The Gift Aperture

There's no way for me to write this post that doesn't make me incandescently angry.  I'll try again tomorrow.  Here's the strip.

I never crossed paths with the Stop Killing Games petition until somebody tried to make the case that it was bad. That strike me as quite bold, but as this person is currently in the process of being dismantled by the Internet equivalent of wild dogs I won't pile on anymore than is absolutely required. I get very sweaty and shaky whenever these weapons are deployed, I abhor their use, but man. Way to literally die on a hill, I guess.

Lego already had us dialed in, so launching an onslaught like a Soundwave - let alone a Soundwave with a talky bit is the kind of virulent attack that kills the host too soon, necessitating a Lego coffin. It's rude, but also kind of awesome, like The Sex Pistols.

I have seen a lot of stuff made with DK Artist, a potent sculpting tool from Nintendo that, surprisingly, comes with a full copy of Donkey Kong Bananza. It's a surprising state of affairs - but if you make yourself a vessel for possibility, if you exfoliate your heart, you'll find that wonders are everywhere.

I remember when they were revealing all the Switch 2 stuff, and how it wasn't launching with a Mario game, and then they announced this Donkey Kong stuff and it was a whole thing. Then it came out that the Super Mario Odyssey team was making it. Okay, tell me more.

Discord keeps adding delighters and sparklitos and all kinds of things they want me to do, use, or buy. I'm not certain we've achieved true enshittification but there is a lot of shit on there now and it's wigglin' 25/8.

I recorded another timelapse of the comic creation and this time I remembered to turn it on before I started! Here’s a look at today’s comic strip from start to finish. Again, if you set the play back speed to 0.25 you approach something like real time but it’s important to note that it only records when I make a stroke so you don’t have all my pauses. While I’m drawing I’m also watching a show, pausing to think about what I’m gonna draw, talking with my kids as they come in and out, messing up and getting mad at myself, eating some lunch, and all that good stuff. This might make it look like I sit down and power through a comic without hesitation and with supreme confidence but I assure you that is not the case unless I am drawing live on stage at PAX. 

Gabriel buying the new old Tony Hawk game on PC of all places must be considered my final victory over the man. Nought remains now but to choose a new nemesis - or even nemeses! Good luck trying to replace a hobgoblin like the Mork with a single foe. It's either gonna have to be a team of people, like with a shared Gcal or something, or I'm gonna have to war with a timeless concept like "hunger" just to get the same high.

I’ve been messing around with the tools Clip Studio has for recording your work. I forgot to turn it on until I had finished my first sketch pass but I do have a recording of today’s strip getting made. If you like to see how the sausage gets made here is a quick little timelapse that shows how a Penny Arcade strip comes together. 

When Gabe and I were writing the strip, Brenna came in and was talking about some kind of altercation she had gotten into with a man online about "woke diabetes barbie." I feel like… I feel like if I had spent a lot of time thinking about that, I would be kind of embarrassed. I have a somewhat complex relationship with masculinity in general, which I'm sure comes as no surprise given my, you know, everything. I had to compile a custom manhood from snips of things I found on GitHub and I don't know if it would even be a durable identity for anyone else. I don't feel any particular compulsion to be a guard on the gate that winnows true men from beta cucks. I have much, much bigger fish to fry. Whatever masculinity is, though, I'm certain it doesn't involve arguing with my wife online about dolls.

I watched a streamer man called Northernlion run an Umamusume Pretty Derby tournament and thirty thousand people were in the channel. Haven't heard of this potent brand, just as vigorous as the horses that inspired it? Of course you have. It's the anime/manga/music/game series from Cygames about beautiful, fast young women who are reincarnations of famous historical racehorses. Obviously.

I remember seeing the first corporate entreaties about AI that had jumped containment and been posted online. They were not gentle, but they weren't overtly hostile: how have you used AI this week to accomplish your tasks? If you squint a little, you can see kind of a weird visage in the negative space. The newer ones I've seen are a little more like placing a loaded gun on the table before you speak. Why haven't you? I think the third evolution of this dialogue is just you getting locked out of Slack, with a mysterious meeting placed on your calendar for later that day.

I was just talking about how Mork's hunger for the written word exposed him to all manner of richness, and one of those was a book called The Martian that a man named Andy Weir self-published first on his blog and then on Kindle. Weir wrote more books later, apparently he "caught the bug," and one of them was called Project Hail Mary. There is a spoiler for the book that Mike has judiciously protected me from for four years, and at around two minutes into the trailer they just straight up let the space-cat out of the starbag.

I was talking to Kiko, whose entire social media diet is checking BlueSky once a week, and it was clear to me how hale and vigorous he was as a result. My own nutrition, pilfered by these deleterious forces, is patchy at best. Necessary compounds are scarce; youthful skin is a memory. I just saw myself in a mirror - for a few moments, I thought I was looking at bowling ball with a greasy napkin draped over it.

There's a lot of focus on the brains and the flesh and whatnot - long, ragged strips of manflesh, juicy like a papaya. But what do zombies want in the long term? Has anybody even asked? Or are they too busy running away from zombies in the corrugated metal maze of a favela? Look. We're always being told to let people cook, with questionable results. Wastrels, "writers" and the like. They've been extended a blank check; an unlimited opportunity to cook the void. Thankfully, the 28 Days X franchise is bold enough to get down to brass fucking tacks.

I start tons of books using the Kindle preview but end up actually buying and finishing far fewer. I lean towards hard Sci-Fi. I like inscrutable alien artifacts and massive jumps through time. If I’m not reading about spaceships I’m reading history books for some reason. I think because the good ones at least are sort of like time travel books. I’ve managed to finish a bunch of great books recently from both these genres and I wanted to share my finds here for those of you with similar reading interests.