/winter. As someone who loves cozy games, I went on Steam to check it out and saw that it had a huge amount of “overwhelmingly positive” reviews, and it was only twenty bucks.

The basic summary is that you play as a diver who explores the sea and fishes for fish during the day, then utilizes your fresh catches to run a sushi restaurant on the beach at night. Here’s a trailer!

Immediately, I loved the art style. I’m a sucker for pixel art, and this game has such charming environments with tons of color. It’s clear that a lot of heart was put into the art of this game, as pixel art is truly a labor of love. It’s not an art style I would’ve expected for a fishing game, but it just works so well.

I thought that my favorite part of this game would be the restaurant management aspect of it. From pouring drinks and serving sushi to putting new items on the menu and deciding on the interior design and decorating, there’s plenty to keep you busy on land. But honestly I really love the semi-open-world style exploration of the ocean and seeing all the super cool fish and plants and discovering lost treasures and resources.

I say “semi” open-world because Dave the Diver is one of those games that heavily relies on you upgrading things with the money and resources you get, such as upgrading your diving equipment so you can dive deeper and for longer durations. So at the beginning, you’re pretty limited to just the shallower water and you run out of oxygen pretty quick, but once you progress enough to stay under for longer and go deeper, there’s so much to see and do.

This game really throws a lot at you in the beginning, as it has a ton of mechanics it needs to explain to you in a very short amount of time. You have to learn how to dive and how your equipment works, plus how to upgrade stuff and make weapons. Then you have to learn how to run the restaurant, add things to the menu, draw people in with social media and advertisements, learn how to pour drinks and upgrade things, it’s honestly a lot right out the gate. It definitely felt a little overwhelming at first but honestly it’s easy to compartmentalize the mechanics into the “fishing” portion of the game and the “restaurant” half of the game. It’s sort of like two games in one in that regard.

While I’m only a couple hours in, I’ve really been enjoying it so far. I like the vibes, the art, the music, and the fishing and serving sushi is plenty fun. It’s an enjoyable time, and I have a feeling it will only get better and better as I continue to upgrade and discover way more. There’s even mini games within the game, which is something I absolutely love when games do. It’s so cute to put a game in your game!

I definitely think this game has a lot to offer for its relatively low price point, and I think if you try it you will definitely get plenty of hours of enjoyment out of it. Personally, I’m very excited to play more of it and am glad I gave it a shot.

Have you heard of Dave the Diver before? Do you like restaurant management games? Is pixel art totally your jam? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!

-AMS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/06/actually-playing-games-in-my-steam-library-dave-the-diver/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58151

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/05/saja-all-fixed/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58141

This handsome little man got fixed today! It’s super important to get your animals fixed, especially if they’re indoor/outdoor like our kitties are. Spaying and neutering is essential for being a good pet parent, and I’m so glad we were able to get Saja taken care of.

He is very drowsy and sleepy, so after feeding him a Churu tube, he is off to his cat bed to rest for the evening. Enjoy his drowsy glam shot, and have a great day!

-AMS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/05/saja-all-fixed/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58141

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/05/thoughts-from-an-off-off-year-election-2025/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58121

Well, that was an evening, wasn’t it.

Zohran Mamdani won decisively in NYC, of course, and that was the headline event in terms of optics, but then there was everything else, that went the Democrats’ way this election night: Governorships in New Jersey and Virginia, along with the undercard races, Democrats gaining a dozen seats in the Virginia House of Delegates, surprising statewide victories in Georgia, Democratic Supreme Court Justices being retained in Pennsylvania, and out in California, Proposition 50 passing comfortably. Almost none of these were razon-thin wins; the Democrats ran up margins.

Over on Truth Social Trump had a tantrum about it, but then, he would, wouldn’t he, and the simple fact of the matter is, all of this is substantially his fault. Turns out that out-and-out grifty fascism isn’t, in fact, very popular, especially when the promised benefits of that nonsense — lower food prices and inflation kept in check — are nowhere in sight, and when the only part of the government that is working is the part that floods cities with armed paramilitary violating people’s constitutional rights. Trump doesn’t appear to think this election was about him and his government, but of course nothing is ever his fault.

I’m not naive enough to believe that this is it, this is the turning point where the nation shies away from the brink, not in the least because the result of this off-off-year election year will be to convince Trump and his pals that the problem was that they didn’t suppress voting more, so 2026 will absolutely have more shenanigans. Fascists don’t like free elections! Who knew! And that will be a thing we get to deal with. With that said, I don’t imagine things are going to get better for the Trump administration in terms of, well, anything, between now and November of next year. It’s entirely possible that their cack-handed attempts to rig elections simply won’t be enough. That’s not to say that they won’t try, however.

