Hi Everyone,

Here we are at the final of four newsletters on Signet City’s influences, and some of the media and ideas that have been stirred into the melting pot for my new project. If you missed any, you can see the posts indexed below:

Reading the City - Literature and poetry

Visualizing the City - Film, comics and photography

Listening to the City - Music

Today’s final newsletter is Playing the City, a set of videogames and tabletop games that have shaped the development of Signet City from when it was an idea, to where it is at today, past the halfway point of its development. As always this list is non-exhaustive, but a curated peek behind the curtain!

This time I wanted to zoom in a little closer: games can be such massive objects—aesthetic, sonic, narrative, systemic—to say a game as a whole influenced me is less true than saying that some particular part of it left its mark. I so often find inspiration in the details of games, in single systems or ideas that feel potent and open to expansion or development. Part of In Other Waters conception, for example, was drawing ideas from the scan visor of Metroid Prime and the gorgeous topogrpahic maps of Destiny and using them not as subsidary systems, but the central pieces of the project.

So here I am once again going to break my influences into three sections, with one main influence and two related influences, where I will pick out just one element of the game that I drew inspiration from. I would always advise those interested in making games to play widely, and with attention to the details, you never know what small system or moment might inspire a whole project in you.

WHISPERS IN THE STREETS

Dishonored | Arkane Studios

I don’t know if there is a series of games whose cities have fascinated me more than the Dishonored games. So richly layered, so elegantly stylized and so cleanly refracted from the capitals of empire of our own world, they feel deeper than any other simply in vibes alone. Dishonored and its sequels are deeply connected to Signet City, in the same way that Mass Effect 2 is connected to Citizen Sleeper 2 or In Other Waters to Metroid Prime: not in pure replication, but instead as a springboard towards my own creation.

If I were to choose a single element of Dishonored that feels like it sparked something in Signet City, it would be The Heart, an equaippable item that you only need squeeze to be fed a poetic whisper straight from the soul of Dunwall. You can point it at places or people, and it gives them all a sense of interiority or history. “The ale here is sweetened with honey to hide the taste of river brine,” the heart might hiss. I love the idea of pulling threads out from the city like this. Its a magic act repeated again in Death of the Outsider with its rat whispers, and in Signet City it is the starting point of the idea of a whole game where you search for these reasonant moments in a decaying, layered city.

Disco Elysium | ZAUM - though people often compare my work to Disco Elysium, I do think there are elements of my approach, style and intent that are different. However, I have always loved, just like Dishonored’s heart, the way the Shivers skill lets the city speak to us, in the most beautiful ways.

Blades in the Dark | Evil Hat - Blades influnece on my work is well documented, but for Signet City it is the city map, with its districts and factions that I feel the strongest influence from. Theres something so elegant in its minimalism, it seems to ask, what is the optimum amount of information you need to tell a story in this city that is both true to the setting and still your own.

LIVING ART

Mundaun | Hidden Fields

Mundaun is a very special game, a grotesque and yet gorgeous paper puppet show about a cursed mountain and the shadow its history casts over a remote village. There are many special things about it, from its haunting exploration, to its spiralling narrative, but it is its aesthetics that I can never tire of. Rather than trying to look like a drawing, Mundaun is a game made of drawings.

At the heart of this are its textures, each sketched in pencil by the game’s creator Michel Ziegler. I love the way that at a distance they are a part of the whole, this monochrome mountain scene, but when you get close they collapse into gestures and marks captured in graphite. Charred wood and even skin becomes heavy marks, while tiles are sketched in precise grids. It gives an uncanny quality to the game that has been on my mind as I have been shaping the aesthtics of Signet City.

Half Life 2 | Valve - Another Viktor Antonov concepted city, along with Dishonored’s Dunwall, City 17 is one that has lived in my mind since launch day. But it’s the city’s skyboxes—the citadel cutting through clouds, the socialist blocks at the canals edge—that serve as the canvas for my imagination. Something I hope to provide the player with in Signet City.

Despelote | Julián Cordero, Sebastián Valbuena - One of my favourite games of the past few years, Despelote is a beautfully heartfelt trip into its creators childhood, and role football played in it, but it is the character sprites that inspire me the most, hand drawn in a simple style that helps them pop among the photo-textures that capture the city of Quito.

DAY BY DAY

Alien Squatter | Andrew Hagen, Shea Kennedy

An RPG that should have sparked a revolution in the genre if there was any justice in the world, Alien Squatter is a hidden gem in the truest sense where you must productively spend your days in an alien migrant camp as you try to beg, borrow and steal a pass into the city. It is written with incredible heart and humour as well as a deep awarness of what it means to live in poverty, but it is the game’s loop that I find so brilliant.

