My B-Day!

Strips about "The Christmas In September" go back, yea, unto the site's very founding. This was during a time where "sites" were a thing, luckily we came to our right minds and converted the frontier into a series of corporate intranets. Dodged a bullet, there. But! There are several more strips in that vein, and there are two strips in particular that have the visual cues to help you understand the rich lore he has been embroidering the holiday with. I should tell you that he and I never once discussed a single stitch of this stuff. I'll just get a strip outta nowhere and he's got a fez and there's a fish for some reason.

One of the weirder things about algorithmic media is that I will receive apology videos from people I've never even heard of simply because it's media that has been engaged with beyond a certain threshold. It's a genre; they seem real sad. I thought Bungie's new video was going to be another entry in this Al-Qaeda Hostage genre, but at least I know what this one is about. Bungie's corporate leadership sold them up the river, made impossible promises, and then actual human beings had to try to spin that candy floss into real products, all while getting chopped up like a boosted Audi. A lot of people mourned Destiny, as they were essentially told to by the company itself. But now it's back! Kinda. Maybe?

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave has Mr. Gribbz by the shortest and curliest hairs he's got. You know it's fucked up when he feels compelled to make a whole post about something, as he abhors the written word. But when a game gets him to stop skipping cutscenes, a phenomenon whose rarity would allow me to count it on one hand, that's when you know you're dealing with some all-time shit. I don't think he's a casual-t, but he's way too invested in the story to miss something because of a bad roll.

Sometimes I bounce right off of a Fire Emblem game, and sometimes they get their hooks in me. On paper I should not be into Fortune’s Weave with all its social dynamics and heavy story bits but I somehow managed to play long enough to discover a gameplay loop that has me completely obsessed. 

God damn, Mork drew his ass off on this shit. I was just typing that he seemed to have a sparkle in his voice as I told him about World of Warcraft Forever, but he just called to write the strip and he was already installing it. Soooo…

Before, Gorbiriel lamented that he had to wait longer than reviewers to be disappointed. Now he has begun to lap at that darkwine, drawing from it a dark strength. Or… rage, at least. He plays games for the Art, in the way some do things for the 'gram. The art is basically killing him.

I think it’s possible that someone could have a good time with Wolverine. Personally I was bored after a few hours. Eventually I was skipping cut scenes to get to the game and then I realised I wished I could skip the game parts too. Personally I have found Onimusha to be much more entertaining. Both games are combat focused but Onimusha actually feels interesting and fresh whereas Wolverine feels like they are still just ripping off the combat from Arkham which was fun but was also almost 20 years ago. It was fine in Spider-Man where swinging around New York was actually the game but Wolverine feels like a massive downgrade to me. 

Let's go over a few things.

1. If OpenAI or Anthropic breaches another company's systems, even if no money changed hands, these are Federal and State crimes. Currently, these narratives are being deployed essentially as a mode of advertising to "pump those numbers." This is why I don't believe anything remotely like what they describe occurred. At all. In any way. They are, in plain terms, "lies." Lies in the context of an IPO are called Securities Fraud - now the SEC is involved. It's astonishing what we're being asked to believe. Listen to these pinchy-faced fucking weasels talk. You would only endure these transhuman idolaters if you thought there was an upside. For you.

2. When they say shit - and they do say shit - like "there's a greater than ten percent chance our product will kill all humans within the next decade," you black bag the leadership of these companies. Again - this is how you know it's a bag pump; an op. First it was like, "Yup, we're spinning up a Jobpocalypse." I guess that stopped moving the needle, huh? A machine that recreates the conditions for feudalism? Every one of its thoughts manufactured, in part or in whole, by the disenfranchised? There's no way to overstate the hideousness they proudly emit. Now it's like, yeah, our Demon Engine might kill your kids - the ones we didn't kill already I guess. It's not serious, I'm sorry. It's Doctor Doom shit. Except in this case, Doctor Doom isn't a techno-sorcerer with Diplomatic Immunity. It's a guy who works in an air-conditioned office whenever he isn't telecommuting or warping capital markets with every breath. Black Bag.

3. Let's say we do need National AI to do battle with the AI of foreign adversaries - sounds like a great anime. If it's as crucial as we're being told, if we stand on the precipice of some great invisible conflict - like the "spirit war" my Church used to rail about - none of it would look this way. They would seize these companies via Eminent Domain, just as they did in World War II. If they did the shit these people say they do, it's not like fucking Coca-Cola. If they can batter any system or kill the world or any of this shit they aren't normal companies and they wouldn't be treated with the deference they are. They're already a cartel, clearly, which gives the government even more potent tools. Fucking come on.

4. All the hokey, handwavey parts of Cyberpunk that you just accept - the origin story of the neofeudal, technocratic state - you always wonder what that looks like. How the interests converge, how they're allowed to converge. I can tell you.

It looks like this.

(CW)TB

I could look up the etymology of the term in the last panel, but I can't imagine why I would. What a fucking delight! Why would I ever want to know the specifics? Every moment I turn it over in my mind reveals rich new contours.

It has been fun to watch a new generation of fans discover Penny Arcade. Stumbling upon 30 years of comic strips, shows, and podcasts must be pretty fun. They have their own Discord server and they asked Jerry and I to pick winners in a PA fan art contest they were holding last month. We each picked our favorites but there were so many great pieces that I wanted to share some of them here on the site. If the only thing Penny Arcade did was occasionally inspire kids to make art I would consider this entire endeavor a huge success. 

I liked Onimusha but I certainly wasn't waiting with baited breath for a new Onimusha. In some ways, in all the ways that matter perhaps, it seemed as though Capcom had onimooshed its last.

Because PAX Houston is in the process of becoming a real event you can attend, I gave a ton of interviews this time. That's typically not something I do, for a couple reasons. It started to seem like I had been asked and then subsequently answered every question imaginable, which made me feel like there wasn't a way to be a real person inside that context. Also, there is a type of hostile person who uses the rules and framework of the interview to be a dick and minimizing contact with that kind of thing while I'm doing a show is just good opsec. So coming back into the light after being away put the differences into relief. For example: there are people so young that you can't imagine it.

Anjali knows our good friend Jasmine, so we were able to hook him up. It's all good.

Now these Zero Company strips are just gentle prayers to those let go; given its quality and level of success I I would be very surprised if the ending of that story were all bad. But you do get a Jedi on your roster at some point in the game, through a narrative conceit rather than from the squadmate creator, probably because if you could have four Jedi running around a lot of people would probably do that. I don't know if you are super up on your lore, but Jedi are space wizards with infinitely sharp swords made out of lasers. Trying to fight them with regular swords and guns would be dumb even if they couldn't also read your thoughts.

I had seen it when it came out in 1995, but I got snared by the Vampire and Netrunner card games instead - I did a lot more roleplaying than reading comics.  But, holy shit.  The story of these guys attempting to summon this "dead game" from the deep and then actually succeeding somehow got hold of me so much that we just talked about the game itself and its history for awhile.  Invincible and The Walking Dead are thoughtfully rendered here, in a game that simply has no points of reference to the dominant species of this genre.  In some ways it plays like traditional card games, where you play through a series of discrete, card limited hands.  It gives it a really interesting texture, with muiltiple victory conditions and comeback opportunities.  I dunno!  You should take a look.

(CW)TB

I just found out that Bitreactor let almost everybody go from the Zero Company before it launched, which might be why my computer is so hot. Now there are lawsuits and countersuits and tons of reasons to discuss things that aren't one of the best outings the setting has ever had.  If it isn't too painful, I hope they like the dumb comics we made.  I think the one that goes up Friday is even better.