Theres an interesting attempt in Keiron Gillen’s Star Wars comics to recapture this, with characters who are analogs for Sherlock Holmes, Indiana Jones, the X-Men… it doesn’t quite work, because because there’s less resonance in echoing its pulp equals than its precursors.

samuel beckett was born on this day 120 years ago. astonishing to think that if he had survived, and could run 100m in 9.57 seconds, he would be not only the oldest but also the fastest man in the world - together with his nobel prize for literature, an astonishing trifecta

I think this is 1) absolutely true, and 2) something you can only notice if you’ve spent time honing your writing skills and thinking about writing. I definitely find that colleagues aren’t attuned to it: it’s all over corporate comms and industry news websites in a grim way.

My mum didn’t believe in hell! My wife is staunchly pro-lgbt! my grandmother thought priests should be able to marry! This whole discourse is weird. (I’m not Catholic but have always been surrounded by a lot of them.)

Obviously Vance is a terrible person, but I do find the “haha, no real Catholic would disagree with the pope” stuff weird. Every catholic I’ve met disagreed with the church about something. My extremely devout grandmother thought priests should be allowed to marry! My mum didn’t believe in hell!

When I was a child my parents wouldn’t let us visit because they thought waxworks museums were a stupid idea. As an adult, I’d be too embarrassed to visit, but it still holds this mystique of something Secret and Forbidden that was denied to me. (See also: Cadburys World)

For me, The Twentieth Century (2019). A very funny and very horrible fever dream of a film.

And I think anyone who has ever hung around in a local music scene knows that “making really good music“ is not a sufficient condition for national success, regardless of genre?

(Admittedly, fake social media posts does seem a grubbier method than several other techniques)

It’s odd - I don‘t know any other artform where people assume that national-level success comes without a marketing team. I like Geese, but it doesn’t seem weird that some professionals somewhere are going to connect bands to someone like me who is receptive to what they’re doing?

I‘m interested in what your perspective on his genuine genius-innovation is (I used to love MBDTF and Yeezus before West’s fascist turn, but I know very little about hip-hop and its history, I just liked those albums’ proggy maximalism)

Father’s Last Escape is probably my favourite ghost story *and* my favourite story about grief

I felt like last week still had half an eye on aping the writing style of the US show, and this week had much more confidence being its own thing.

Though the nursery rhyme recordings my daughter has censors out the “here comes a chopper to chop off your head“ line, which is probably wise but does feel a bit sad.

It is weird listening to the lyrics of nursery rhymes for the first time since I was, like, six, and finding out that so many of them aren’t even hiding that they’re about the fragility of human bodies, economic anxiety, and class warfare

I haven’t seen either show, and if even if I’m going to smash immersion up I might as well do it with my own hinterland, not someone else’s.

The idea of a *whole book* in that mode just feels hideously embarrassing

I can’t even stand pop-culture references in RPGs when they’re brief and disguised in-jokes. There‘s a good Vaesen adventure with characters who are joke references to Supernatural, theres a Fraggle Rock myth in mythic Bastionland…

The sinister temptations of the Mothership Month backerkit survey coming round and listing all the zines you didn't back last time as potential add-ons...

If nothing else #over/under was a hell of a marketing exercise.

Backer number 129 here - any particularly good mystery solutions come up during playtesting?

Yeah, engagement patterns is the big one - being permanently engaged in an O/U-a-like would prob destroy me, and I wasn’t even one of the super-engaged people!

There’s also discoverability. O/U had the backing of a big company. But Cataphracts servers have lots of reasons not to advertise.

In terms of Big Innovation Shifts, my guess is that seven-part-pact is going to lead to more boardgame/rpg hybrids, and it feels like we still haven’t seen the post-Over/Under wave of large-scale discord games that still feels inevitable.

No idea what I'll do with this but god it'll be fun when the consequences come back to bite them. I love this game.

So he offers *a favour he is owed by the sinister eminence grise of one of the realm's major cities*. So now the knight's memory is rewritten, and one of my villainous NPCs is indebted to *a sentient cave from outside time and space*.

In today's session: two knights owe a debt to an Eldritch Being. The rules text: "he accepts anything of value, and tries to kill those who won't pay". The first knight offers up a treasure he's carrying. Fine: the eldritch being accepts. But the second knight isn't carrying anything valuable...

This is completely right. 'How do these fun made-up stories fit in with each other?' - sorry, that is the question of a particularly dull child. Have fun with it!

Not a slight on the comics! I just think he’s a fantastic critic and writer about craft, and the way he writes Comics has never quite clicked with me.

From the Gillen I’ve read, I’ve always enjoyed the critical notes more then the comics (and my favourite form of Gillen was the videogames reviews he wrote in the 90s early 2000s)

Certainly for me, the appeal is less about the quality of sketches, which can be good or bad, and more on watching performers who you’ve got to know over previous episodes Put On A Show, muppet-style. And the live performance adds a manic difficulty, which increases that enjoyment.

Me and my crew love Barry Lyndon.

We go see it in costume. Every slow zoom out, we cheer. Every slow zoom in, we boo.

When Colonel Bulow rewards Barry, we throw Friedrich d'ors at the screen.

When Barry attacks Bullingdon, we start fist fighting in the theater.

Then we shoot each other.

Woman at the window of a bare, clean house. Who is outside? Child, ghost, spirit? Friendly, frightening? You say. By Jacob Vrel, whose day is today.

George Saunders?