bijan

@bijan.bsky.social

15902 Followers 529 Following

writer @compulsiongames.bsky.social, music critic @thenation.com, playing characters on @funcityventures.bsky.social, making @dearannagame.bsky.social bijanstephen.blog/about

tweet from thomas white (@len0killer)

Every journalist: This lil piece is taking forever but it WILL be a masterpiece...send hugs :/

Finished article: Even the mere amazing flavor of the tantalizing food, entices one to eat it. And believe it or not, that delicious journey from plate to mouth, is only the beginning.

fuckin Reebok x dragon quest pastel windbreaker

a seamless marketing email advertising a buy one get one lunch deal at sweetgreen

yami yugi believing in the heart of the cards

At this point, honest mistakes among buyers begin to bleed into something a little bit less mistaken. On TikTok, which has in recent years seen its young user base invent several classic types of fraud from first principles, it’s not hard to find tutorials on how to use chargebacks to get free stuff, circumvent “final sale” purchases or speed up refunds if a merchant is taking too long to process a return.

iPhone with headline surrounded by shots

alf banner in front of toilet

⁠‍‌‍Hi, I'm Layla from Indeed.

Your background stands out for a straightforward, remote-based assignment. We are looking for individuals to help increase the visibility and engagement of a trending mobile application on the App Store. The tasks are very simple and designed to be completed quickly.

• Daily Pay: $200 - $500 ($1,000 guaranteed for every 4 days worked)
• Time: Only 60-90 minutes per day, 4 days a week.
• Perks: Full orientation provided + 15-20 days of paid annual leave.

Glass of water. Ice cold

Dragon quest slime candle

discord screenshot with an image that says "don't get the discord subpoenaed"

total units: 2
steam units: 2

A Cosmic Elegy: Mother Earth—Where Is Home?
A short, interactive, multi-ending visual novel with a unique atmosphere; best experienced alongside Lasah’s tracks "ALONE to ALONE" and "MOTHER."
Total playtime (all endings): 1–1.5 hours.
This was my first time playing a game by Bijan Stephen, and *Turn Out the Lights* left a strong impression. Interaction relies almost entirely on mouse clicks—which might feel tedious to players who dislike that style. The visuals consist of processed black-and-white photographs; they not only effectively set the mood but also saved on production costs. The sound design is excellent, particularly the voice of "Red," which enhances immersion. I also appreciated the branching paths and multiple endings. While not overly complex, they encourage players to revisit the text and replay the game. The sudden shift to a red color palette really snapped me to attention—a great way to keep the player engaged.
Additionally, Bijan’s writing is accessible—friendly even to non-native speakers—yet carries a touch of gentle melancholy. I really loved the final line: "Turn out the lights, would you?" Just let me drift in the endless void. There is no one left on Earth waiting for me...

Gameplay: Point-and-click; there are no other mechanics. The entire experience is driven by the narrative. Although there are multiple endings, the branching paths are neither numerous nor complex.
Story Premise: Years ago, a major corporation recruited people for space exploration and mining. I signed up, underwent training, and even earned a medal—only to board the ship alone, bound for a distant asteroid belt where I would spend years. Life in space is lonely; the destination was a desolate "space hell" consisting of nothing but rock. I named my robotic companion "Red" and had it take the form of a puppy to keep me company. Whenever I rode my bicycle through the barren canyons, Red would trot along behind me, and I’d occasionally exchange a few words with it.
One day, …

vhs of heat

Although perhaps in our dotage every man's sun-bleached vanities may finally rot away and clear a path for the true self, so naked in his appetites that he would appear a stranger to us.

top text: please let me work on your ip
bottom text: i am normal and can be trusted with your precious intellectual properties

Slide that says:

I know narrative designers who use branching dialog and they’re all cowards

A talk by Nicholas O’Brien

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orange and blue dial soap bottle

big ass phone case, freytag wallet, Marlboro reds on top

bing bonged

excerpt from the foreword of the book Computers as Theatre by Brenda Laurel:
" This is a challenging book, one that offers an entirely new
perspective upon the development of the modern technologies of computation and communication. The main theme of
this multithemed book is that these technologies offer new
opportunities for creative, interactive experiences and, in particular, for new forms of drama. But these new opportunities
will come to pass only if control of the technology is taken
from the technologist and given to those who understand
human beings, human interaction, communication, pleasure,
and pain
It is time for the engineers to go back to engineering. To
develop these new technologies, we need a new breed of creative individuals, most likely those associated with poetry,
writing, and theatrical direction. Who, asks Laurel, who better understands human interaction than the dramatist?"

mortal kombat screenshot saying flawless victory

NY Times screenshot:
Prices in the U.S. Are Rising at the Fastest Pace in years
Officials at the central bank have embraced the possibility of higher interest rates to get resurgent inflation under control

But confusion isn’t really a defense in journalism. If you are going to use another writer’s prose—not a stray fact or publicly known information, but a sequence of details arranged in the same structure and pattern—that requires a quote or a clear attribution, not a hyperlink.

text from grogu:

grogu: why is the world so cruel? why must they hate me?
reply: Hey! I'm so glad you reached out. I'm actually at capacity / helping someone else who's in crisis / dealing with some personal stuff right now, and I don't think I can hold appropriate space for you. Could we connect [later date or time] instead / Do you have someone else you could reach out to?

