PAX West 2025 Catalog!

My criminality is well known, in lexical circles - my base contempt for the tyranny of accepted nomenclature always on display. I'm the joker/smoker/midnight toker of not spelling things correctly. But I have a very complex and yet absolutely wrong reason for why "phase" means "faze," just completely made up, and yet internally consistent enough to stay lodged there with primacy over the true word. Gabriel decided that I needed to be punished, which is true, but not for this! I need to be punished about another, different thing and I'm hoping this will apply.

A lot has to go right to get a new TCG going in your friend group. It's like founding a new religion, or maybe a terror cell - you need to make firm believers of them, and fast. They need to see the face of God instantly and hurl all doubts into a cleansing flame. You can always fall back on Magic the way you would D&D or, I don't know, Catholicism? These are proven brands that have stood the test of time and everybody has a few cards or dice or… beads, I guess. Wine might be better. Trying to get people to worship some off-brand deity like Baal takes a bit more doing. You gotta loosen that jar.

I made a joke that Gabir would be at the sing-along showings of KPop Demon Hunters, but when we were writing the strip he said that he had grabbed tickets with some difficulty for he and Kara. You know? For good or ill.

Pokemon GO has become a durable event at Chez Gabir, and with that comes engagement with the game beyond just putting a little English on a pokeball and bouncing it off a beast's head. I hope the suggestion in panel three is only a gentle jest, because the pocket monster he left there is essentially a bug made out of fire. Or vice versa. I guess. The forbidden hot pocket! Mayhap the hottest pocket known to man.

Gabriel's been tormented by Madden Ultimate Team long enough for us to have a chorus of strips about it, and we have penned a new entry in the canon.

Actually being old I can't speak to. But Getting old is really interesting. I mean, if you're me. If you aren't me, maybe the hellscape of degradation that our culture constantly heaps on you for having the temerity to not die can find purchase. There's a lot of people trying to make me ashamed of various things and then trying to sell me chemicals to manage them, and while I appreciate the hustle I'm simply too far along whatever kind of spectrum it is to yield to this kind of manipulation. It isn't possible to not age; I never thought I would remain the same. That's what would be weird, in fact: to endure raw time and the obvious, profound insincerities of existence and be recognizable at the end. It's psycho shit; I don't honor it.

You never know what you're gonna get from a Netflix Original. Or, maybe you know exactly, and it suppresses your expectations down to the level where it can be consumed without harm. Their Sony shit kinda pops, though. They delivered authentic quarantine thrills with The Mitchells vs. The Machines, and Sony Pictures Animation's KPop Demon Hunters(?!) made such an impact that it and its pretend bands are getting a theatrical release. I know about it from the girls on my block of course, but once Mork finally gave up on the Fandango at Home app they decided to watch the first thing that came up on Netflix. Then, when they woke up, they watched it again.

I ended up grabbing a plain white deck box for my Gundam deck because it felt appropriate for the RX-78, but once I got home it just started to look like a blank canvas. 

I mean, not really. But it would be on brand.

I love that every card game has to have a special word for turning a card on its side because the alternative is oblivion, especially since… well, we did a strip about it. If you want to know what I think you can go look at it!!!

Maybe I am still spicy after my trip to Spokane but I feel like Acquisitions Inc. probably should have been mentioned at least once in an NPR article about the resurgence of D&D and the rise of live play. 

-Gabe Out

I was delighted to see that Gabe was still cranked up enough about the Gundam Card Game, whatever it may be called, to do an actual review for the site. Now: we may have to consider that he is just trying to get more cards by being naturally influent. I hope so. I won't be able to have any of those cards, no fucking way, but I might be able to seize the little shreds of booster foil and make an attractive nest.

Both of my boys are currently gripped by a Magic the Gathering madness that is fun to watch from a safe distance. I’ve played a few rounds of standard with them but when they ask why I don’t seem to like MTG as much as them I have to explain that I’ve played this game in some form for like thirty years, and I have never been good at it. I love this for them though. 

I checked out the demo for SHINOBI: Art of Vengeance this morning and HOLY SHIT! Do yourself a favor and get this demo now. I played it on the PS5 and it was absolutely stunning. Also, you hit people SO FUCKING HARD in this game! Seriously just go get it right now if you like awesome video games! 
You can find it on Steam here

And here's a link to the Playstation Store listing

New gadgets provide Gabir with Vitamin G, a vital nutrient. His most recent supplement has been a new watch, a category I've been considering because it turns out that they're still a pretty good idea. But modern watches are wrist computers and I just don't need them to do as much shit as they are always doing. I don't wanna mine crypto or some shit. I just want the old Pebble I lost at a con a million years ago.

Because my first Gen Con was sure to be fraught with a passel of first times, mercantile temptations, eldritch beasts, and various crushings by crowds, I was understandably intimidated preemptively. Luckily, I have a powerful ally - maybe not as powerful as the Living Force, but certainly Gabe has been here one time more than I have. In this kindness, he has revealéd all. Do I feel better? Hard to say!!!