Jerry mentioned Sand in his most recent news post but another multipart series started this week 9 years ago. Our story “Grace” is a Nightlight tale and you can get started with part 1 right here. If you’re not familiar with it, Nightlight is a series of stories based on the idea that all families have a “Nightlight”. That is to say someone whose job it is to fight the monsters that DO IN FACT live under the bed. A Nightlight can be anyone and they have many different ways of battling these monsters. I always thought this one would make a great series on Netflix or some other streaming service. Who knows, maybe someday it will!

Specifically, the comic.  I saw via Design's perpetually delightful "Feeling Nostalgic" section that it had run about eleven years ago this week, but the initial page actually ran a couple years before.  That was sort of a busy time for us!  It took us a while to get back to it.  I think it was worth it?  Maybe?  No, I really like this one actually, this future western stuff is always in season for me and I have an endless desire to write in this patois.

Very soon, indeed this very week, I am releasing two novellas - indeed, two versions of the same novella. One as a fantasy adventure, and one as a fantasy adventure that is also a romance. We're gonna start digital; if it was good enough for MIke's living god Hugh "Wool" Howey, it's good enough for me. They'll be available right from our store.

I left Social Media a few months ago and I don’t regret it at all. Twitter has always been a weird place but after it was purchased by Ebon Husk it became a true cesspool. Out of morbid curiosity I looked at what was trending this morning and it’s some of the most vile, psychotic shit I have ever seen. People there feel comfortable spouting truly unhinged beliefs and they love to preface their deeply fucked up opinions with “Fun Fact” . I think about it as if it were a real place. If I went into a restaurant for example that was full of (and indeed catered to) conspiracy theory loving racists, I would leave and I would never go back. It’s that simple. I don’t have to support a place like that even tacitly with my presence, much less my money. I recognize I’m just one person and leaving Twitter won’t hurt the service but it will help me sleep at night. 

He doesn't know about shit! I can't even imagine the comfort. In the end, I suspect it mostly leaves him with more time to grapple internal demons. He doesn't know about Hawk Tuah. Poor Hawk Tuah! She had a whole thing happening, and then the world reconfigured itself twice in about a week. I should check her socials, make sure she's doing okay. Or, who knows. It may be that this incredible service is required more than ever.

There are two videos for the new Worlds 1 update for No Man's Sky, one in a more traditional vein and one where Sean Murray physically opens his ribcage and bares his soul:

Was I able to get Gabe to draw a Neurotyrant? Yes. Time was, this would have been a fraught proposition - but these days he has tons of Adeptus Astartes and Death Guard and Tyranids and Tau and all kindsa shit going on over there. A lot of it is even painted! I know, right? Wow. But also, I'm not sure we've had a Warhammer game that looked this good, which can't possibly hurt:

It looks like Club PA members are starting to get their July sticker packs! This pack included the stackable ice cream as well as Motorcycle Helmet Tycho. I’m excited to get into the holiday months this Fall because I have lots of ideas for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas sticker sheets. In the meantime I've been hard at work on the August sticker pack and I wanted to share some progress pics with you guys. 

Steam has a running tally of Gabriel's accomplishments in The First Descendant, and I don't doubt that they represent true valor in the war against whoever that guy was in the intro I played. I'm not a hundred percent sure what some of these things mean, though; it says he's completed ten Void Intercept battles, which seems like a nice round number. He's also combined modules seven times? That seems like a good, you know, number of… times. I was gonna describe the conversation we had about it, but I guess we did make a comic strip that depicts the general arc.

It’s true I’m still hooked on The First Descendant but I haven’t actually tried to push it on any of my friends or family. I think it’s a game you have to come to on your own and decide for yourself if you like it or not. I only played it because it was free and because I like to at least try as many games as I can since you never know where a comic strip idea will come from. This is a game I went into expecting to hate but ended up loving. That’s a hard trick to pull off. 

I recall Etsy being a realm where one could get a handmade thingy, or even a doodad. Brenna had a store on there for a while; I would link it, but it eventually got so demoralizing it was removed. She is a seamstress with decades of experience, having worked professionally in a variety of theatres, but the dynamics of that place are such that trying to make money on handmade goods charging what they were actually worth was essentially impossible. It was like operating a sweatshop where you are the cruel man on a mezzanine, looking down at your only employee on the shopfloor, who is also yourself.

I have never sold anything on Etsy but I’ve certainly purchased things from the site. A few years ago Kara and I wanted to get new wedding bands that reflected our love of games and we found an incredible jeweler on Etsy. I’ve also ordered prints from artists I like and handmade gifts. I always thought of it as a sort of Farmer’s Market or Artist Alley where I could directly support creative people making cool stuff. With their latest announcement that AI shit will now be allowed on the site they have created a space that is actively hostile to the exact sorts of people Etsy was theoretically designed to promote. 

I think we all saw the pre-order image for the new Dungeons & Dragons, yeah? This one? This Ubisoft lookin'-ass thing?

Our July sticker pack will arrive in Gabe’s Sticker Shoppe today! There are 100 of these packs containing this month’s handmade sticker offerings. As a reminder these are available to all Club PA members of any level. You’ll just need to be logged into the store with your Club credentials. Here’s what you can expect in your July pack!

Zenless Zone Zero, I mean… it seems like only food words could possibly suffice. It's luscious. Now, the first time I typed that, an errant pinky had hit the caps lock key and the words "it's luscious" looked a lot more excited than you might expect. Here's the thing: it would be true, even in caps. The game is nutballs, world class in every particular, with supernatural art and animation, a very weird but cool cyberpunk urban fantasy hybrid setting and action gameplay that stands up tall. Music is excellent. I've also never felt less equipped to engage with a game's underlying systems - the dense thicket of custom lingo, mystery resources, and shibboleths designed to obscure that free-to-play games are gig work - they are jobs that you pay to work at.

We have a heat advisory here in the Seattle area with temperatures up into the 90’s. To avoid the heat I stayed inside and played games but let’s be honest, that’s what I would have done had the temps been in the 70’s.  I decided to investigate the two big new free to play titles Zenless Zone Zero and The First Descendant. I bounced back and forth between both games all weekend and now I have…Opinions!