9.

in games i have a working self and a dreaming self. the dreaming self plans, schemes, comes up with jokes that might be funny or images that might be cool; lists the overall plan of work, the steps involved, the assets that have to be produced. the working self is what actually sits in front of the computer - confronted immediately with all those decisions too granular or too stupid to be acknowledged by the dreaming self. should i put the trees in this map HERE or HERE? if i put them here it looks better but i might need to run the path around. this textbox is too busy so i'll need to chop it in two and then come up with some filler for each part so it doesn't look too shorn. obstacles and areas changed on the fly, made shorter, longer. things my dreaming self thought would be funny or cool that fall flat - the working self tries them, shrugs, has to chop and change them without throwing the shape of the whole too out of whack. new effects are discovered and unplanned trips are made to explore them. the dreaming self is there too, looking at these changes, running them back into the fantasy machine. the working self dreams and the dreaming self works.

i assume that's how it is for everybody. what i find interesting about specifically being a hobbyist dev is this: all of a sudden one self has much less force over the other. the working self gets restless without a plan, the dreaming self can't do anything unless it gets the other one to work. in a commercial context various new sticks and carrots are available - budgets, incentives, deadlines, goads to work, to hit the milestones and follow the plan. without these things, the working self now has an absolute veto. if i don't like the plan, if the planning self has left the working one too many chores, left all the juicy moments of invention and discovery for itself, the rest of me reserves the right to down tools.

tom 3 from toonami

Her experience reflects a broader pattern among recent graduates. The unemployment rate for people ages 22 to 27 who recently completed college hit 5.6 percent in the final months of 2025 — well above the 4.2 percent rate for all workers, according to national data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Nearly half of that age group was underemployed, meaning people were working in jobs that did not require a degree, the highest share since 2020.

champagne colored hyundai 120 super zoom film camera

An alcoholic beverage called 420 haze passion with horny goat weed in it

Louise loves Claude in the way that you love someone when you are in your early twenties and have a job proofreading an eight-hundred-page book titled “Texas Business Law”: with blazing, idiotic conviction. But Lemann, to her credit, does not play this for laughs. You believe Louise when she declares, “My heart was not trained to love anyone but him. I could only love one person. This was my innate principle.” Those who have gone about their lives without falling for such a dissipated trap of a person may wonder how she could be so naïve. But the inevitability of doom does not lessen its impact. Like the unseemly family wealth that funds all those gin-soaked garden parties, or the nameless Black maids on their periphery, some truths are willfully ignored in the haze of romantic self-conception.

tweet saying: snowing hard this morning. Bus driver slid through a red light. Only thing he said was "we slidin" i cant stop thinking about this

rona from swan boy saying "oh no it... happened." real dark night of the soul shit (she shit her pants bad)

with this industry's death, the thread of prophecy is severed. restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created.

Summit County Sheriff’s detective Jeff O’Driscoll, the lead investigator on the case, testified that Richins paid a ghostwriting company to write the book for her.

Officially the light sweet crude vs the heavy sour championships

Screenshot of the iconic “Buffy will patrol tonight” image modified to say “Buffy will not patrol tonight”

tillie, the steeplechase face in coney island

Demon from Hush episode of Buffy

cover of oblivion from bethesda

Best Experimental Work

Known Mysteries

Dear Anna,

How To Make It Home

Anyway, I say this to say I've been thinking a lot lately about James Gunn's Superman, the latest reboot of the film franchise. I saw it when it released in theaters last year, and, predictably, by the end, I had shed more than a few years. I didn't understand why until this weekend, when I was having some Outdoor Beers[1] with a couple friends. The plot of the film is pretty simple: Superman saves some people who need saving, and eventually, emotionally, saves himself. (It really is worth watching.)

But the reason I had such a strong reaction to this Superman, despite it being a lot like every other superhero film, was ultimately pretty simple: it felt radical to see a man with so much power could decide to use it for good. That someone — even a fictional someone — could believe that goodness was a thing worth sacrificing for, worth working to protect.

the scene from spaceballs where president skroob sniffs canned air

death blighted elden ring status

Black voters also moved to Trump but remained overwhelmingly Democratic.
Trump nearly doubled his support among Black voters between 2020 and 2024: 8% voted for him in 2020 vs. 15% last year. Still, 83% of Black voters backed Harris.

SOS

Hi Joanna! Thanks for getting in touch — this sounds super cool. Unfortunately I've basically left journalism, and so I won't be able to cover this story. Best of luck, though, and I hope you're doing well!

Best wishes,

Bijan

Stańczyk, the famous Polish painting. From wikipedia: "The painting presents Stańczyk with a sense of isolation and hopelessness, which reflects the political situation of Poland during the 19th century."

I know that some AI believers are going to say that none of the above will prove human authorship. That in the future LLMs will be undetectable and the TikToks and podcasts faked. I expect that is true. I expect we’ll see some hoaxes and scandals too. I don’t think it changes the fact though. Readers will look for those markers of human authorship even if they aren’t infallible. And not just readers. Agents and editors may be even more concerned with this. Unknowingly publishing an AI book risks both backlash and potential legal headaches (e.g., around copyright law). Last year, I was chatting with a literary magazine editor who had put their magazine on hiatus for a few years. They mentioned how exciting it was to come back to the slush pile that had been closed since before ChatGPT: “I feel like I am sitting on this treasure trove of stories that are all definitely written by an actual human.”