Each day you have a limited humber of “steps” to walk around the camp, taking on tasks, getting into random battles with cockroaches, stealing, begging, chatting and scavenging. The more you eat during the day, the more steps you’ll have during the next one. It is tight to the point of restictive, but gives the game a compelling rythmn of overlapping short, medium and long term goals, while still allowing for surprises. As I have found with Signet City it can be so hard to get a day loop right in a game, but Alien Squatter is a brillaint example.

Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor | Sundae Month - Many of you will know the influence this game had on Citizen Sleeper, but one element I love that fits in Signet City where it didn’t in Citizen Sleeper, is its days of the week. Both an elegant way to give a world depth and a way to give the players variety and rythmn, I could never get enough of the way Theday parties and music were always naturally followed by the trash-strewn streets of Onday.

Before the Green Moon | Turnfollow - A farming sim that is less interested in bucolic fantasies and more interesrted in the downtrodden community at the foot of a space elevator, Before the Green Moon is another exceptional but overlooked game. There are many parts of its subtle narrative and world I love, but it is actually the rainy season, with its natural progression from drizzle to downpour, that I adore. Farming games often treat seasons as distinct, with hard boundaries that don’t reflect reality. Before the Green Moon instead stages an constant transition from wet to dry and round again that makes its world feel real.

So there you have it, nine games that all played their part in my process. Together, with the books, photography, film, comics and music, I hope you will find something to love while you wait for Signet City.

With this foundation set, this newsletter will now be turning to news and updates about the game itself. you have all been very patient, but I wanted to take my time with explaining the project to you all and give you an insight into my process. Most of the reveals around the game will be coming in 2027, but I may be back for one more newsletter before the year ends.

Until then, wrap-up warm and be well,

Gareth

Last week I went to a concert with two of my best friends. We were there to see singer-songwriter Nick Carpenter, who goes by Medium Build on stage. Carpenter has been in the music industry for more than a decade. He comes across as relatable and charming, a person who seems at ease singing deeply personal songs to rooms of 500 or so. Medium Build tells stories about people who have messed up, who loved and lost. He sings about the yearning and mistakes and sparks of growth that dot the lives of most young people. I heard the room sing along to one of his bangers about depression when I thought, "I want to talk to Vincent about this!" Vincent is an internet friend of mine from Toronto. He saw Medium Build a couple weeks ago when the artist toured through Canada. We had a virtual sit-down this week to chat about how we connected to Carpenter's music.

Vincent and I found out by accident that we were both hooked on Medium Build. His music doesn't sound like that of any artist we'd talked about before. Vincent says that his usual flavor of music is well within the "pop diva" realm. He says, "I try to seek out male musicians who use he/him pronouns when referring to a lover," something I do as well. Vincent also likes ballads and slow songs but will on occasion dip into twangier sounds. The twang genre—not quite country, not quite rock—is one of my favorites. I grew up in Austin (the live music capital of the world, thank you). Most of the music from the region, the land of Willie Nelson and Stevie Ray Vaughan, tends to have a little drawl to it. My tastes still include a lot of synthesizers and pop divas, but I have a soft spot for a sad song set to acoustic guitar. Across our conversation, I noticed a few themes in Medium Build's work that resonate with us both.

a different model of masculinity

Carpenter identifies as queer or bisexual. "Everybody's hot!" Carpenter says in one interview. He often leaves the subject of his songs as gender ambiguous, or refers to them as "baby," or the like. On other songs, he make his attraction to many genders more direct. 'Drug dealer' is about the crushes we develop on the service workers in our lives. His drug dealer is a man, his bartender is a woman, and everyone loves "that songwriter" on the same track. He opens 'Thank you, Cook' with the lyrics, “when the masculine in you finds the feminine in me.” Gender is a spectrum in a song about the connections we may have across our long lives. The song is a personal and emotional end to an album full of such moments. But it also touches on personal growth in ways that seem inaccessible to many male musicians. In the first verse he talks about needing Cook more than anything. By the end of the song, he reassures them that the love they once showed him is how he learned to love himself.