Those caveats noted, let’s not pretend last night wasn’t, in itself, a big deal. Democrats essentially ran the table in the big races and even flipped some long-held GOP seats in the deep south, and that’s not nothing. Mamdani throat-punched the Trump-endorsed Cuomo not once, but twice — as well as he fucking should have (the fact that 40% of New York City voters went for a sex creep who pretty much believed he was entitled to the mayorship, is a whole other discussion to have some other time). It’s also not nothing that a Muslim Democratic Socialist got over 50% of the vote in a three-way race and still would have won even if all of GOP candidate Curtis Sliwa’s votes had gone to Cuomo instead. Sliwa said last night that he’d been offered $10 million to drop out. I’m glad he didn’t, but even if he had, Mamdani would still have been making his victory speech.

There’s been some hand-wringing among the pundit class that Mamdani, famously brown and an immigrant, might now be the poster boy of the Democratic party, which seems stupid on its face and doesn’t get any better as one drills down. There is no doubt the GOP will strive to scare a bunch of rural white people with Mamdani, because the modern GOP is an unapologetically racist party that exists to scare other unapologetic racists (and people who are willing to be swayed by unapologetic racism) into compliance against their own interests. What all of them miss is how Mamdani actually won, despite all the frankly despicable racism and anti-Muslim bullshit that was thrown at him. It’s a formula that, as it happens, is easily transferable to other Democratic candidates in other races, even when their underlying conditions are different than in New York:

I’d say there are probably two other points to add here: Mamdani ran a campaign based on optimism and inclusion, which stands in stark contrast to the politics of the modern GOP, which is fueled by hate, fear and exclusion. Also Mamdani ran to win, as opposed to running to not lose, which is a different thing and has a different tenor to it. I think there’s a sense, particularly among younger voters, that the modern Democratic party runs campaigns to not lose more often than not, which makes them safe and not capable of actual change, and also pisses people off, because right now is not the time to run cowardly campaigns. If what the DNC and others in the Democratic party, and the general pundit class, are taking away from Mamdani’s win is oh, no, a Muslim socialist rather than looking at the mechanics of how he won and won a fucking majority of votes in a mayoral election with the largest turnout in decades, then they are stupid and need to stand aside and let others lead.

With regard to California’s Proposition 50, I’m glad it passed and I hate that it’s come to this, but come to this it has. The GOP is now Trump’s party, and Trump doesn’t actually give a shit about democracy and never has. This fact delights a lot of GOP politicians on both the national and state level, who find democracy an annoyance at best and would happily stuff everyone but white male landowners into a hole if they could. Texas’ wholesale plan for an off-season revamp of its legislative districts to turn the state even redder is egregious. The fact that the GOP expected Democrats only to whine about it but otherwise do nothing was, well, naive, especially when California is being led by an ambitious egotist like Gavin Newsom, who clearly has the presidency in his sights for 2028.

At least Newsom’s redistricting proposal was put to an actual popular vote, rather than simply shoved into being like it was in Texas, so there is some veneer of propriety to it. To be clear, I suspect that if redistricting was put to a vote in Texas, it would pass. But I don’t imagine it even occurred to Abbott, Paxton, et al to do it that way — they find democracy annoying, after all. In a perfect world neither Texas nor California (nor any other state) would get to resort to such electoral shenanigans, representative districts would not be relentlessly gerrymandered, and we could all eat ice cream sundaes and never gain weight or get gassy. We do not currently live in this perfect world.

Finally, on a personal note:

THIS IS TRUE. Sherrill recently recommended The Dispatcher as “a fun beach read” (true) and now she’s Governor-Elect of the great state of New Jersey. Is this a coincidence?!? I mean, yes, yes, it is, correlation is not causation and all of that but even so, if you were running for governor of a state in our great nation, I would say at the very least recommending my work during interviews couldn’t hurt. Just try it now and then, is what I’m saying. You’re welcome.

Anyway. A good night for people who are not racist fascists and/or sex creeps. We need more nights like these, especially hopefully a year from now. They will not happen without effort. Take a couple days off to enjoy the moment and then let’s all get to it for 2026.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/05/thoughts-from-an-off-off-year-election-2025/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58121

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/04/the-big-idea-charles-h-melcher/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58109

Some stories go beyond the page, presenting themselves as “living stories,” as author Charles H. Melcher calls them. Read all about these living stories in the Big Idea for his newest book, The Future of Storytelling, and see how a story can be capable of invoking all the senses, make you the main character of the story, and offer a glimpse into the future.

CHARLES H. MELCHER:

My quest to find the people and technologies that are reinventing storytelling has often led me to some unexpected places.

One evening in 2014 I found myself in a former mail-processing facility in London, taking in a performance of The Drowned Man by the immersive theater company Punchdrunk. The conceit was that you were in a Hollywood-like film studio where a movie was being shot. Upon entering, guests were given masks and asked to keep them on at all times and not to speak. Otherwise, there were no rules, and the nearly 600 guests were free to roam around the building like ghosts, either exploring the many intricately designed rooms or following specific actors as they performed scenes in different locations.

