Return the power to the workers and separate your boss from their teeth.
What Remains of Edith Finch is a game about death. That’s not unusual. So why does it feel so different?
Gorogoa's twisting narrative hides a surprisingly human message about life and perseverance.
The Man. The Legend. The Architecture.
This universe ain't big enough for the two of us, partner
I have burned the tobacco that was in your fields and which you were probably saving for harvest Forgive me, it burned so brightly, so angry and so cold
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the Lower Pthumeru Chalice in the dead of night.
Shall I compare thee to a plastic guitar Thou art more lovely, and more kinetic
with the power of their lives while from the dim-lit halls of other places forms that could never be writhe for the impatience of the few who have never seen or been seen.
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow, And watch where the chalk-white hollows go To the place where Lordran ends.
"Where are the people?” resumed the little prince at last. “It’s a little lonely in the desert…” “It is lonely when you’re among people, too,” said the snake.
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout, But there is no joy in Hyrule—mighty Ganon has struck out.
Samuel Beckett once said, “Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness”...on the other hand, he SAID it. -Art Spiegelman, 1992 CW: Descriptions of both historical and contemporary Nazism and White Supremacy, depictions of extreme violence, some discussion and depiction of child abuse (in context of Wolfenstein), brief discussion of animal abuse (in context of Wolfenstein), significant discussion of anti-semitism and the holocaust.
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token...how often it must be impaired by the eyes of the unfeeling and the cruelty of the impotent.
"You're not understanding, are you? The brain does the thinking. The meat." “Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!" "Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal!"
Where are you? I don’t know. How can I? Which way is up? I’m falling. Good God, I’m falling.
Upon it, their imagination shaped new ideals. They returned to their homes, each one of them carrying in their soul the shadow of the white cloud, each of them permeated by the most subtle and slow-acting of poisons.
a mystery which will never happen again, a miracle which has never happened before– and shining this our now must come to then
A world of made is not a world of born
They walk out under the branches of hopelessness They think of this world welcoming the bodies of their sons.
and you leave behind you a heroic trail of desolation
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
Some time after the looting, the locked gates, the US tank stood idle in a gallery
pity poor flesh and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this fine specimen of hypermagical ultraomnipotence.
"Clear and sweet and savory emotion did not run in a rippling stream in my personal world- more pity to it! But in stories and poems I found passion unfettered, and healthy."
One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one lets himself be tamed.
Praise the mutilated world and the gray feather a thrush lost, and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
"We are going to tell you what lies underground, why you should not disturb this place, and what may happen if you do."
but i have seen death’s clever enormous voice which hides in a fragility
(also titled "Life in the Shadow of Midgar") in an unlit room, the attempt to focus upon the machined eyes of my lover
Both birds are yellow but the louder one is yellower
Extract ideas whose compelling force is identical with that of hunger.
The swear jar isn’t empty. Full of flowers instead of coins
you feel compelled to keep moving into a darkness so complete that your reflection becomes visible on the screen, and it is as if the figures in the image were journeying inside you, delving into your flesh
The pass is short and to the right. It is sucked into the exhaust of the rocket and completely incinerated.
Surprising love can happen at any part of one’s life, like the pixels deciding when to flicker into bursts.
I, too, hope to die into structure but must I spend my whole life doing it?
The soft uncertainties are gathering round the smell of blood.
And anyway it’s the same old story – a few people just trying, one way or another, to survive.
Memory’s images, once they are fixed in words, are erased.
Returning sunlight enters the dark woods; again shining on the green moss, above.
The distant light of no new star marked me home.
He could have left us his Golem; he should have. What did he fear?
The tiger. He destroyed his cage. Yes. YES. The tiger is out.
Howling at a concrete moon
I wanted the past to go away, I wanted to leave it, like another country
Cross my heart and hope to die
Take away the narrative, as you might lift the roof off a church, in order to remember what you’re worshipping.
With every passing day, the winds might blow stronger
They made themselves shine through the plunder
Gotta get a grip!
All you feel is infinite, knowing all the falls and leaps and sweet and death.
Learn to rely on a future you made in which it gets better
You are reduced to a crawling thing on the margin of a disintegrating world. Nothing will so quickly isolate a man.
And in those days, the Moon shuddered for every spasm of someone that dripped from the eyes of Selene.
Sand is overrated. It’s just tiny little rocks.
Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep, Until the latter fire shall heat the deep; Then once by man and angels to be seen, In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
What then gives us so great a propension to ascribe an identity to these successive perceptions?
This video documents the creation of my essay “Head Transplants and the Non-Existence of the Soul” from the very beginning to the very end.
And besides, this isn’t my sword.
An extended conversation with author and Metal Gear scholar Harper Jay MacIntyre about the lasting impact of Revengeance.
I am happy every time to see real personhood resist our tricks. I am happy to see bodies insist they are not shut up in this book, they are elsewhere.
(also titled "I Can’t Stop Talking about Resident Evil 4 VR") I think it is the music of a new life, pouring over the hills with the subtlety of dawn— a cold dawn, a cruel true dawn.
Oh Mr. Kennedy, you entertain me!
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.
Long Live the New Flesh
People laugh about this, self-soothing engines sputtering through a nosedive. Not me.
