Dr. Emily Friedman
@friede.bsky.social
16K followers 2.9K following 39K posts
Storyteller about storytellers. 18th century to today & beyond. J.W.Liles Prof of English Words: Polygon (RIP), LARB, etc Next book: HOW STORIES ARE PLAYED (#TTRPG Actual Play & digital storytelling performance) ecfriedman.com (free) patreon.com/ecfriedman
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friede.bsky.social
Howdy, y’all.

I’m a tenured prof who studies storytelling outside the rules of mass media. This has included never-published manuscripts from during the age of print (1750-1900) & of late has made me a leader in the study of #TTRPG Actual Play.

I’ve learned a lot about friendship along the way.
Reposted by Dr. Emily Friedman
grahamwalmsley.bsky.social
One slight difficulty I have is that, even when we try to remember "forgotten" games and cultures, we often talk mainly about the United States.

I'm personally keen to remember the Collective Endeavour (Scotland and UK) as well as The Forge. And there'll be other movements in other countries too.
rascal.news
Reshare: Even as TSR and D&D’s early periods receive the gold-standard treatment, there’s much more to the hobby than one game and one company. But are those histories actually important? What is at stake if we forget them?

www.rascal.news/we-cant-let-...
We can’t let the market decide what we remember and forget
Emily Friedman and Evan Torner on why gaming histories matter.
www.rascal.news
Reposted by Dr. Emily Friedman
literaturegeek.bsky.social
. @prisonculture.bsky.social's zine is very popular in our library free zine distro (76 copies have been taken, # only limited by that's what I've had time to fold/staple/put on the rack yet). It's a friendly+free workbook for connecting your values, strengths, needs to advocacy you can do now:
Reposted by Dr. Emily Friedman
romgothsam.bsky.social
Continuing my long-running and unavailing attempts to try to convince the world Rochester is worse than St John.
romgothsam.bsky.social
He's an emotionally manipulative, selfish, frequently cruel, whining 'me me me' asshole. He would never start a school for local chidren, trek through a snow storm to deliver aid to the dying or anything at all for duty because anything unpleasant begins a chain reaction of 'woe is me' assholery.
friede.bsky.social
The vibe here is very “qui docet discit” — which is to say, we’re all learning together.
Reposted by Dr. Emily Friedman
tiffanyleigh.bsky.social
NYC weekend plans: play Dare to Karaoke, the song night with a game show twist!

Sat, October 11
Doors 7:30p/Songs 8pm
The Francis Kite Club
40 Avenue C @ East 3rd Street

• Sing songs = win tickets
• Complete song dares + "trick shots" = more tickets
• Spend yr tix at our cool & unusual prize table
Flyer for Dare to Karaoke, a karaoke night with a game show twist in New York City co-hosted by Charles Kilbourne and Mx. Tiffany Leigh.

The "DARE to Karaoke" logo is in the same style as the 80's-90's D.A.R.E. drug awareness campaign, with "DARE" in a swooshy red graffiti font on a black background that looks like a bumper sticker.

Underneath is a 3 x 3 grid of colorful clip art depicting different musical iconography: tickets, a speaker, a jukebox, a microphone, a hand throwing up the rock and roll devil horns, a guitar, a keyboard, a turntable, a stage light. The vibes are like that animated "12345" pinball video from The Electric Company. 

Details on the flyer for the show:

DARE TO KARAOKE
Saturday, October 11, 2025

Location: The Francis Kite Club
40 Avenue C (Loisiada Ave at East 3rd Street)
East Village, NYC
Cover: $8 USD in advance; $10 USD at the door

There is also a QR code in the corner of the flyer that takes you to the Dare to Karaoke's Eventbrite page for tickets. Direct link to that page is here: 

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dare-to-karaoke-tickets-1702812651479
friede.bsky.social
For those of you hype for the upcoming @manysidedmedia.bsky.social roundtable with me, @brennanleemulligan.bsky.social and @itsquinns.bsky.social — this is some useful background reading.

