The Fourth Panel

A combination of a very strong army choice, great rules, and a warrior's spirit has continued to see Gabriel's youngest terrorize the game table at home - sowing discord in the family unit. Not really! Gabriel is certainly more competitive than me, but being defeated by your child at something still feels like winning to a somewhat integrated person. That said, I would never undertake the actions seen here in a million years. For one, it would be like gettin' the whippin' switch. For two, that ain't my kid. That would be like getting beat by a literal fucking baby.

The squad is essentially splitting time between Rainbow Six and Marvel Rivals now, and because they do something almost completely different you can "hold space" for them, as they say. If Marvels was a bit more constrained, or if R6 were a little less… whatever it is, maybe they would start bleeding into each other. In a round of Rainbow, for example, we probably won't be erased from reality by Scarlet Witch's "Reality Erasure" ult. You know? It helps you compartmentalize. If you're at the store, and you hear the bark for this ultimate? Don't shop at that store anymore.

It is no longer safe.

I'm not here to hold forth on the ethics around being high on goofballs. There are those who seek refuge in the goofball, and find comfort there. Or, maybe you are coming out onto the stage at a videogame awards thing and you goofed three or four balls right before you got out - their spent husks tossed hither and yon. The VGAs are a little more lo-fi than the sorts of things he typically goes to, and that might provide some license. It's also possible he's just a huge fan of Critical Role or something but also wanted a little carcinization, as a treat.

Those of you who grew up with The Bible will recognize instantly the opportunity Marvel Rivals grants the player - the opportunity to meditate on mortality itself while spending time inside of a fish. I didn't understand before that I craved this state, a fishy state, where the cares of the world disappear beyond a wall of cool meat.

Coming back to Seattle from Philadelphia, you have a couple options when travelling by sky-bullet. One of them has you leaving at 6:20 in the evening, and the other - the one less travelled by - leaves in the crisp light of a new star, at the very moment the world was born. That is to say, 7:14am, which necessitates waking up at a ghastly juncture prior to causality itself. I was originally configured for the more humane option, but descended into madness and swapped. Then the machine in the security line detected some kind of pantal anomaly and we all laughed our asses off for a while.

I am home recovering from an incredible PAX Unplugged. I love the show but I always need a few days afterwards to hibernate and recharge my batteries. This Unplugged was especially cool because it was just me and my youngest son Noah. He’s 14 now and as a Dad it was just an incredible opportunity to get to spend the entire weekend with him. We spent time roaming the massive expo floor, watching folks play games in the freeplay area and trading pins at the community events every day. I also took great pleasure in introducing him to the magic that is Reading Terminal and its culinary delights. 

I am a sucker for demos at PAX; I'm also too polite to extract myself after a certain point, even if the theme or mechanics don't particularly entice. Oh! And try not to be disgusted overmuch by the greasy and wicked levitator floating in Panel 2. This vile beast, the Cheesesteak Fairy, earned more than ten gees for Child's Play if you can believe it. The ritual involves holding the mascot hostage until the audience ponies up, and thus far this mercenary tendency has served the teens very well.

I know there are those of you who want to rock the purple, and we are here to oblige you - check out the range, up for a limited time!

(CW)TB out.

If you are a dork of a specific flavor, a subset of a subset, you might be watching a pretend advent calendar on the Warhammer Community site. Because wargames exist at the nexus of tiny plastic freaks and walls of text - with affection for either marking one as somewhat outside the bounds of society - adding a little bit more text can change everything about how these poles interact. Well, they're adding all kinds of text over there - Thousand Sons got some love today, my evil bugs got some love the day before, and a couple days ago Noah - who doesn't need any fucking help at all - got some new toys as well. He doesn't know, because he can't be allowed to know. It's for the best.

After those first Marvel Rivals streams, where our celestial betters were allowed to frolic and play amongst the stars, I felt sorta confident not engaging with it. Every hero I saw in this hero shooter seemed to be a kind of gumbo made from the rinds and tailings of the Overwatch characters they'd mined out. I saw them pushing the kind of cart I was already sick of pushing when I was pushing carts before I quit Overwatch.

And then they showed Squirrel Girl.

People have been saying they were gonna leave Twitter for a super long time, in the same way they often claim they're going to move to Canada, and with roughly the same level of success. I'm not trying to say they're dumb liars; full synchronicity with our personal ethics requires a nearly cosmic level of effort, and in my experience always comes with painful sacrifice, which is why most people are content merely to describe this wicked gulf in others. But it actually seems to be happening, this time. There is a sundering of sorts, the kind of thing you would read in the Silmarillion. At least, I think. I've never read it. But it's still true: BlueSky and Threads are now functional, catalyzed venues for discourse with varying levels or intentions to Federate. Federation is sort of a sophisticated concept to explain, but it might be reasonable here to say that it is an orthogonal philosophy to the Internet as it works now. Another way of saying it: Federation has ideas in common with the Internet that was stolen from us.

This week I’ll be leaving for Philadelphia and PAX Unplugged. This is one of my favorite shows and I’m super excited to be bringing my youngest son Noah with me this year. He’s obsessed with Warhammer 40k right now so I think a tabletop gaming expo will be a lot of fun. 

Some of you have already taken us up on the offers of our humble shop - but there are, perhaps, those who are hungry for a sweeter offer. And we can provide: at 2pm PST, we will unleash a horde of our famous Double Secret boxes for the true pin enthusiast. Hunger for these boxes has historically been ravenous, so plan accordingly. I packed a ton of these myself, and there are some true delights to be had in this heady mix.

When we were learning about wargaming from The Germans - two German men who taught us wargames - they always say that you should not pay to reroll something unless the chance of you succeeding is at least sixty-six percent. I try to remember that every time; I can hear their voices in my head every time I forego their sensible advice. We offer another piece of advice to you today, a corollary of sorts, in today's incomparable strip.

I would rather be eaten in my front yard by wild dogs, but it's not to be. I'm heading over to Spokane where I will no doubt be eaten by something much worse.

Gabriel the Younger is quite a bit like his dad, but his youngest creature - like my own - simply can't be derived conceptually from a combination of their parents' traits. It's shocking to the layman, like multiplying two negatives and getting a positive. In practice, it's like entering the world with a service animal. There's just stuff about it I can't perceive despite my prodigious attempts and ample time to have done so. They see and delight in these hidden geometries! So it is that Noah often accompanies his father as an Adventure Companion, most recently to the Child's Play Charity dinner and auction. They did not secure the UCS Millenium Falcon (75192), but I think Noah would like you to know that he knew the designation and part number off the top of his head.