We have invented a radical new expressive form: called the comic strip, it uses sequentially arranged, ostensibly humorous "panels" to simulate the passage of time. It leverages a compact structure. There is no reason to believe that such works will not come to define the age.

Brandon Sanderson has an aggressive contingent in the office, a "posse-equivalent" activist body, and there's no reason to create discord in the work environment. Inoculate your toil warrens with our supreme techniques.

I'm still checking off boxes, trying to clear the deck for next-gen hardware; the most recent loop-closure came in the form of Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs.

There has never been a point where I didn't know what A Machine For Pigs was about. Actually about. I knew from the first video. I played through it and felt everything at the correct moments, even so. You play a person who doesn't know what is going on, and the more you learn, the more you wish you hadn't.

It's gotten wrapped up in the current conversation about whether or not something is a game, which is the kind of conversation I think you must have attended college to enjoy. It's less traditional in its structure than its predecessor, which I think as a consumer of products you can make a legitimate case around. It doesn't do what's expected, generally, and I am fine with that. In fact, that the only times I don't especially like it are when it makes concessions of various kinds to an audience that demands those deeply codified gesticulations that mean gameplay. They're especially empty here, alongside everything else it attempts.

It's exquisitely written, utterly consistent in voice. A vehicle for some truly, brutally bad medicine. It succeeds at its aim, which is to impart the aforementioned. Success in stated endeavor is how I determine quality of a work.

I tried to explain the story to Brenna, because I know all of its whys. I know them deep down. "Shut up," she said, after I laid the groundwork. "Fuck him. I don't care." And I know this, also - it's up there spinning around the other idea, chasing it around. There are warring cultural edicts about this: being able to believe contradictory things is either evidence of idiocy or refined intellect, and the Internet can be offered as evidence it can be surprisingly hard to tell the difference.

(CW)TB out.