His writing also blurs the lines of biography and fiction. Carpenter describes the song 'Hey Sandra,' as a letter that his dad might have written his mom if he needed to win her back. Vincent says, “he's almost mythologizing his dad and and straight male relationships. He wants to win his woman back by writing her a letter. At one point he sings, 'That lil' prick from Texas tried to touch ya and I broke that fucker's hand? [...] You used to like that tough guy act.' It feels like it's part of a story.” It might be this exploration that makes Medium Build's music so compelling. Men can mess up, make mistakes, fail their partners, and apologize. Carpenter’s songs don’t put the blame on the person he’s singing to. It’s not that person’s job to fix him. He can feel torn up about losing them, even long for them, but the work is his to do. Carpenter also sings on several songs about his struggles with body image. Lyrics from older songs like 'FatBrokeLoser' read like painful and self-deprecating diary entries. Newer songs like 'Armor' reveal some growth when he sings, "I wanna starve myself until I'm beautiful. Hey, what the fuck is that? Thought I could fix myself without the dysphoria." This is a topic rarely covered by male musicians, but one that a growing number of men struggle with today. I Medium Build's music offers a model of masculinity that says it’s okay to be vulnerable; it's okay to grow.

storytelling in songwriting

Vincent and I learned that we approach Medium Build's storytelling in different ways. He's not the first artist to sing about messed-up youth and bad breakups. One of my favorite artists, The Mountain Goats aka John Darnielle, often sings in that register. Vincent and I compared Carpenter's lyrics to those of women singer-songwriters like Lana Del Rey and Mitski. Music critics often ask women artists if their songs are autobiographical. This stems from the outdated sexist belief that a woman can only write songs from her own experiences. Sarah MacDonald writes, "Authenticity is mistaken as a synonym for autobiographical, and women have been told by critics, fans and their male colleagues they can only make autobiographical art." Women create personas to blur the lines between reality and fiction in their songs. Darnielle never wrote songs about stories from his own life until The Sunset Tree, his 9th album. Men are free to create personas, too, something Carpenter seems to be urging us to remember.

Carpenter's songwriting focuses on the emotional depths of the characters he sketches. I related to many of the people who show up in these songs. At some points in my life I have been those characters, these former lives of a person who's now grown up. I'm not the only listener who's ever been a little reckless in love. We all feel regret for the things and people we've lost. I am grateful for all the people who have left impressions on the many seasons of my life. 'John and Lydia' is one of a handful of Medium Build's songs that is explicitly about his parents. He intersperses snippets from the past with how he relates to them as an adult. He embraces the freedom of making his own choices and respecting the ones they once made. “Would we have been friends if we were born at the same time?” he sings. “Maybe in another life.”

I asked Vincent how he related to Medium Build's lyrics. I was curious if his life experiences overlapped his songs in the same ways that mine did. It surprised me to learn that, for the most part, he didn't. Instead, Vincent said, “the songs are like watching a movie about someone’s life, one that's not my own.” Songs like ‘Hey Sandra’ and ‘Misery’ are dramatizations of events that happened to someone around him. All artists borrow from and embellish the stories of people they know. But the way Carpenter blurs into his Medium Build persona gives us the thread of truth we need to connect with him.

parasocial connections to a stranger

At the concert, Medium Build sings a line from 'Never Learned to Dance.' It goes, "Buying weed on Wilshire, sexting with my therapist." The crowd sings along with him, but seem to get louder at that part. He grins at us and says something like, "I know you weirdos love that line." Carpenter worries about the fans who think the harmful relationships in his songs are normal. What does this say about us in 2026? A person who sings about depression is once again rising in the music industry? In another recent interview he says, “I get DMs all the time of people being like, "Our song is Triple Marathon." I'm like, "You should check the recipe on that cuz that song is unhealthy.” In many of his songs he wrestles with his growing fame. On ‘Perceived’ he laments having to turn his “private life into entertainment." On ‘Never Learned to Dance’, he sings, “Babe this dream I had feels like it might ruin me.” Despite lyrics that feel too revealing at times, Carpenter still comes across as a private person. Perhaps this is why he's quick to puncture the illusion of his stories in interviews.

I can see the appeal a songwriter might have in blurring the lines on the sources of their inspiration. Singer-songwriters aren't usually manufactured from within the music industry. Authenticity—emerging organically from the grassroots—is part of what they sell. People relate to an artist more if they tell a story that feels real. Songs about trauma feel more real when people who identify with them believe the artist has also experienced it. That vulnerability connects the fan to the artist in very personal ways. But we don't know an artist as a person when we hear their music. Despite the romantic notions we may hold, songwriting and performance is still a job. Artists are still part of a billion-dollar industry. The internet expanded how much access that regular people can have with celebrity. A post-covid decline in face-to-face interactions further fueled this desire for celebrity intimacy. Horton and Wohl first described these interactions as "para-social" in 1956. These are one-sided interactions where the audience falsely thinks they know a celebrity like a friend. It's well-documented that this belief is untrue (but huge business for many industries). It can also make celebrities, especially ones who are new to fame, uncomfortable. In 2024, Chappell Roan famously shared how uneasy parasocial fans made her feel.

