So I’ve been watching a lot of Count Duckula lately and, not to be dramatic, but I’m beginning to suspect this show is a cursed object. Not in a creepy VHS-from-the-attic kind of way, but in the sense that it might be an ancient riddle disguised as children’s television—like a Lovecraftian artefact covered in fart jokes and broccoli references.
Because first off: is Count Duckula even a vampire? The intro says yes. The lore says yes. He was resurrected by lightning and incantations, with a whole Transylvanian ritual, dark towers and bat silhouettes and everything. But then the ritual goes wrong (they used ketchup instead of blood—it’s a whole thing), and now he’s vegetarian and pacifistic and really into showbiz. He hangs out in sunlight like it’s nothing. Vampires around him burst into ash the second the sun’s out, but he’s chilling on the terrace sipping tomato juice like it’s brunch. Garlic? Not an issue. Mirror reflection? Fully intact. But Von Goosewing, bless his persistent little goose heart, still hunts him with the blind zeal of a man who has never once asked a follow-up question.
And then there’s the lineage problem. Igor, the perpetually disappointed butler who wants nothing more than for Duckula to go back to his murderous, bloodthirsty roots, keeps talking about the Count’s ancestors. His great-great-grandfather, the legendary Lord of the Night; his uncle who could decapitate a man just by raising an eyebrow. But Duckula, this Duckula, was explicitly resurrected. So is he genetically descended from them or just the latest reboot of the same haunted soul in a duck-shaped casing? Is this a legacy role, like Batman, or more like reincarnation through botched necromancy? Are all Duckulas just different builds of the same firmware?
Now enter the castle: a transdimensional nightmare funhouse that teleports from location to location using a TARDIS-like system that’s somehow powered by a cuckoo clock. Not just any cuckoo clock, though. The cuckoo clock. The cuckoo clock that houses Dimitri and Sviatoslav, two bat-shaped slapstick gremlins who exist to make puns and raise questions. For some reason, this clock is the absolute linchpin of the castle’s teleportation tech. No cuckoo, no travel. And it returns to Transylvania at dawn like it’s on magical airline autopilot. Which is wild. Because that means some duck vampire household figured out not just space-warping technology, but targeted, scheduled dimension-hopping and then decided to anchor the whole system to an ornamental bit of wall furniture. Incredible.
But here’s the real kicker, the part that truly breaks my last grip on reality: Igor.
Igor has been serving the Duckula family for thousands of years. He says this. Frequently. Casually. Like it’s just an HR fact. “Back when your great-great-grandfather was feasting on monks…” and “During the Siege of Antioch, your forebear was a real delight.” Which would be fine—expected, even—if he were, like, a vampire. Or a ghoul. Or an immortal goat-witch. But he’s just a guy. A goose, technically. A deeply goth goose with a taste for the macabre. He’s not undead. He ages. He sighs. He makes tea. He does not exhibit any signs of supernatural durability except that he has somehow been around for millennia and never even explains how.
There is no "why" given. He’s just always been here, like mildew or ennui. There are no hints about him being cursed, or bound by dark magic, or built in a lab by necromancers. He’s just... Igor. Eternal Igor. The one fixed point in the show’s swirling chaos. Honestly, at this point, I don’t think Count Duckula is meant to take place in any fixed dimension. It’s a metaphysical state. It’s a cosmic slipstream populated by creatures that run on cartoon logic and delayed punchlines. One minute you’re in 1890, the next there’s a joke about Duran Duran. The laws of time and biology have no jurisdiction here.
So to recap:
Count Duckula is maybe a vampire but also maybe just a duck in a cape who was microwaved by magic.
His family tree is a combination of inherited evil and Frankenstein rules.
His castle is a TARDIS built by lunatics and run by a pun-delivering cuckoo clock.
Igor is immortal and no one’s going to explain that.
Time is fake, space is fake, blood is ketchup, and I think I love it.
This show is what happens when you throw gothic horror, British sketch comedy, existential metaphysics, and hand puppets into a blender and then animate whatever leaks out. It’s absurd. It’s brilliant. And if I think about it too long, I’m going to start drawing diagrams and yelling about duck necromancy in a gas station parking lot.
Anyway, five stars. Highly recommend.

So I’ve been playing Zenless Zone Zero, and folks… I’m obsessed. This game has no right being this stylish. Like, it could mug Persona 5 in a back alley and walk away with its aesthetic and still have enough leftover style to start a boutique in the Hollow. The vibes? Immaculate. The combat? Smoother than a jazz record soaked in motor oil. The city design? It feels like someone made Jet Set Radio, Yakuza, and Neon Genesis Evangelion share a cramped apartment in a post-cyber-apocalypse sitcom. I would live in New Eridu if it weren’t for the interdimensional horrors and the economy.

Now let’s not pretend we don’t all see what’s going on here: this game is weaponized thirst. Zenless isn’t even subtle about it. The jiggle physics are out here in full 4K glory like it’s a mission-critical gameplay mechanic. I saw one character bounce into frame and I swear I heard a stock anime spring noise in my mind’s eye. Every time a cutscene starts I feel like I’m one camera pan away from getting caught in public. The gooner pipeline is not just open—it’s a six-lane freeway and I am barreling down it in a neon garbage truck. The devs didn’t have to go that hard with the rendering of thighs and tight jackets and suspiciously well-animated idle animations, but they did. They chose this. And I’m not mad.

But here’s the wild part: beneath the absurd thirst-trap presentation, it’s actually fun. Like, good. I came for the eye candy and stayed for the combat. The game moves. Fast-paced, tag-team action that somehow feels crunchy and flowy at the same time. The combo system is built to make you feel like you’re in a shonen opening every five seconds. The animations slap. It’s all breakbeats and kinetic flash, like Devil May Cry got caught in a hyperpop blender.

People online are calling it “Honkai but with ADHD,” and honestly? Not wrong. It’s chaotic. You blink and suddenly you’re in a boss fight against a multi-armed nightmare who talks in confusing metaphors while a dubstep violin screams in the background. It shouldn’t work, but it does—and it works with swagger. The whole game has the energy of a guy doing parkour on top of a moving train just to impress someone hot in the audience.

Anyway, I tried logging off to do other things like a normal human being and ended up designing a full Hollow Crisis tabletop setting and writing 3,000 words of fanfic about Wise and Nicole running an underground ramen racket with heavy sexual tension and occasional jazz interludes. This game has rewired me. I am different now. Something in my DNA is glittering and unstable. I’ve become feral and futuristic.

10/10. Would lose all dignity again.