After a couple hours of wandering and watching, I grew tired and was thinking of calling it a night, when just then a beautiful young actress in a tight leopard-print dress and ruby-red lipstick drifted into the room. I chose to stay a little longer and see what unfolded. I followed her, along with some of the other guests, as she performed different scenes, until she ducked behind a door that I hadn’t noticed. On a whim, I decided to see where she was headed, so I followed her. She was waiting for me on the other side and quickly shut the door behind me and locked it. She motioned for me to follow her down a hallway into a little office. There, she reached up and took off my mask. My cloak of invisibility had been removed, and I felt exposed, face-to-face with this actress, just the two of us.

She hung my mask on a coat rack and took a Humphrey Bogart– style trench coat off the hook. She put it on me, tying the belt and adjusting the collar just so, and then led me by the arm down a narrow corridor that got progressively darker until it was pitch black. Finally, she let go.

I was alone in the dark, every one of my senses on high alert. After what felt like a long time, I suddenly heard a voice over a loudspeaker yell, “Action!” followed by a popping sound and an explosion of light, then another pop and another burst of light. As my eyes adjusted, I realized I was surrounded by about thirty silver umbrellas, the kind photographers use to diffuse strobe lights. And then I saw her, the actress, starting to walk slowly toward me—but she was completely transformed. She had an intense, almost crazed look in her eyes. I was worried that she was no longer a friend but a foe—maybe even insane. As she drew closer to me, I froze, fearful that I was going to need to physically defend myself against her. She raised her hand up toward my neck and then laid it gently on my cheek. When she took another step forward, I could feel the warmth of her body up against mine. I could smell the sweetness of her perfume. Instinctively, my hands went around her waist.

As she looked longingly up into my eyes, I was no longer afraid of her—now I was afraid of myself. What role was I willing to play here? I’m a happily married man, but there I was, alone in a room with a beautiful starlet in my arms. While I contemplated whether to lean in for a kiss, I heard the same voice over the loudspeaker yell, “Cut!” and everything returned to pitch black. The actress moved away and I was alone, every part of my body shaking with excitement and uncertainty. Then I felt her hand on my arm, and she led me back down the corridor into the small office, where she removed my trench coat, hung it on the hook, and put my mask back on. Finally, as she was about to see me unceremoniously out the door, she stopped and whispered in my ear: “I think you would be great for the part.” I was off again, left afloat among the hundreds of other ghosts in the building. I’d entered the experience as a voyeur, but by the end, I was playing a role—in fact, I realized I had been auditioning for the role of the leading man. And as unsettling as it was, I loved it. For the rest of the weekend, I walked around London just a little bit taller, feeling like James Bond, with the sense that adventure might be waiting for me around any corner.

This experience made me realize that I was craving a new type of storytelling, one that is participatory, multisensory, interactive, and highly personal; stories that aren’t confined within a screen, a pair of headphones, the words on a page, or a theatrical proscenium but exist all around us, engage with us, and even change based on our decisions. And I’m not alone: Creators and audiences all over the world are embracing embodied, immersive stories, although the scale and breadth of this trend is still invisible to most.

A revolution in storytelling is taking place, and it is going to have profound implications in almost every field. It’s happening in the top-secret tech labs of Meta, Apple, and Google; in avant-garde performances at fringe theater festivals; in escape rooms housed in storefronts of suffering shopping malls; in cores of quantum supercomputers containing next-generation artificial intelligence; in the newest VR and AR headsets; and in centuries-old museums. It’s happening at festivals like SXSW, Cannes Lions, and Comic-Con; in restaurants and bars; in old garages and abandoned bowling alleys; in Hollywood studios and Madison Avenue advertising agencies; on university campuses and at nonprofit organizations. It’s happening in the middle of the desert in Nevada and on a palm-sized device that lives inside the pocket of nearly every person who will read my book The Future of Storytelling.  

As the publisher of Melcher media and the founder of the Future of StoryTelling (FoST) Summit, I’ve been incredibly lucky to get invited into the studios, labs, offices, and academic corridors where the future of living stories is being invented. I have come to believe that if we can understand the mechanics and unleash their full power, living stories – a term I coined – have the potential to become more popular than Hollywood and gaming have ever been. Artists and storytellers have a new opportunity to serve their audiences by creating experiences in which the audience plays an active role. 

Something beautiful happens when creators relinquish control of the narrative to their audience. The reason living stories are so powerful is that they engage not only our eyes and ears but our whole person. They gift us experiences that our brains and spinal cords are primed for, thanks to millions of years of evolution. You can feel your response to a living story in the hairs on the back of your neck, in the pit of your stomach, in the ache in your thighs as you move and choose, emote, and think through these experiences.