do something productive

"I wonder what Nick would think if he read your article," Vincent said near the end of our call. "Would he be like, 'What are these guys talking about?? They don't know me!'" We laughed a little at the idea but I didn't have an answer ready. Writing this essay taught me how little we actually know about the famous people in our lives. I can relate to music without believing that the artist and I are the only survivors of those experiences. We will only know a sliver of most people's lives. Even among our friends, we know the most about what they choose to show us. Vincent is a friend I made from the internet. He visited Seattle once for a work conference but we chat online almost every day. Online interactions can certainly feel parasocial at times. Unlike most celebrity encounters, these potential friends can also deepen into real friendships.

What we do know with intimate familiarity is the interiority of our own lives. It can feel profound when another person holds a key of experience that matches one of the locks in our heart. When we connect with someone, we should see it as an invitation to share more in both directions. Even after we add one or two more colors to our palette, we still can't rely on a picture of the person we paint in our minds.

Medium Build, aka Nick Carpenter, is fascinating for many different reasons. But they're still two different people (or personas). I'm happy that I got to see Medium Build with two friends who are important to me. I'm delighted that Vincent was willing to chat with me on zoom for an hour after work. I'm grateful that Nick Carpenter's art found me when it did. I'm also grateful that he helped me create a deeper connection with some of the real friends in my life.

Thanks so much to my pal Vincent for talking with me this week!

Massive club owners Kevin Kauer and Ethan Cory were in the middle of doing a supply run for a party on October 22 when Cory received a concerning text from their social media manager. Instagram had suspended the gay club’s account–which boasts around 22,500 followers—without much explanation. 

According to Kauer and Cory, the so-called “final straw” for Meta—the Mark Zuckerberg–headed company that owns Instagram—appeared to be Massive’s promotion of Pack Party, a monthly party for Seattle transmascs. The club co-owners said Meta’s AI detection flagged the posts for “conditioning harm” to other people and took down all accounts involved: Massive, Pack Party, and the account belonging to bar manager and Pack Party organizer Max Currie. No one received any further details on what happened and why. 

“All they told us was two words: ‘conditioning harm.’ That’s it,” says Cory. “The issue with Meta is that you don’t clearly understand what the rules are. So, if we were to do anything wrong—and nothing we’re doing is wrong—there’s no way to actually amend your actions without going through their AI review.” 

The suspension and deletion of Massive, Pack Party, and Currie’s accounts are part of a concerning pattern of gay clubs and promoters across the country being targeted by Meta’s AI detection system. Meta could not be reached for comment on Massive’s Instagram suspension.  

Gay clubs exist as spaces for queer people to dance, sip a drink, and meet up with other people in their community, things everyone has a right to do. For a club like Massive, not having access to a platform where they can promote their parties and events to followers means smaller turnouts, directly affecting their bottom line in a business where margins are already small. The suspension of their Instagram last month forced Massive to cancel Bronze Babez, a drag-pole-burlesque show featuring Black and Brown performers. 

“We can’t get promotion out, and it means that a whole group of people are now out of a paycheck as well,” says Cory. “It affects more than just our engagement and selling tickets. It means losing a space for a lot of people to just be themselves, for one, and also make money and survive in Seattle, which is obviously a very insanely expensive city.”

Kauer and Cory immediately took to their personal Instagrams, alerting the community about the accounts’ suspension, urging any queers who had an inside track at Meta to help them with the situation. In the past, according to Kauer (who has worked in queer nightlife for two decades), public pressure was the surest way to get accounts back. But as Meta increasingly relies on automated technology to monitor their platforms, it makes it seemingly impossible for suspended accounts to make their case to an actual human without a sympathetic party on the inside. 

“You’re not really given the option to ever get justice on it unless you make some huge deal of it, which is super unfair, particularly if a person that’s being affected doesn’t have some large community or business or people behind them to help them out,” says Kauer. “You’re just kind of screwed.”

A few days of back-channeling later, Massive’s Instagram account was restored, only for Massive’s Stripe account—which processes credit card payments on the club’s ticketing site—to then be taken down. The company flagged Massive event descriptions containing the terms “slutty bingo” and “pole dancers.” As they worked with their ticketing company, Tixr, to get their Stripe account back up and running ahead of Massive’s packed Halloweekend event schedule, their Instagram was taken down— again. 