At some point my dear you need to come to terms with this fear of dying from being fucked by a giant monster, and ask yourself what would be worse- being fucked to death by a giant monster, or never being violently fucked by a giant monster

If we take as our point of departure the observation that in certain aesthetic communities—most notably those which define themselves by an arbitrary and particular sensuous signifier, such as the preference for anthropomorphic animal forms—a certain deformation of judgment arises, then we may discover therein not merely a social peculiarity but a more profound misapplication of the faculties which ought to operate in harmony. For the subordination of the understanding to sensibility, when not governed by reason's regulative principles but instead by the pathological interests of taste misidentified as categorical imperatives, inevitably produces a form of aesthetic myopia in which no object—be it game, literature, or art—may be evaluated except through the singular lens of said community’s favored form. Thus arises the phenomenon whereby the community’s esteem or approbation is no longer dependent on the free play of the faculties between imagination and understanding, as delineated in the Critique of Judgment, but rather on an imposed schematic framework which demands conformity to an inherited aesthetic archetype, thereby occluding the autonomy of taste and reducing reflective judgment to mere mechanical association.

This tendency toward aesthetic dogmatism—wherein the mere presence of the signifier (i.e., the ‘furry’ form) becomes not merely sufficient but necessary for any object to be considered worthy of attention—produces a kind of aesthetic despotism, wherein reflective judgment is supplanted by schematic necessity. Such a reduction is contrary to the proper exercise of judgment, which requires not a determinate concept but an indeterminate yet purposive relationship between the faculties. The community thus ceases to exercise judgment in the proper sense and instead engages in a kind of taste-substitution, whereby the subjective universality of aesthetic judgment is replaced with the objective homogeneity of subcultural validation, and whereby all novelty is apprehended not through the imagination’s harmony with the understanding, but through its compliance with a single, overdetermined visual form.

The epistemological consequences of this subjugation are not trivial. For if, as I have asserted, the understanding is the faculty of rules, and the imagination must submit its manifold to these rules for cognition to arise, then a community wherein sensibility dictates the rules in advance—prior to any engagement with the object itself—must necessarily forfeit the possibility of genuine knowledge. That is, when the legitimacy of a creation is predicated on its resemblance to a given aesthetic schema rather than on its internal purposiveness or the coherence of its design, the aesthetic becomes a prison rather than a means of liberation. The synthetic a priori conditions which make knowledge possible are thereby rendered inert, and what remains is a simulacrum of creativity: the repetition of forms without conceptual content, the appearance of novelty without its reality.

Moreover, one must attend to the moral implications of such a collapse. When aesthetic allegiance is elevated above practical reason, identity ceases to be grounded in autonomy and instead becomes dependent upon external forms of validation. The self no longer legislates moral law from within, according to the categorical imperative, but rather conforms itself to an aesthetic law imposed from without. It becomes reactive, not reflective; impulsive, not principled. One observes, in such conditions, a marked incapacity for emotional regulation—a symptom not of individual pathology, but of a collective failure to cultivate moral maturity. The community, in its insistence on aesthetic affinity as the highest good, tolerates within itself behaviors and actors that, under the guidance of practical reason, would be subject to moral censure. But here, where recognition supplants responsibility, critique is recast as aggression and ethical discernment is pathologized as divisiveness. The very possibility of moral development is foreclosed by the aesthetic conditions of belonging.

And thus arises the greatest danger: the transposition of aesthetic taste into the realm of moral necessity, whereby that which is pleasing in appearance is mistaken for that which is good in itself. The kingdom of ends, wherein each rational being is treated as an end in themselves and never merely as a means, is abandoned in favor of a kingdom of forms, wherein membership depends not on reason or virtue but on one’s conformity to a symbol. In such a kingdom, the artist, the writer, the philosopher—even the citizen—must translate all efforts into the accepted idiom of the tribe, or else risk invisibility. This is not community; it is simulacrum, and it deprives the subject of that which is most essential to their dignity: their capacity to judge, to will, and to act from principles they have given to themselves.

To extricate oneself from such a condition—to encounter and participate in creative spaces where aesthetic forms are plural and the judgment of taste is exercised freely—is not merely a psychological relief but a reassertion of one’s rational vocation. It is the rediscovery of autonomy, not merely as a moral lawgiver, but as a judging subject who can engage with the beautiful beyond the fetters of the tribal. That such emancipation feels exhilarating is no coincidence; it is the soul remembering that it is not merely a vessel for inclination, but a faculty of reason in its own right. And thus, the true pleasure in creating and experiencing lies not in aesthetic recognition, but in the freedom to pursue the beautiful without prior conditions, to encounter the new without schema, and to belong to no aesthetic but one’s own.

Let us then not mistake the proliferation of aesthetic objects for the flourishing of aesthetic freedom. Where the former reproduces itself under the compulsion of community validation, the latter can only emerge where judgment is autonomous, purposive, and communicable. A community that refuses to recognize this distinction not only stifles its own creativity, but also impedes the progress of enlightenment itself, insofar as it replaces the exercise of reason with the repetition of form. In such a world, even the most sincere creative act risks becoming nothing more than a gesture to a silent tribunal, waiting not for meaning, but for mirrors.

There’s this kind of soft, buzzing static in the back of my head lately. Not the poetic kind, not the romantic notion of "white noise" that people write songs about—just actual brain static. The kind that clings to your thoughts when you're trying to focus and everything keeps fracturing into smaller and smaller half-thoughts until you're left holding confetti instead of ideas.

I think part of it is how many projects I’ve got orbiting around me right now—some are just sparks (ha), others are smoldering, and a few are actual fires I keep forgetting to tend. There's something quietly maddening about having too many creative threads to follow and not enough hand-span to hold them all. It’s like trying to grab water. Ideas that felt sharp and urgent last week have already lost their heat, replaced by new ones that are somehow even less formed but way louder.

I've been looking at things lately—just objects, books, half-finished drawings, saved links, unread tabs—and trying to figure out whether I’m collecting inspiration or hoarding it. Whether the digital clutter is a toolbox or just a prettier kind of entropy. At a certain point, you have to ask: are you feeding your creativity or just drowning it in potential?

Also: my shelf of “to-read” TTRPG books is looking at me with that specific kind of judgment only inanimate objects can give. You know the one. It’s the same face your unopened mail makes.

Sometimes I wonder what kind of creature we’ve become, creatively. There’s this constant need to be producing something, anything, to be “in progress.” Resting feels illicit, like some kind of personal rebellion. But also, not resting? That just leads back to the static. So what do you even do with that?