Just imagine: How different is it to read a book or see a movie about surviving a natural disaster than to believe in the moment that you did? How much more satisfying is it when you, not King Arthur, are able to pull the sword out of the stone? Stories have always provided us with a safe, instructive way to survive the world, as we observe characters making choices (often the wrong ones). With living stories, those characters are us, and we learn from the choices we make, and learn deeply, because we feel them throughout our own bodies. Living stories are a gateway to a more intense emotional life, to living more fully in the world.

I wrote The Future of Storytelling not to undermine the traditional storytelling forms, or to suggest that they should or will be replaced. I wrote it because of my love for living stories and my excitement for what these stories can and will do now and in the future, due to breakthroughs in technology, storycrafting, world-building, and our perpetual yearning for new paradigms.

For storytellers, audiences, and stories themselves, it’s an exciting time to be alive.

The Future of Storytelling: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s

Author socials: Website

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/04/the-big-idea-charles-h-melcher/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58109

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/04/a-change-of-pace/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58096

Hello, everyone! Recently I did a piece over the fact that I’ve been writing on the blog more or less officially for a year now, and I asked y’all what you thought of the content so far and what y’all want to see more of, and all that good stuff. I also said that it’s pretty clear from my history that I tend to write about restaurants, outings, and unique experiences more than anything else, as it’s what I have really enjoyed doing and writing about and it also makes for new and exciting content.

Despite these types of pieces being my most commonly written genre and them being well-received, I’m here to say that I’m going to be slowing down on those types of posts specifically.

I wasn’t exactly expecting to get a whole dang house right now, and now that I have one, my priorities are shifting. So too must what I do and what I spend money on shift, as well.

As much as I love dining out, partaking in bougie experiences, and driving far away from home just to do weird activities, again, I have a whole dang house now! I suddenly have… a utility bill?! And the house itself plus all the awesome decorating I’m about to do is not, uhhh… cheap.

In response to this, I must reel in my extravagant purchases and galivanting around the surrounding cities, spending all willy-nilly on excellent food and drinks. Instead, I will have to start making my own excellent food and drinks, and I hope that y’all end up enjoying that content just as much. I know some people in the comments of my previous post said they like my baking posts and would like to see more cookbook reviews/cooking at home content. So, it’s y’all’s lucky day because that’s about to be a huge chunk of what I do!

Aside from cooking at home and talking about cookbooks, being a home cook, cookware I like, etc., I’m also planning to do posts over the house itself. Things like the decorating process, how I’m devoting an entire bedroom to my 200+ Squishmallows, fun things like that. I also plan to do more movie reviews, because I have lots of streaming services and will be at home plenty enough to watch stuff now. Also, more sticker content! Basically things that I can do at home. I’m about to become the biggest homebody you’ve ever seen.

Honestly, change is very difficult for me, and it’s going to be hard to do things differently than I have been doing them for years. I think that all things considered, though, that this is a good change. I love cooking and baking, and having the chance to improve my skills and learn more about home-cooking is exciting. I truly love going out, but it can also be exhausting. This past year in particular it’s really been getting to me how busy I am and how much running around I do. I think it’ll be nice to be more anchored to one place. My new home.

And this isn’t to say that I’m never going out again or won’t be dining out literally ever. Just that my focuses are shifting right now. It’s all very exciting, honestly! I’m glad y’all are here through this journey, and I can’t wait to share more.

-AMS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/04/a-change-of-pace/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58096

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/03/reminder-scam-artists-are-scammy/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58078

Found via Facebook, a fake testimonial from “me” being excited that a scam site got “me” a dozen reviews on Amazon and Goodreads over the space of a few weeks. I obviously did not make this testimonial, and also, bluntly, I wouldn’t be excited by a dozen Amazon/Goodreads reviews. “3 Days” pictured here, already has 3300 ratings/reviews on Amazon and over 4000 on Goodreads. I’m not now, nor have I been for some time, in the business of trying to plump up my Amazon/Goodreads review numbers. I certainly wouldn’t be recommending a service to do the same. They’re scams all the way down.

I suspect the people who regularly read here know that I or other well-known authors are not in the business of giving testimonials to sites that purport to “help” authors with reviews, but there are lots of aspiring writers who, shall we say, live in hope that there’s a shortcut to getting one’s name out there, and that something like this may be one of those shortcuts, and who might see my name, or the name of some other similarly notable author, and allow themselves to be convinced this sort of scam is a good idea. So this post is to tell them: No. Sorry, no. No author you have ever heard of is going to be scrabbling for Amazon or Goodreads reviews, and even if they were, they wouldn’t be doing it like this. Save your money.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/03/reminder-scam-artists-are-scammy/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58078