“Obviously a human reviewed our things and got [Massive’s Instagram] back. Was it then automatically reported again by the automations? Or did some other human come in and say, ‘No, that’s not OK?’” says Kauer. “We follow the rules the best we can.”

A similar sense of frustration overcame Max Currie, who started the monthly Pack Party at Massive in April 2025 as a way for people under the transmasc umbrella to meet one another, make friends, dance, and find partners in love.

Meta labeling his party as “conditioning harm” is completely against the party’s ethos. “If anything, it’s the opposite,” says Currie. “These events are oftentimes how we can help stop harm in our community, just having a place to go and be around other people who have shared life experiences.” He immediately appealed Meta’s ruling and, three days later, discovered both his personal and Pack Party accounts had been fully deleted. Though Currie still plans on hosting the party every second Thursday at Massive, there’s no clear path forward.

“I’m at a standstill,” he says. “How do I even reach my community without being able to be on social media? How do I promote this event, how do I talk to people about their experiences at the party? It’s been pretty rough.”

This patterned targeting of queer clubs, bars, and promoters isn’t new. According to a Facebook post, CC’s Seattle had their Instagram account suspended in April and denied their appeal for reinstatement. When a bar worker continued to promote CC’s events, their account got suspended as well. As a result, CC’s has been forced to move off of Instagram and mainly posts updates on Bluesky and their website. 

Nationally, Meta suspended the Instagram account of historic San Francisco gay bar the Stud in July, falsely flagging it for “engaging in human trafficking.” Only after intense pressure from the public and state senators did the Stud get its account back. In the last year, similar Meta suspensions have hit trans-focused club night Transfix and clubs Catch One, Club Chico, and Club Tempo in Los Angeles, gay bar Rain on 4th in Austin, and Latino gay clubs Next Level and Que Rico in Oakland. 

It’s a tricky balancing act for gay bars and promoters. They have to navigate the ever-shifting sensibilities of a large social media platform that is seemingly hostile to their existence, while running a business based on attention. Kauer and Cory say they have had to be extra judicious about what they post on Massive’s Instagram page, nixing party pictures that might have an errant exposed torso or using codes for words like “trans” or “queer”  that could set off Meta’s detection system. 

“For us to advertise and put our business out in queer nightlife… and make it through the Instagram barriers is a real huge effort,” says Kauer. “And they keep taking you down, or people can report you. It just makes it quite a hellscape, to be honest.”

While Massive got their Stripe account back up before Halloween, their Instagram account is still suspended. The account’s suspension is making Kauer and Cory rethink the club’s entire marketing strategy and consider moving things like ticketing and promoting offline entirely. Currently, the best way to find out about goings-on at Massive is to subscribe to their weekly email newsletter. Though they currently have 15,000 subscribers, Kauer says the email “open” rate sits at around 8 percent. 

For better or worse, social media platforms like Instagram are the de facto way to get word out about parties, DJ nights, and drag shows they host each week. Not having it hurts attendance, which, in turn, affects their ability to keep the bar above water. But being on a platform like Instagram or Facebook puts gay bars like theirs in a position that’s beholden to the whims of Meta’s technology. 

“Massive is like many businesses that, unfortunately, rely heavily on Instagram. We’ve worked really hard this whole time to build it naturally and to make it fun and engaging and work for our club while still following their rules,” says Kauer. “Then to take it away, I mean, they’re just dinging a small business that’s already fighting to survive.”

The post Meta Keeps Suspending Seattle Bars and Clubs from Instagram appeared first on The Stranger.

Elisabetta Palagi, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Pisa, had sent her team of research students to Ethiopia to study geladas, monkeys whose hearts appear to gleam out of their chests. But as her students watched the geladas munch on a grassy plateau alongside other grazing animals, they noticed a peculiar interaction between two other animals. A bull approached a male donkey and mounted him. This behavior did not seem to bother the donkey. The donkey did not kick him or otherwise try to escape the interaction. The researchers contacted Palagi and asked if she thought this cross-species intercourse was worth studying. "I said yes," Palagi wrote in an email.

After close observation, the researchers found that the the bull, dubbed Achille, and the donkey, dubbed Patroclo, have a persistent, mutual sexual relationship, which is described in a new paper in Current Biology. Achille and Patroclo's relationship was not news to the local herders, who laughed when they saw the researchers filming the unexpected pair. "What was an unexpected observation for us was evidently a familiar sight to them," Palagi said. (The paper includes explicit footage of the pair's mating that we have omitted out of respect for their privacy.)

thefugitivesaint:

Sir Patrick Stewart (1940-2026)