Anyway. That’s where I’m at. A weird kind of liminal energy, suspended between "I should be making something" and "maybe I should burn it all down and make a shrine out of the ashes."

But hey, maybe the shrine would be pretty.

Alright, so Final Fantasy XVI is a game that desperately wants to be taken seriously. It’s got the grimdark medieval aesthetic, the brutal combat, the Game of Thrones political drama—but the pacing is all over the place, and it keeps tripping over itself. One moment, you’re locked in a visually stunning, bombastic Eikon battle that looks like it cost more than my entire existence to animate, and the next, you’re being sent on a thrilling quest to pick some herbs for an NPC who barely has a name. The game cannot decide whether it wants to be an intense, cinematic action-RPG or a medieval gig economy simulator.

Mechanically, it’s an odd beast. The combat is gorgeous and smooth, but it’s also very forgiving, to the point where there’s almost no real build variety. Clive is who he is, and there’s no real customization outside of deciding which pretty particle effects you want to spam. Gear? Stat sticks. Side quests? A mixed bag. Some have emotional depth, but most feel like an intern was told to add “content” and just made everyone in Valisthea incapable of handling their own problems. And the story—oof. It wants to be a grand, political epic, but every time it gets close, it backs off in favor of another flashy set piece. There are genuinely compelling moments, and the voice acting is phenomenal, but the game keeps interrupting itself with pointless busywork that kills any momentum. Final Fantasy XVI is an experience that constantly dazzles, but it doesn’t always engage, and by the time it’s over, you’re left wondering if all the spectacle was meant to distract you from the fact that it never quite knew what it wanted to be.

And then there’s the weird tonal whiplash. The game leans hard into the “dark and mature” aesthetic—lots of war, suffering, and tragic backstories—but then it’ll throw in a goofy fetch quest that feels like it wandered in from a completely different game. It’s like watching a high-budget fantasy drama where every so often, the protagonist takes a break from overthrowing tyrants to help some guy find his lost chickens. It wants to be taken seriously, but it also refuses to fully commit to the weight of its own narrative, which makes it hard to stay emotionally invested. At the end of the day, Final Fantasy XVI is beautiful, well-acted, and fun in bursts, but it’s also uneven, frustrating, and sometimes just plain exhausting. It’s the video game equivalent of a moody prestige TV show that gets a little too obsessed with its own cinematography and forgets to tell a story that actually lands.

I'm fairly sure I am going to keep playing Zenless Zone Zero, and not because of the ecchi anime girls, neko catgirls with jiggle physics and... my profile D is 1505315913 so folks should add me as a friend!

(Verse 1)
Strut in the club, heels clackin’ on tile
She’s got that smirk, yeah, she’s servin’ that style
Lips like sin, nails sharp like a blade
You ain’t ready for the game that she played

(Pre-Chorus)
Oh, you thought she’d sit and take it?
Nah, babe, she’s here to break it
Flippin’ the script, bendin’ the rules
She ain't your girl—she's the king of the fools

(Chorus)
Suck her dick, yeah, bow to the queen
She’s runnin’ the show, she’s chasin’ a dream
Call it a twist, call it a trick
But you know what she wants—so suck her dick!

(Verse 2)
She don’t need your “sir,” don’t need your grace
She’ll sit in your chair, she’ll take up your space
Crown on her head, boots on your pride
Step out the way, let her take you for a ride

(Pre-Chorus)
Oh, you thought she’d sit and take it?
Nah, babe, she’s here to break it
Flippin’ the script, bendin’ the rules
She ain't your girl—she's the king of the fools

(Chorus - repeat but LOUDER)
Suck her dick, yeah, bow to the queen
She’s runnin’ the show, she’s chasin’ a dream
Call it a twist, call it a trick
But you know what she wants—so suck her dick!

(Bridge - slowed down, dramatic, maybe with a synth breakdown)
Oh, you thought this was your world?
Oh, you thought you made the rules?
She’s here to rewrite the story, babe—
And you’re just playin’ the fool.

(Final Chorus - SCREAM IT)
Suck her dick, yeah, bow to the queen
She’s runnin’ the show, she’s chasin’ a dream
Call it a twist, call it a trick
But you know what she wants—so suck her dick!

(Outro - chaotic energy, lots of distortion, mic drop moment)
Yeah, yeah, yeah—who’s laughing now?
Yeah, yeah, yeah—who’s taking the crown?
Yeah, yeah, yeah—what’s that, you’re sick?
Too bad, babe—suck her dick.

I’ve been thinking a lot about  Sparkle lately. Or Tik-Tak. It’s weird when someone has multiple names, because you start thinking about them in different ways depending on what you called them at the time. Spark feels like a person from one part of my life, Tik-Tak from another, and now they’re just… gone. They actually died a few years ago, and I didn’t even know until December. December. That’s absurd. That’s wrong. It feels like I should have just known somehow, like some internal string should have snapped and sent a ripple through my brain, letting me know that the chance to fix things was gone. But the world isn’t poetic like that. The world is just a series of things that happen, and sometimes you only find out after the fact that something important happened a long time ago, and you were too busy eating toast or playing some dumb board game to feel it.

We parted on bad terms. That’s the bit that stings the most. But bad terms don’t feel permanent when you’re alive. Bad terms are just the current state of things, and states change. People cool off. People mature. You think, one day, we’ll talk again. One day, we’ll sort this out. One day, I’ll make the effort to say “Hey, I know things went to shit, but do you want to talk?” But there is no one day now. Just the final full stop on a sentence I hadn’t finished reading.

And what’s weird is that I’ve had plenty of people come and go in my life. Plenty. Some left because of drama, some because they were just dicks, some because of some complex, multi-layered nonsense that I couldn’t begin to untangle if I tried. And there are some people I just wouldn’t care about if they died without me knowing. That sounds cruel, but it’s not, really. There are people out there who, if I found out they were dead, I’d just shrug and go, Huh. Anyway. Because some people are just awful. Some people don’t leave behind regret, just relief that they’re no longer taking up space in my mental landscape.

But Spark wasn’t like that. Spark wasn’t a twisted, miserable void of a person. They weren’t the kind of person where, after enough time, you just accept that they were irredeemable and stop caring. They were just… human. Just complicated, like the rest of us. We got angry, but anger is temporary. The problem is that death isn’t.

I regret it. Not in the vague, wistful “oh, I wish things had been different” way, but in the deep, gut-twisting way that makes me want to throw something. I regret not reaching out, not even thinking to reach out when I still had the chance. I regret assuming time was infinite. I regret that I’ll never get to say, Hey, I know things went to shit, but do you want to talk?

