Exploits 96
OK, here's the deal. You can have the March Exploits FOR FREE, it's right down there at the bottom of the post. Unwinnable's monthly cultural diary, full of quick reviews and recommendations meant to expand your media horizons.
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The Catch: If you laugh, learn something new, take a recommendation or generally enjoy yourself while reading it, you gotta subscribe.
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This is the honor system. But remember, you can never be 100% sure that I can't summon hellhounds.
It's going to be so funny when the Firefly thing is a subscription box
If you want to do all that, you can do so for free right here:
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Here, actually, why don't you check out Exploits 96 in its entirety for yourself. Six mini-essays, dozens of short reviews and your horoscope for the month. For free!
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"Art, as Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE understands, can catalyze reckonings."
@nivmsultan.bsky.social examines the power of art in Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE:
"One of the finer, more refreshingly creative RPGs of the 2010s, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE imbues its showbiz fantasy with remarkable diegetic texture. In the vein of the Persona series, dungeons give physical shape to psychological phenomena and power structures: Consider the level that explores the relationship between photographers and their subjects, with vaguely Escherian architecture that evokes the disorienting effect of being captured on camera. Then there’s combat: While party members in turn-based RPGs often strike nonsensically flashy poses during and after battles – who are they stunting for? – our crew here hams it up with professional purpose as fights unfold beneath bright lights and before a voracious audience. When characters execute cross-team combos they call out the name of the next companion in the queue, as though introducing a guest on a track. And worry not: Every attack in a chain nets you cash or an item. All labor is rewarded generously, each worker spared alienation. That’s praxis."
really happy to share my first piece for Unwinnable, looking back on Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE for its 10th anniversary. a game whose absurd premise and world (complimentary) take root thanks to a surprising commitment to diegesis
unwinnable.com/2026/03/05/t...
When Landsman says "this seems a little combative" you can almost see the light in his eyes like when a baby is questioning if you do in fact have their nose.
www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...
The game looks very cool! It's got such amazing color pop! It's a horrible vision of the future! But... every time I think that I have to wonder a little, did the person who came up with that get paid and properly credited?
And while icon size etc kept me from really enjoying playing, it's kind of a shame that Marathon does look so cool given Bungie's history with theft? Intentional or otherwise, I can't help but feel like every time I like the way something looks in their game I should wonder if it was stolen.
I also will likely not play it and I agree with everything being said here...but... I thought the icons were often too small? Like opening a chest I couldn't tell what was what and why I should grab it (or not). Maybe there's a scaling setting somewhere I never found? But LOOKED great felt bad?
Not to be overly sentimental, but this one means a lot to me. So happy I got to chat with @tonialaird.bsky.social about her work.
"In all of her work there’s a deep sense of care and respect for how people, both individually and collectively, are impacted by society’s systems of power."
@phoenixwritesdown.bsky.social talks to @tonialaird.bsky.social about her work and her debut novel Seventhblade:
"So how does all that nonsense work on the Switch? Astonishingly well, it turns out."
@robsteinone.bsky.social tries Caves of Qud on the Switch:
If you itemize your membership is tax deductible.
I'm going on member preview day
The cover of the March 2026 issue of Exploits, featuring “Winter Coast,” by Winslow Homer, 1890 art portraying a hunter on a snowy beach. Text at the bottom indicates that this issue covers Heated Rivalry, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, About a Place in the Kinki Region, Do It, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, and School Spirits.
Bundle up -- it's still cold out there. This month's issue of Exploits includes micro-criticism on everything from Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE to School Spirits.
Buy: buff.ly/bwvtaIe
Subscribe: buff.ly/1KL2RKg
Read Beatrix Kondo's essay on M/M narratives: buff.ly/MpgtkJx
My feb column is in CD! I think you should play Station to Station:
"you have nothing to lose but your chains" hits a lot differently when those chains are healthcare for you and your family!
That's why the fight for universal healthcare is a core part of the fight for true representative democracy in the US. And why the establishment won't create it for us.
This is the real reason we cannot have universal healthcare.
It has never been about the cost, the taxes, the "socialism" it has always been because as a people we'd be too mobile, too able to fight.
As a socialist and a colleague, I hope, in this time of turmoil, you'll recenter the things that matter for you as a human and push away the extrinsic value of labor sold to capitalism.
Always available for a DM in the dark hours of the mind!
Humans are beings of routine. We do a thing, do it well, get rewarded for doing it. As a distant colleague, I will tell you this is normal to feel adrift without that pillar of your day.
I hear a megacorp bought another megacorp yesterday. Cancel those streaming services and put some dollars in the hands of small, independent publishers. Unwinnable not your speed? Try @critdistance.bsky.social @romchip.bsky.social @bpmonthly.bsky.social @noescapevg.com @startmenu.bsky.social
Whenever people ask me what we're doing I always tell them "we're socialists!"
Seems like a weird conflict of interest to own the aggregator, the algorithm, and then also the publications that feed in!
I would NOT trust the healthcare plan.
They just need to "work"!
For me, the one worth chasing is frame rate. Something running well is way, way more important than horse testicle physics or being able to see a character's pores.
Thanks for circling back on this. I suppose I'll have to sit this one out!
