I probably have a foot in each world when it comes to romance in media generally. I think it's very fun to write but whenever I read it, I get the sense - communicated by the hairs on my neck - that I am being observed. The shit people are saying online about this old man, and others, heroes of every conceivable description, is so out of pocket that it's lying on the actual ground. I'm the last person who is gonna be out here policing a kink, but I will admit to a little confusion about what kind of speech is kosher when describing even imaginary people. I feel like the rules keep changing in a kaleidoscopic shibboleth, a three dimensional hard-light cipher. I get more value out of trying to describe it than I do trying to solve it.

The June Sticker Pack is available today for Club PA members! You’ll just need to be logged into the PA site with your Club credentials to see it in the store. We made 200 of these packs and each one is filled with goodies. 

In regards to today's comic, I’m situated firmly on the side of the Neurospicy spectrum that finds things more interesting than people. Pretty girls? No thanks, I'll take a featureless monolith floating in space near Jupiter whose perfect ratio of 1:4:9 is inexplicably filled with stars. 

On the planet of Matsu, one final test remains.

Twitch.tv/pennyarcade 

(CW)TB

Now that Kingdom Hearts is on PC, it… well, it was on EGS. Now that it's on more PCs via Steam, it's time to figure out which Kingdom Hearts is right for you. I've digested enough lore videos to know that the Dunkey video doesn't have as many jokes in it as you would think it does, but I'm not super up on what the most savoury route through these things actually is.

The entire Kingdom Hearts collection is now available on Steam and I spent the weekend replaying some of my favorites. The games are divided into three different packages that collect games from various platforms. You can also buy the "Integrum Masterpiece" which includes all three packs with all the games. I’m lucky that all my favorite entries in the series are in the first pack called KINGDOM HEARTS -HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX-. 

Apparently shit got pretty heated over at Chez Gabril night before last, as the youngest is now coming into his own - ready to contend with his elder brother in a truly ancient form of combat. I understand that really getting down into the Mortis Gods can have a certain intensity, but I would much rather discuss Tatooine or some shit than the crap I got going on over here. I'll tell you that much. Holy shit, man. I'd love to cross those fuckin' streams. I'd be overjoyed to discuss how, since Star Wars is in the ancient past of this universe, and Star Trek the near future, we have to consider if and how not just The Fast but also, like, The Furious fits into all this.

I left Twitter months ago and it has been awesome, I highly recommend it. Now I just post here on Penny Arcade which honestly has a couple million more viewers than my Twitter account ever had. Somehow I still have to deal with Twitter bullshit though. If you still toil in that wretched place you should know someone has picked up and started using my old account name. I’m not going to link it here and we have removed mentions of it from the site but I just wanted to make sure everyone knows that’s not me. I’m done with social media, if you want to know what I’m up to, just read this site.

-Gabe out 

I just received my own merch newsletter, which you can receive also by putting your email into the bow at the bottom right of this very page.  But it had cool stuff in it and I thought I should also post about it here, because it has some Cyberpunkian product - or, as the French say, les produits du ponque-cybre. 

Except for the time they went extreme with it, Ubisoft's Prince of persia games have essentially been bangers. I haven't played the roguelite one, but it's reviewing well and it's made by Evil Empire, which I'd say are two things that sort of naturally go together. There's been a remake on the books for a while it seems like, and at Ubi's Ubisoft thing a few days ago they dropped a teaser that said the new one was gonna drop in 2026. 20 fuckin' 26! That kind of optimism stirs the heart.

I’m not sure what games I’ll be playing in the year 2026, unless hiding from packs of wild dogs is a game. I can tell you what I’ve been playing in 2024 though! I’m still not really into any one big game at the moment but I’ve put a few hours into some fun stuff here and there. This is what I’ve been playing:

I just noticed that today marks the 15 year anniversary of the very first Lookouts comic. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long! You can check out more Lookouts stories along with other tales of the Eyrewood right here. You can also watch the Lookouts short film by Redgate Films, which we didn’t know was being made until they invited us to the premiere. I think "fantasy Boy Scouts" is still probably one of the coolest ideas we’ve cooked up. 

-Gabe out

Friday was the day that everybody decided to say all the deeply held gaming secrets at once, a policy that only echoed for the rest of the weekend and technically - technically - won't even resolve until today at noon my time, when Ubisoft does its thing. My favorite things from them were the pre-RPG Assassin's Creeds and Splinter Cell, which is to say I haven't been "addressed" as a "market" for a while. But Bungie also dropped the raid that unlocks The Final Shape's ending mission on the same day, with all the revelations that must certainly entail.  

I’m actually a big fan of Hero Shooters. I’m not nearly as sick of the genre as many other gamers out there seem to be. My only requirement is that the heroes in said shooter need to look cool and not like normal people they found in a Target or a bunch of cosplayers. Star Wars Hunters is a new Hero Shooter with some very cool characters and the game itself is fast and fun. The problem is that it is also free to play.

When I was talking to Mork yesterday about Instagram, it became apparent that describing the web accurately makes you sound unwell. You can leave one service because it has enthroned a cyber-tyrant who is training an AI on all your data, and then go to another service where only a few months later they will start training an AI on your data. You might open up an account for your art on an independent service, where your enthusiasm and the enthusiasm of others strikes their infrastructure so hard that it generated a hundred thousand dollars in overage fees after a few hours. How do you orient yourself toward such an environment? These aren't natural phenomena.

Meta is going to train their AI on all the artwork posted on Instagram. I have not deleted my entire Instagram account yet but I have already removed all my art. I realize that there is really no place on the internet where you can possibly hope to be safe from these monsters but I don’t have to literally put my head in their mouth. I heard that it’s possible to mail them and request that they not use your work to build their artist killing AI. How about fuck you instead? I’m not going to beg the creature devouring me to be more gentle, I'm just going to leave.