And I regret that they’ll never get to answer.

So today was Board Game Day™, which meant gathering a chaotic mass of trans folk into a café, shoving cards in their hands, and letting the beautiful, nonsensical mayhem unfold. It was like an experiment in controlled entropy, if entropy was powered by coffee and gender euphoria.

We started with Sushi Go, which, if you’re unfamiliar, is a game where you pass around cute little sushi cards and attempt to assemble a meal without your so-called friends absolutely ruining your life. The transmascs immediately went feral over the dumplings (predictable), someone tried to explain optimal drafting strategies (boo, nerd), and one guy just started hoarding sashimi like he was trying to reenact Finding Nemo in real time. Chaos.

Then came Werewolf, a social deduction game where you lie to your friends and attempt to get them murdered (so, y’know, normal friend behavior). This was fine, until it turned out that trans people are either absolutely terrible at lying or criminally good at it—no in-between. One round lasted two whole minutes because the werewolves immediately turned on each other and self-destructed like a spy movie gone wrong. The next round lasted an eternity because everyone stared at each other in paranoid silence like a standoff in an arthouse thriller. At one point, someone tried to claim they weren’t the werewolf because they “just don’t vibe with murder,” which was simultaneously the most compelling and least convincing defense ever given.

Finally, we played Exploding Kittens, which is a game about cats committing acts of terrorism. This went exactly as expected:

One person immediately died because they “wanted to see what would happen.”
Someone played a defuse card while loudly monologuing about the power of trans resilience.
A dramatic final duel ended with one player screaming “GENDER IS DEAD” as they placed the last exploding kitten in someone’s deck like an executioner in a Shakespeare play.
At the end of it all, we had:
✔️ Betrayed our friends.
✔️ Developed deep-seated grudges.
✔️ Consumed so much caffeine.

Honestly? A perfect day.

Alright, here’s how this works: Instead of me oversharing, you get put on the spot. Leave a comment, and I’ll hit you with a TMI-themed question—could be weird, could be cursed, could be something that haunts your dreams forever. No take-backs. No cowards.

Think you're brave? Drop a comment. Let’s get uncomfortably personal. 😈

Alright, nerds, I finally caved. After years of resisting yet another messaging app (seriously, how many do we need?), I have officially installed Telegram. That’s right, I’m in the Matrix now.

If you wanna hit me up, my account name is Gwyllie. Feel free to message me about whatever—dumb memes, cool projects, deep philosophical debates about whether or not orcs should be unionized (they should).

No promises I’ll respond quickly, because I am, at my core, a creature of chaos and bad time management. But hey, I’m here now.

So yeah. Gwyllie. Find me. Or don’t. I’m not your dad.

The soundtrack for the old PC cyberpunk video game 'Dreamweb' is a banger.
https://youtu.be/DRN2hhXOhNM?si=eynuU19QEb-odJY1

Alright, let’s get real for a second—I’ve been sitting on this thought for a while, and honestly? It’s starting to bug me enough that I just need to say it: why does the UK furry scene feel so weirdly closed off compared to the US?

Before anyone grabs their pitchforks, let me be clear: this isn’t a callout or some spicy drama drop. It’s just my personal experience, and maybe I’ve just had bad luck. But it’s happened often enough that I think there’s something worth talking about here.

In the US, furry conventions feel like walking into a giant, chaotic hug. You don’t need to know anyone, have a suit, or even fully understand what’s going on—people just want you to be part of the madness. You walk through the door and it’s like, “You made it! Welcome! You like weird animal art and unhinged vibes? So do we! Come hang out, try this event, meet some folks!” It’s infectious. You get swept up in the enthusiasm, and suddenly you’re playing along in a dance circle or trading memes with a stranger like you’ve known each other for years.

It doesn’t matter if you’re deep in the community or just furry-adjacent. Maybe you’re just curious, dipping a toe in, trying to figure out what the hype is about. Doesn’t matter. In my experience, the US furry scene is like “You’re here? That’s enough. Come join the chaos.” It’s open. It’s welcoming. It’s just... fun.

Now, let’s talk about the UK scene.

In the UK? It feels like walking into a club where the bouncer’s asking questions you didn’t study for. “Are you one of us? How long have you been around? Do you actually have a suit? If you’re not a furry, why are you even here?” There’s this weird vibe, like everyone’s already got their tight little groups, and if you’re not already plugged into those circles, good luck breaking in. It’s not openly hostile—no one’s throwing shade outright—but the cold shoulder? Oh, it’s there. You feel it.

It’s like everyone’s already locked into their cliques, and unless you’ve been grandfathered into the scene or you’re someone they already know, you’re just... floating around the edges. There’s no “Come in, try this, let’s hang out” energy. It’s more like “Who are you, and why should I care?”

And the thing is—I want to get involved! I want to vibe with people who are creative, passionate, and just as weirdly niche as I am. I want to share art, talk nonsense, and maybe even roll into a fur meet and feel like I belong. But instead of open arms, it’s this invisible wall of “Yeah, but are you really one of us?”

I don’t know if it’s a size thing—maybe the UK furry scene is smaller and feels more insular because of that. Maybe it’s a cultural difference, where people just take longer to warm up to strangers. I get it. I really do. Smaller communities can be protective of their space. But honestly? It wouldn’t hurt to be a little more inviting—a little more “Hey, you seem cool, come chill with us.”

Because here’s the thing: every community needs new blood. You don’t grow by making newcomers feel like outsiders. You grow by letting people in, by making room for fresh faces, new ideas, and different kinds of creativity.

Right now, though? The UK scene feels like it’s gatekeeping itself into stagnation.

And maybe that’s harsh. Maybe I’m just hitting all the wrong events or talking to the wrong people. But it’s frustrating to feel like you’re showing up with genuine interest, only to be met with the social equivalent of a shrug.

Anyone else feel this? Or am I just rolling a nat 1 on community vibes over here?

[INT. NERD HAVEN GAME STORE - DAY]

The store is dimly lit with that peculiar musk of plastic, cardboard, and the faint whiff of desperation. Walls are lined with shelves full of Warhammer kits and Magic: The Gathering booster packs stacked like sad Jenga towers. Enter CUSTOMER, clutching a spark of hope and a wallet fat with potential. Behind the counter, STORE OWNER, a cheerful Warhammer zealot with paint-stained fingers and an apron that reads "ROLL NAT 20s, NOT D20s."]

CUSTOMER
(bright, hopeful)
Hey, uh, I was wondering if you guys run any skirmish wargames here? Y'know, like Marvel Crisis Protocol, Malifaux, Infinity, Moonstone, Battletech?