Anything can and will travel across screens: violence and trust; empathy, however slight or temporary; connection and disconnection; presence and absence.
Below the thunders of the upper deep, Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea
From one thing, know ten thousand things.
There is no band! Il n'y a pas d'orchestre! This is all a tape-recording. No hay banda! And yet we hear a band.
Some part of you decays while something else feeds from that decay…and you join the chorus. And together you sing the song of growing things.
Please try to enjoy each fact equally, and not show preference for any over the others. That's ten points off.
God, from the machine.
“Give ‘em hell!” (Ichiban Kasuga to his personal orbital laser, Yakuza: Like a Dragon)
Their father could tell the future but he never prophesied that.
(also titled "Wanted: Dead is One of the Strangest Games I've Ever Played") And here is a red balloon. I think of you and let it go.
Time to test out if Vivienne's lasagna really is a heartstopper.
Since you have been condemned to die at dawn, you must yourself attempt to stop the sun.
Reading and reflecting on a paper I wrote in October of 2014, titled “Unusually Common: An Examination of the Failures of Lethal Injection.”
Most scary stories are, of course, meant to be told. They are more scary that way. But how you tell them is important.
What do we find in linking the sapient dream?
In the land of the two-armed mobs, the four-armed man is king.
A recording of a talk and Q&A session I delivered at the Durham Public Library. This recording includes a slideshow not shown at the original talk.
Now you're looking for the secret…but you won't find it.
The darkness is cold because the stars do not believe in each other.
Impressionists excelled at capturing a moment in time. Can we capture the same moment in food?
And physicists rocketed copies of the decree to paradise in case God had anything to say, the silence that followed being taken for consent
"Why" I cannot ask, though I would like to know, the answer has to be simply "because."
Maybe we’ve always suspected; always tried to ignore the whine of zero in our ears…but isn’t it worse, now, knowing?
How is it done? You can write about these things and still not be any the wiser.
A collection of individuals pooling their resources through intertwined roots, sheltering one another from wind and weather and drought.
Jacob Geller and Leo Vader discuss and spoil Alex Garland's 2020 TV show, DEVS.
Investigating the most important question of our time: has anyone else noticed that Arkham Knight has really good graphics?
The truth is seldom welcome, especially at dinner
There are a whole lotta ways to bounce off a peg.
For one hundred years, a legend spread across the planet without ever experiencing periods of oblivion.
Jacob and Annie unpack the 2022 film "Pinocchio: A True Story."
the fist of longing Punches my heart, until it is too dark to see.
Reloading Arms is clinically proven to improve punching effectiveness.
Where there’s a desert, that changes everything, as if earth hadn’t wanted to fill only her own need.
Darkness had no need of aid from them—She was the Universe.
Annie and Jacob discuss the experience of visiting Michael Heizer's sculpture, "City"
Pain destroys one’s world, and, in that silence, torturers impose the myth of the state’s legitimacy.
For now forever, for the first time being forever, while this lasts forever.
All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
I have come to realize the body is its own pyre, that degree rises from within
To grow old is to lose everything. Aging, everybody knows it.
a child carrying flowers walks toward the new year
From before the beginning to after the end: this is how I make a video essay. This is a recorded workshop I originally presented at the Fritt Ord Foundation in Norway.
Jacob and Annie explore the nuances of Louis Sachar's landmark children's book "Holes," as well as its movie adaptation.
Jacob and Annie explore the nuances of Louis Sachar's landmark children's book "Holes," as well as its movie adaptation.
Jacob is joined by Clair Obscur superfans Iron Pineapple, Eurothug4000, and Razbuten to discuss the mechanics, lore, and implications of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. FULL SPOILERS!
Jacob and Annie take on another baking challenge! This time: Molly Baz's recipe for a strawberry praline "triflemisu".
An adventure into the rocky world of defective physical media. Full spoilers for Sunshine!
Perhaps the heap of bodies clangs a bell, reminds me of love; a closeness gone missing.
Running down my 10 most played games on Steam, followed by a list of fun asterisks!
You say I took the name in vain; I don’t even know the name. But if I did, well, really, what’s it to you?
"Every kid in the world wants to dig a great big hole," said X-Ray. "To China, right?"
I'm going to stand here, growing colder, until every inch of my skin is numb. I can't cross over. Then you really will be gone.
No, never judgment. Just the abyss into which all acts are thrown down, and the terrible white silence in which judgment either endures or burns
About the only thing I thought I knew was that nothing I’d ever know would do any good.
I shake the gates, I howl, I twist and break them open at last. Their fear has fed me, and I am warm despite the lack of sun
The passions that we fought with and subdued never quite die.
Jacob is joined by Razbuten and Brendon Bigley to sing Silksong's praises. Spoilers throughout!!
Jacob's favorite movies, books, TV shows, podcasts, and hell, even some gam- OH MY GOD I FORGOT TO TALK ABOUT THE REHEARSAL
But the wind blew through me like I was a hologram. If you say I am a mystic, then fine: I’m a mystic. The trees are not trees, anyway.
“And that,” he said, pointing to the last building on the island, “that’s the other synagogue. I wouldn’t go there if you paid me.”