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Jordan Cassidy

@thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social

340 followers 770 following 1.2K posts

On YouTube as The Crossover Appeal. At thecrossoverappeal.com for pop culture recs. Games writing, criticism. Formerly games studies. Open for writing and editing opportunities. Bylines: Unwinnable, Uppercut, Barely Textual, InMediaRes. 🏳️‍🌈🇲🇽

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · Jul 16

Hey, I’m Jordan.

I’m a recovering academic (English, game studies, queer theory) who occasionally writes and makes videos about games, music, movies, and pop culture.

Stick around if you like takes on:
- indie games
- board games
- rpgs
- criticism
- new music
- org design
- writing

Welcome!

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 4h

Solid C- in my Reading Popular Culture course I used to teach 19 year olds.

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 6h

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 17h

Morning blossom.

Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 1d

A rainy one all day today. Splitting between Ikebukuro and Koenji, dogs find raindrops all the way.

Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 2d

I’d say we started off pretty strong on Day 1 in Tokyo.

Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 2d

Little Simz, Ninajirachi, Jason Isbell, The Aces, Clipse, Obongjayar, and Jane Remover currently the front runners for my album of the year.

Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 2d

Post you from a different era.

Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 2d

Big Night for me. Never fails to hit.

two men are having a conversation and one of them is saying " maybe i should make mashed potato for on the other side "

ALT: two men are having a conversation and one of them is saying " maybe i should make mashed potato for on the other side "

media.tenor.com

Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 2d

Morning wander near harajuku.

Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 3d

Landed.

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Reposted by Jordan Cassidy

AndresPlays🎮🦇 @andresplays.bsky.social · 4d

Little Nightmares 3 is like a Greatest Hits album. Whether that's good or bad is in the eyes of the beholder. For fans of the series, it just means more Little Nightmares.

Here's my review for Seasoned Gaming:

Review : Little Nightmares 3 : The Horrors Persist

After Tarsier Studios was acquired by Embracer Group in 2021, they were no longer able to work on their baby, Little Nightmares. Their eerie, grotesque,

seasonedgaming.com

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 4d

Fantastic essay about two of my favorite films.

Here is a strange thing about prayer: you do it with your eyes closed. An act of reverence, and also self-preservation […] The tension at the heart of both The Exorcist and First Reformed is what happens when you start to pray with your eyes open.

Joshua Rivera @jmrivera.bsky.social · 4d

excited to share this one. For the good people at @tesseractcinema.bsky.social , I wrote about The Exorcist, First Reformed, and forms of prayer

tesseractcinema.com/2025/10/08/e...

ENTER THE HYPERCUBE: FIRST REFORMED + THE EXORCIST - TESSERACT CINEMA

Joshua Rivera ties together the religious terror of The Exorcist and First Reformed.

tesseractcinema.com

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 4d

Jesus, this is so good.

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Reposted by Jordan Cassidy

Joshua Rivera @jmrivera.bsky.social · 4d

excited to share this one. For the good people at @tesseractcinema.bsky.social , I wrote about The Exorcist, First Reformed, and forms of prayer

tesseractcinema.com/2025/10/08/e...

ENTER THE HYPERCUBE: FIRST REFORMED + THE EXORCIST - TESSERACT CINEMA

Joshua Rivera ties together the religious terror of The Exorcist and First Reformed.

tesseractcinema.com

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Reposted by Jordan Cassidy

Seasoned Gaming @seasonedgaming.bsky.social · 4d

Little Nightmares 3, now developed by Supermassive Games, is here just in time for spooky season.

As a fan of the first two @andresplays.bsky.social dove in to see if it lived up to that legacy.

Our spoiler-free review:

seasonedgaming.com/2025/10/08/r...

Review : Little Nightmares 3 : The Horrors Persist

After Tarsier Studios was acquired by Embracer Group in 2021, they were no longer able to work on their baby, Little Nightmares. Their eerie, grotesque,

seasonedgaming.com

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Reposted by Jordan Cassidy

Emma Kidwell | Looking for work ✨ @emmakidwell.bsky.social · 4d

Boosting again, please share! Still looking for writing work-- full time or contract, i'm incredibly adaptable and eager to learn and grow ✍️

Emma Kidwell | Looking for work ✨ @emmakidwell.bsky.social · Sep 4

Hi! I was laid off from Firaxis this morning. I wrote leaders and civs for Civilization VII (NDA for now) and Deadpool and Storm for Marvel's Midnight Suns. I also wrote the award-nominated Hindsight.

I'm available for full time, remote work starting ASAP. DMs are open:

emmkid.info

Portfolio

emmkid.info

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 5d

Always pumped to see more publications and writers hop onto blue sky.

Hayes Madsen @solfleet.bsky.social · 5d

Hey ya’ll. Pleased to say Inverse now has a Bluesky account, and I will (largely) be running it. So if you’d give @inverse.com a follow on here, I’d tremendously appreciate it.

Reposted by Jordan Cassidy

Hayes Madsen @solfleet.bsky.social · 5d

Hey ya’ll. Pleased to say Inverse now has a Bluesky account, and I will (largely) be running it. So if you’d give @inverse.com a follow on here, I’d tremendously appreciate it.

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 5d

It’s unreal how much shit I simply do not say.

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 5d

Developing a very potent crush on both Moros and Nemesis which feels like a real referendum on my future as a bisexual.

Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 5d

Still thinking about Expedition 33 almost every day.

Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 6d

Thanks for providing such a good jumping off point! Maybe I'll just keep myself on track with writing by yes-and-ing something *you* write every week.

Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 6d

And that embodiment is at odds with genres where the friction is arguably more cerebral in nature - like with menu-driven JRPGs.

For some, Expedition 33 is the affective equivalent of finding crunch berries in your cheerios. Those parries just aren't supposed to be there.

Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 6d

I'll also add to all of this that I believe friction, and what it is meant to do within specific genres, is why there has been so much debate about parrying in 2025. Parrying is an intense concentration of friction that produces strong embodiment.

Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 6d

Been an interesting year for thinking about friction in video games. @bignerdgaming.bsky.social shared some interesting thoughts about friction as part of his Hot Takes piece last week (bignerdgaming.com/2025/10/03/m...), and it's planted a bug in my brain that hasn't stopped buzzing.

A thread. 🧵

My Hottest Gaming Takes of 2025 So Far

This may surprise you, given the title of this article, but I don’t like a lot of “hot takes” in the gaming space. I feel like a lot of these takes are given in bad faith, and mos…

bignerdgaming.com

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 6d

Place that alongside all the other themes of pilgrimage and monasticism in Silksong, and all that friction suddenly becomes incredibly productive for understanding what Silksong is *doing*.

I'm still working on the full argument here, but I needed to get all that out of my brain to move forward lol

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 6d

It's telling that Silksong places all this friction *in front of* the bosses. It's saying, "if you cannot calm yourself through the run, you cannot face the enemy."

This might annoy you as a player - and again, fair enough - but it *is* fascinating for a game in which you play a warrior monk.

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