STORE OWNER
(grinning like he just rolled a nat 20 on persuasion)
Oh! Skirmish games? Absolutely—we’ve got Kill Team! Warhammer 40K, but, you know... smaller! Same grimdark fun, but bite-sized! Like Warhammer tapas.

CUSTOMER
(trying again, optimism slightly dented)
Cool, cool. But what about Malifaux? You know, with that whole steampunk horror aesthetic?

STORE OWNER
(nodding vigorously)
Ah, steampunk horror! You’ll love Necromunda! Underground gangs, gritty vibes—it’s like Malifaux without... y'know, all the steampunk. And, uh... with more skulls. Also, Warhammer!

CUSTOMER
(gritting teeth, undeterred)
Right. How about Moonstone? It’s whimsical, fairy-tale fantasy meets tactical brilliance?

STORE OWNER
(brightly, not missing a beat)
Whimsy? Fantasy? Sounds like Age of Sigmar! Epic heroes, big battles—whimsical if your idea of whimsy is... endless war and cosmic horrors. But hey, it’s still Warhammer!

CUSTOMER
(increasingly desperate)
Okay... Carnevale? Venetian horror? Acrobatics? Canal combat?

STORE OWNER
(snapping fingers like he just solved a riddle)
Ah! That screams Warcry! Fast, furious, and... well, technically no canals, but lots of dramatic jumping over ruins! And—guess what?—Warhammer!

CUSTOMER
(grasping at straws)
What about Battletech? Giant mechs, crunchy tactical play, deep lore?

STORE OWNER
(leaning in, eyes sparkling with misguided enthusiasm)
Giant mechs? Adeptus Titanicus! Colossal god-machines obliterating everything in their path. Like Battletech, but... y'know, Warhammer. And way more skulls. Can’t forget the skulls.

CUSTOMER
(visibly withering)
Okay, uh... What about card games? You run anything like Yu-Gi-Oh!, Lorcana, One Piece, Flesh and Blood?

STORE OWNER
(clapping hands together, thrilled)
Absolutely! We’ve got three dedicated nights a week for card games—every format you can imagine!

CUSTOMER
(hope rekindling like a cheap lighter)
Oh, awesome! What games?

STORE OWNER
(practically vibrating with excitement)
Magic: The Gathering! Monday’s Commander Night, Wednesday’s Draft Night, and Friday’s Modern Tournament!

CUSTOMER
(blink. blink.)
You said different formats. I meant, like, different games?

STORE OWNER
(still smiling, not getting it at all)
Yeah! Commander is totally different from Draft—different decks, different strategies. It’s a whole new experience every time!

CUSTOMER
(deadpan, soul exiting body)
But they're all Magic.

STORE OWNER
(enthusiastic as ever)
Yeah! Isn’t it great?

CUSTOMER
(voice cracking under existential strain)
Why don’t you run anything that isn’t Magic or Warhammer?

STORE OWNER
(shrugs, like it’s just the way of the universe)
Nobody plays anything else. Nobody buys anything else.

CUSTOMER
(eyes narrowing)
Have you tried... I don’t know... stocking anything else? Running events for other games?

STORE OWNER
(cheerful, clueless)
Nope! Why would we? Customers don't buy them or play them.

CUSTOMER
But I'm right here! I'm literally right here, looking to play them. How would people know what games are available if you don't even stock them? How would people know if they'd want to play a game or not if you don't run them? You're claiming that people don't want to play games when you are - as the entryway to these games - not giving them any entryway to them!

STORE OWNER
But there's Warhammer...

CUSTOMER
(fuming, voice dripping sarcasm)
Oh, yeah. Why support diverse games or indie developers when you can just endlessly shill Space Marines and Magic decks? Brilliant business model. Truly fostering the local gaming community.

The CUSTOMER turns and storms out, leaving behind the scent of broken dreams and dashed hobby hopes.

STORE OWNER
(calls after them, still clueless and cheerily hopeful)
If you change your mind, we’ve got a Warhammer Underworlds league starting next week! It's, uh, like... skirmish... but Warhammer!

The STORE OWNER, unfazed, hums happily and returns to painting a Space Marine for the hundredth time, blissfully unaware of the crushing monotony he perpetuates.

[FADE OUT]

Alright, folks, it’s that day of the week again—where we cast shame aside, embrace the chaos, and answer the kinds of questions that make everyone involved rethink their life choices. You know the drill: ask me anything, no matter how cursed, weird, or deeply personal, and I’ll answer with brutal honesty (or at least an elaborate lie that’s funnier than the truth).

Wanna know my worst dating disaster? The most ridiculous injury I’ve ever sustained? That one food I secretly love but would get judged for? The absolutely unhinged dream I had last night? Some deep lore from my Questionable Life Choices™️ archive? Drop your burning questions in the comments, and let’s get uncomfortably familiar with each other.

Or, you know, sit in awkward silence and let me tell you about the time I [INSERT TRULY UNHINGED PERSONAL ANECDOTE HERE]. Your move.

So, Gundam 00 was supposed to be a more grounded, "realistic" take on the franchise—focusing on contemporary politics, real-world conflicts, and a Gundam team that was less about space magic and more about tactical intervention. And for, like, maybe the first two episodes, it kinda stuck to that. And then? Then it absolutely lost its mind in the best way possible.

For those who need a refresher, the plot of Gundam 00 goes like this: a mysterious paramilitary group called Celestial Being appears out of nowhere with four ridiculously overpowered Gundams, declaring they will end war by intervening in every armed conflict on the planet, whether people like it or not. This, naturally, pisses off all the major world powers, leading to a global arms race, the formation of a unified military force, and an escalation of technology that makes the once-unstoppable Gundams kinda struggle to keep up. All of that sounds reasonable for a sci-fi war drama, right? Well, buckle up, because by the time the second season rolls around, the series just gives up on realism entirely and introduces evil brainwashing chips, a resurrected space tyrant, an orbital death laser (with backup), and a secret ancient alien supercomputer that may or may not be God.

And I cannot stress this enough—one of the villains is literally named Bring Stabbity. That is his actual, real-ass name, as if someone left a Gundam villain name generator running overnight and just went with whatever it spat out. This is the same series that had serious, grounded political maneuvering and hard questions about war and interventionism, and then also said, "Okay, but what if this dude was named Bring Stabbity, and he flew a giant laser death machine?" And we just had to accept that.