(It’s a teaching roundtable, you thought there wouldn’t be homework?)
rascal.news
Reshare: Even as TSR and D&D’s early periods receive the gold-standard treatment, there’s much more to the hobby than one game and one company. But are those histories actually important? What is at stake if we forget them?

www.rascal.news/we-cant-let-...
We can’t let the market decide what we remember and forget
Emily Friedman and Evan Torner on why gaming histories matter.
www.rascal.news
Reposted by Dr. Emily Friedman
rascal.news
Reshare: Even as TSR and D&D’s early periods receive the gold-standard treatment, there’s much more to the hobby than one game and one company. But are those histories actually important? What is at stake if we forget them?

www.rascal.news/we-cant-let-...
We can’t let the market decide what we remember and forget
Emily Friedman and Evan Torner on why gaming histories matter.
www.rascal.news
Reposted by Dr. Emily Friedman
guyintheblackhat.bsky.social
Glad to see the Tabletop Games series at @uofmpress.bsky.social take off with @jreylee.bsky.social's book on Catan.

Clear, unambiguous writing on abstraction and gaming with regard to colonial themes.
Book cover -- Unsettling Catan
friede.bsky.social
Tonight I managed to get my CV down to two pages for a thing.

Normally it’s more like … 30-something?
Reposted by Dr. Emily Friedman
reverendjesus.com
Blessed are the frogs, for they keep making authoritarians look incredibly stupid
Three persons in inflatable frog costumes. One of them is holding a nicely painted sign with two little cartoon frogs holding hands, below the text "FROGS TOGETHER STRONG"
Reposted by Dr. Emily Friedman
clairewillett.bsky.social
there’s pretty much no subset of the church I trust more than American nuns over 50
Reposted by Dr. Emily Friedman
clairewillett.bsky.social
the gospel according to me
clairewillett.bsky.social
there’s pretty much no subset of the church I trust more than American nuns over 50
Reposted by Dr. Emily Friedman
londonmikmaq.bsky.social
Getting into the Halloween spirit with medieval books at the Morgan Library.
Image of skeletons attacking men in a medieval book
Reposted by Dr. Emily Friedman
meganlcook.bsky.social
TBH, I went into this profession believing there would be a lot more overlap between "reading books" and "being an English professor" than there actually is. Sending emails, managing spreadsheets, handing tissues to weeping people: yes. Reading books, or substantial portions thereof, not so much.
Reposted by Dr. Emily Friedman
friede.bsky.social
Co-signing @ckunzelman.bsky.social saying @chasecarter.bsky.social has been working on this, and Charlie Hall was before the Polygon purge. GAMA for sure has been yelling, as have most publishers. Even TTRPG publishers are worried their books might get reclassified as games.
Tabletop industry in full panic as Trump tariffs are poised to erase decades of growth
‘Devastating consequences’ on the way, says trade group
www.polygon.com
Reposted by Dr. Emily Friedman
mkirschenbaum.bsky.social
If anyone has hot takes on the implications of the just-announced 100% China
tariffs for the board game industry I guess I’m interested.
Reposted by Dr. Emily Friedman
quinnanya.me
I don't have a printing press, but I do have access to a laser cutter and supplies for pendants and keychains. #DHmakes 🐸
A row of Miles's Frog of Portland images cut in a circle out of plywood on a laser cutter. A keychain and pendant of the Frog of Portland image.
Reposted by Dr. Emily Friedman
sonjadrimmer.bsky.social
People think the first thing Gutenberg printed was the Bible. This is false. The first things he printed were a political prophecy, propaganda about the Turks’ threat to Christendom, & a popular school text. If you want a parallel to AI, that’s it: making $ from conspiracies, racism, & school slop.
Reposted by Dr. Emily Friedman
literaturegeek.bsky.social
'Knit Hello is a typeface for hand knitting, the outcome of a series of Typographic Knitting—or Typeknitting—workshops...based on slipstitches & a simple letterform grid, offers a simple, frustration-free process for beginners, w/o floats or getting entangled'. By Rüdiger Schlömer. #DHmakes
Knit Hello – Typeknitting
Knit Hello is a typeface for typographic knitting.
www.knithello.com
Reposted by Dr. Emily Friedman
fishkin.bsky.social
@mit.edu has done an incredibly important service to the nation by being willing to be the first school to reject the administration's "compact."

President Kornbluth focuses—and she's right—on the principle that "scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone."
The document also includes principles with which we disagree, including those that would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution. And fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.