But easily the most incredible moment of Gundam 00's descent into absolute madness comes in Season 2, when Celestial Being pulls off an elaborate, high-stakes mission to destroy a giant orbital death laser (because of course there’s a giant orbital death laser). They fight through fleets of enemies, they struggle against impossible odds, they FINALLY manage to blow it up in a climactic battle… only for the camera to dramatically pan to the right to reveal an identical second giant orbital death laser, just chilling right behind it. Like the writers realized halfway through the season that they had wrapped up that plotline too soon and just went, “Uh… oh, there was actually a spare orbital death laser. Surprise!”

And then there’s the identical twin situation. One of the protagonists, Neil Dylandy (aka Lockon Stratos), dies in Season 1, which was a huge, emotional moment… only for Season 2 to introduce his never-before-mentioned identical twin brother, Lyle Dylandy, who not only has the exact same combat skills but is also just given the same Gundam and codename. Like, no one ever stops to ask, “Hey, wait, why did none of Lockon’s flashbacks ever mention his identical brother?” Nah, they just roll with it. Lyle barely even seems affected by the fact that his twin brother just died doing this exact same job. It’s like the writers said, “People liked Lockon, right? Let’s just do it again and hope nobody asks questions.”

So yeah, Gundam 00 was supposed to be the realistic Gundam show, but somewhere along the way, it turned into complete, absurd, over-the-top chaos, and honestly? I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I had a dream last night that started out normal enough—just me, at some vague and blurry party, trying to find the bathroom. Classic dream nonsense. Except when I finally found a door, it didn’t lead to a bathroom. It led to a long, endless hallway lined with identical doors, each slightly ajar, each one humming like a fluorescent light about to explode. At this point, Dream Me should have noped out, but obviously, I did what any horror movie idiot would do: I picked a door at random and went in.

Inside was a perfectly normal-looking living room, except for the fact that everyone inside it was me. A dozen versions of myself, all engaged in casual activities—one reading, one watching TV, one just sort of sitting there staring at the wall like a Sims character whose AI broke. None of them acknowledged me. I waved. Nothing. I cleared my throat. Nothing. So, naturally, I did the only logical thing and screamed, “WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?”

They all turned in unison. Their eyes were completely black. One of them, the one closest to me, slowly set down her book and said, “You should not be here.”

I woke up immediately. I have never been more grateful to wake up in my stupid, normal bedroom. But now I keep getting this weird feeling that if I open the wrong door in my apartment, I’m going to walk in on them again. And next time, I don’t think they’re just going to sit there.

Today, my partner and I squared off in War of the Ring, which is less of a board game and more of a lifestyle commitment. This absolute monster of a game lets you reenact the entire Lord of the Rings war, with one player commanding the endless armies of Sauron (me, obviously) and the other desperately trying to keep Middle-earth from turning into a flaming hellscape. It’s part war game, part political backstabbing, part screaming at dice while praying to the Valar, and all incredibly thematic. Every time we play, it feels like living out an alternate version of Tolkien’s story—except one where things spiral completely out of control in the weirdest ways possible.

Since I was playing the forces of darkness, I did the sensible thing and immediately rushed Saruman into play, because why wouldn’t you want a cranky old wizard yelling about industry and war? With the White Hand leading Isengard, I focused on squashing Rohan like a bug before they could do anything heroic, then took my ultra-violent rampage west to wipe out the Grey Havens and the Shire, because honestly, someone needs to teach the hobbits that their little agrarian utopia isn’t sustainable. But while I was busy terrorizing peaceful civilians, my partner, playing the Free Peoples, was making some chaotic moves. He took the elves of Rivendell and marched them north to conquer Angmar, which, excuse me, is NOT how elves are supposed to work. Then he split the Fellowship so Aragorn could go full action hero in Gondor, leaving only Gimli to go with Frodo and Sam, which is an objectively hilarious decision. It also turned out to be a bad decision, because my armies steamrolled into Lothlorien before the poor little hobbits could even think about reaching Mount Doom.

Now, here’s where hubris set in. I left Moria unguarded because I was sure the game was in the bag—Rohan was a pile of ashes, the elves were on the run, and the Fellowship was down to a single dwarf. And then, like the opportunistic gremlins they are, my partner’s Rangers of the North snuck in and took Moria while I wasn’t looking, which was just enough to turn the tide of war. The final battle came down to my desperate attempt to take Lothlorien, but my partner managed to hold the line just long enough for victory. Which means, in this timeline, Sauron almost won, but then some upstart human archers and a stubborn band of elves went all “Actually, no” and Middle-earth was saved.

Lesson learned: You CANNOT get cocky as Sauron. The Free Peoples are scrappy little bastards, and if you overextend, they will absolutely ruin your day. Also, I don’t know what kind of dark deal my partner made with the dice gods, but I’m formally requesting an exorcism for our game room. Still, War of the Ring is hands-down one of the best board games ever made, because even when I lose, I get to monologue like a classic villain and make dramatically bad decisions. 10/10, will attempt to crush Middle-earth again.

Oh, Wraith: The Oblivion. The White Wolf game that everyone agrees is incredible, innovative, and hauntingly atmospheric—and yet, somehow, no one has ever actually played. Not once. It simply does not happen. And that’s a crime, because this is one of the most unique, thematically rich RPGs ever made.

You play a ghost trapped in the Underworld, clinging to unfinished business while the forces of Oblivion try to erase you. The setting is bleak and terrifying—decaying necropolises, endless storms, and an economy that literally runs on souls. But Wraith doesn’t stop at making the world your enemy; it makes you your own worst threat. Every Wraith has a Shadow, a destructive inner voice that actively works against them—played by another player at the table. That’s right. Your friend gets to be the whispering devil on your shoulder, tempting and sabotaging you at every turn. It’s brilliant. No other RPG captures self-destruction and psychological horror like Wraith does.

And yet. Nobody plays it. Because convincing a group to commit to bleak existential torment isn’t easy. People will happily play sexy goth vampires or eco-terrorist werewolves, but “let’s explore personal trauma and despair” is a tough sell. So Wraith sits on bookshelves, admired but untouched, the RPG equivalent of an art house film that everyone respects but nobody actually watches.

Honestly, I’m glad Paradox hasn’t touched it. They’d only butcher it like they did V5 Vampire and Hunter. Let Wraith rest in peace—forever waiting, like me, for a group that will never come.

Ohhhh my GOD, y’all. I just got my hands on some fresh prints of Gravitation, and I have been flung face-first back into the early-2000s anime fandom trenches like a war flashback. If you somehow missed this glorious mess of a series, buckle the hell up, because it’s a ride. The basic premise is this: a tiny, aggressively pink-haired menace named Shuichi Shindo is the lead singer of a band called Bad Luck (a name that foreshadows his entire existence). One night, while he’s doing his usual routine of running around like a feral toddler high on Pixy Stix, his lyrics get yeeted into the hands of a mysterious blonde man who reads them, makes the most disgusted face humanly possible, and tells him they suck. This absolute dreamboat of a bastard is Eiri Yuki, a romance novelist who exudes the kind of icy detachment usually reserved for Victorian ghosts. Naturally, Shuichi immediately imprints on him like a lost duckling and starts throwing himself at Yuki’s feet, begging for attention like a dog whose owner left the house for five minutes. Yuki responds by barely tolerating his existence and actively negging him at all times. And thus, a romance for the ages is born.

Look. I will not sugarcoat this: these two are a terrible couple. Shuichi is like an emotionally starved, hyperactive chihuahua, and Yuki is an emotionally repressed disaster man who deals with affection the way a housecat deals with being picked up—by stiffening up and looking vaguely offended. Their entire relationship is just a never-ending cycle of Shuichi throwing himself at Yuki while Yuki alternates between ignoring him, insulting him, and then maybe showing a brief, fleeting moment of affection before slamming his emotional walls back up like a drawbridge during a castle siege. It is peak early-2000s BL toxicity, and somehow, somehow, we all ate it up like starving feral creatures. Was it healthy? Absolutely not. Was it peak entertainment? Oh, hell yes. If you did not have an emotionally unbalanced attachment to this disaster relationship at some point in your anime-watching career, then congratulations on your well-adjusted psyche, but I was feral for this nonsense.

Now, let’s talk about the anime. Because this show? Ohhhh, it committed to the bit. Specifically, it committed to playing the exact same damn song over and over and OVER again until it burrowed into your skull like a particularly aggressive brain parasite. Super Drive was everywhere. Every concert scene? Super Drive. Dramatic rooftop moment? Super Drive. A moment where literally any other music could have fit? NO. Super Drive. If you weren’t sick of this song by episode three, you had the patience of a saint, because I promise you, by episode five, it felt like Shuichi had only ever written one song in his life. And the best part? Shuichi keeps acting like he’s working on new music. SIR. WHERE. WHERE IS THE NEW MUSIC. Because I sure as hell haven’t heard it. Is Bad Luck just a one-hit-wonder band that keeps pretending they’re making new material while they ride this single into the ground like a meteor? The audacity. The sheer nerve.

And for a BL anime, Gravitation was so damn tame that it barely qualified as spicy. I’m talking a whole lotta build-up with no damn payoff. It was like watching a soap opera where they keep teasing a kiss for sixteen episodes and then cut away at the last second. You got longing glances, a lot of dramatically charged staring, and the occasional emotionally wrecked declaration of feelings, but that was it. If you were a BL fan in the early 2000s, you were starving for content, and Gravitation showed up with a single saltine cracker and said, “Here. This is your feast.” And you know what? We took it. Because that’s all we had. It was this, Fake, or trying to track down grainy, half-translated VHS copies of Kizuna from some dude at a convention selling bootlegs out of a cardboard box. We suffered for our fandom.

Speaking of sketchy VHS tapes, I had this anime on a bootleg subtitled VHS, and it was an experience. The subs had been translated into Chinese and then back into English, which meant that everyone’s names were wrong. Shuichi was something like "Xiu-Xi," and Yuki was just. Elliott. I don’t know where the hell they got Elliott from, but I lived with it. I got these tapes from my friend Robin, who was an absolute legend and mailed them to me in a shoebox along with Weiss Kreuz because she knew I had needs. Robin also roleplayed as a blue cat named Pattrick on Furcadia, and we spent an unholy amount of time doing dramatic, over-the-top RP sessions about nothing important. I haven’t heard from her in twenty years, and sometimes I just sit here and wonder, Where the hell is Robin? Is she still out there? Does she still roleplay as a blue cat? Did she ever escape the eternal loop of "Super Drive" playing in her head? Maybe one day, I’ll find out. Or maybe she’s just out there somewhere, in the great wide internet void, still hoarding weird bootleg anime tapes and waiting for the right person to ask, “Hey. Do you wanna RP?”

Alright, let’s talk about Call of Cthulhu, or as we in the deeply immature segment of the TTRPG community call it—CoC. That’s right. Big, scary CoC is a fundamental part of the horror RPG experience, and if you’re brave enough to get your hands on some, you’d better be ready for a mind-shattering experience. I mean that literally. Sanity loss is a key mechanic, and sooner or later, the CoC is going to break you.

For the uninitiated, Call of Cthulhu is a game where you play a fragile 1920s nerd who thinks reading old books and poking around cult-infested towns is a great idea. Spoiler alert: it isn’t. The deeper you get into the mystery, the more exposure you get to CoC, and before you know it, you’re gasping, losing control, and rolling to see if your character faints from the sheer terror of what’s unfolding. And let’s not even talk about when the tentacles come out—because they will come out. There’s always a moment when a group of investigators realizes they’ve bitten off more than they can chew, and that’s usually when the CoC just erupts into pure chaos.

The mechanics really hammer home the theme of helplessness. Unlike D&D, where you can heroically swing a big sword and save the day, CoC is all about fumbling with your gun, missing every shot, and realizing too late that bullets are useless against a writhing mass of eldritch horror. It’s a game where you try to keep your grip, but CoC just keeps wearing you down, pounding your sanity into oblivion. And let’s be honest, nobody ever walks away from an encounter with CoC feeling normal. You either get wrecked and end up in an asylum, or you die screaming as something unspeakable swallows you whole.

And speaking of unspeakable things, this game is absolutely drowning in tentacles. Tentacles in the shadows. Tentacles in the deep. Tentacles writhing their way into places you never expected. CoC is a relentless, overwhelming experience, and at some point, you’re going to find yourself staring at something utterly horrifying, whispering, “I wasn’t ready for this much CoC.” But it’s too late. It’s already got you.

So should you play Call of Cthulhu? Absolutely. It’s one of the best horror RPGs ever made, a masterclass in slow-building dread, and an experience that will leave you changed forever. Just be warned: once you’ve had a taste of CoC, you’ll never forget it.

Okay, so I had the most amazing eggs benedict today, and I’m genuinely sitting here wondering how something so simple can taste so perfect. It was like the universe decided to make a culinary gift just for me. The eggs were so perfectly poached—those golden yolks just oozing out when I cut into them, smooth and velvety like they were made by some kind of magical breakfast sorcerer. And don’t even get me started on the hollandaise sauce. It was rich, but not heavy, creamy but with just the right amount of tang to balance it out, like they spent years perfecting it in a secret underground sauce lab. I’m convinced they use some kind of butter from the gods themselves.

The English muffin underneath was toasted just enough to give it a little crispiness but still soft enough to soak up all that perfect sauce. And the Canadian bacon—don’t even think about calling it “ham,” okay? This was the good stuff. It had that perfect balance of salty and savory, and each bite paired so perfectly with everything else on the plate that I could’ve eaten it forever. Honestly, I’m convinced the world would be a better place if everyone had access to eggs benedict like this. Like, it’s the kind of meal that makes you stop, close your eyes for a second, and just savor life in all its delicious glory. If eggs benedict was a feeling, today, it was pure joy.

Ghost hunting used to be cool. It used to be about weird little local legends, half-remembered tragedies, and stories passed down through generations. You’d get eerie accounts of restless spirits in old houses, spectral figures tied to long-forgotten crimes, actual folklore wrapped up in history and mystery. And then? Then Ed and Lorraine Warren had to drag their greasy little claws over the whole thing and ruin it for everyone by turning ghosts into demons and ghost hunting into Bible cosplay. They saw The Exorcist make a ton of money and went, “Oh, that’s the angle!”—and boom, suddenly every old-timey haunting wasn’t just some sad Victorian lady in a tattered dress, it was a portal to Hell. Because you can’t sell seminar tickets by talking about Granny McGillicuddy still rattling around the attic—no, you need Satan. You need danger. You need stakes so high that people will buy whatever tacky blessed trinkets you’re selling just to keep their suburban homes safe from Beelzebub.

And because the Warrens were absolute masters of making shit up and getting people to take them seriously, the whole ghost-hunting world just followed along. Every amateur ghost hunter on YouTube, every paranormal investigation show, every clout-chasing dipshit with an EMF meter decided that, actually, it’s not a ghost, it’s a demon. Because ghosts? Ghosts are old news. They’re too low-stakes. The second someone says, “Oh, this house might be haunted,” you know some jackass is gonna pop in with a dramatic voice and say, “It’s not a ghost. It’s something much darker.” And congratulations! There goes the interesting discussion about history or folklore or anything that might make the place feel eerie and unique, replaced with the same tired script about ancient evil and “inhuman entities.” It’s like some kind of paranormal pissing contest where everyone is trying to up the ante, but instead of being cool, it just gets dumber.

And the worst part? It makes everything feel way less believable. Because look, maybe ghosts exist. Maybe there’s something weird going on with the way energy works, or consciousness, or whatever. I can at least entertain the possibility of ghosts. But demons? Actual capital-D Demons, like the kind that show up in the Bible and have names ending in -iel? Those only exist in the minds of people who have been completely saturated in American Protestant horror-movie theology. And because America is very good at exporting its religious anxieties to the rest of the world, now everything paranormal has to be filtered through the lens of, “And then a priest saved the day!” Like, sorry, what the fuck does a Christian demon have to do with an 18th-century French noblewoman haunting her old chateau? Why is a preacher from Ohio suddenly the expert on a thousand-year-old Scandinavian ghost story? It’s embarrassing.

And the result is that ghost hunting isn’t fun anymore. It’s not eerie, it’s not weird, it’s not tangled up in local folklore and urban legends—it’s just dime-store Catholic horror movie bullshit. Gone are the cool little mysteries, the historical rabbit holes, the debates over whether that old shipwreck really has an angry sailor’s ghost stomping around its remains. Now it’s just a bunch of dudes running around abandoned hospitals yelling, “BRO, IT’S A DEMON!” into night-vision cameras while some guy offscreen frantically Googles Latin prayers. And for what? For clicks? For content? For some desperate attempt to make an otherwise normal haunting sound like something out of The Conjuring? Folk horror, real or imagined, deserves better than this.

TTRPGs were so much better in the ‘90s. The books were cheaper, the art was all that gorgeous, grimy black-and-white ink instead of soulless digital paintings, and you didn’t just get a core book and a splatbook or two—you got a whole damn library. Every class, every vampire clan, every weird little corner of the setting had its own book, packed full of lore, crunch, and the kind of deeply specific nonsense that made the world feel massive. And every game had its signature characters—the writer’s own PCs shoved into the lore with names like Johnny Silverhand or Sascha Vykos, showing up in stories and rulebooks like recurring characters in a soap opera. And I like that! I like reading about Lord Soth going off on some doomed adventure, or some random nobody outwitting Renraku, because that kind of worldbuilding made the setting feel BIG and alive.

And don’t even get me started on metaplot. God, I love metaplot. I love it when the setting changes—when Cheliax goes to war, when a spirit storm wipes out the astral plane, when some major NPCs actually do something that shakes up the world. People act like this stuff makes games “impenetrable” to new players, but that’s bullshit. It makes them exciting. You step into a living world that moves, that has history, that evolves. And back then, you weren’t introduced to a game by watching a highly produced Actual Play where a bunch of actors do scripted improv—you had to sit your ass down and PLAY. No endless lurking, no spending months absorbing lore by osmosis, no parasocial attachment to other people’s games. You learned by rolling dice, making terrible characters, and experiencing the world yourself. Watching someone else play will never be as fun as playing the game, and I feel like people have forgotten that.

Also? Games were messy back then, and I miss that. You’d get weird ideas shoved into a book because some designer thought it was cool, not because a committee approved it. Like, oh, this edition? Yeah, it has a sentient virus faction. That book? It’s about playing as ghosts, actually. Every vampire clan got a book, every single one, even the weird ones nobody played. There was no attempt to sand down the edges to make everything equal or approachable. If a game had factions, some of them sucked. If there was a class system, some of them were bad. And I liked that! I like when a game has too much lore, when you have to actually dig through books to find the weird, game-breaking bullshit. It felt like uncovering treasure.

Now everything is so streamlined and balanced and focus-tested to hell and back, and it’s like—where’s the soul? Where’s the nonsense? Why is every setting this vague, open-ended “toolbox” instead of a big, ridiculous, self-indulgent world full of novels and metaplot and some developer’s barely-filed-off OC kicking around? Why did we decide that letting games breathe and change and grow was a bad thing? I want the lore bloat. I want the impenetrable novels. I want to see a vampire setting where half the clans have been wiped out in a civil war I didn’t even know happened. I want stakes. I want history. I want a game to feel like it exists outside of my table. And yeah, maybe that means new players have to catch up a little. GOOD. Learning a game should feel like stepping into something vast. That’s what makes it fun.