The Sneak Attack
I’ve been thinking about the role that humor plays in a narrative. We often regard humor as an end in and of itself, something that adds entertainment – who doesn’t like to laugh? This approach is natural and worthwhile, but…
Category Essays
Fallout
I’ve been playing and replaying old Fallout games – there may be some kind of tenuous connection between that and the release of Fallout 4, but mostly I just finally got around to playing through New Vegas and that whetted…
Difficulties
It’s not that I don’t have things to write about. I do. And it’s not that I can’t think of the words to say what I want to say. I can. It’s that the thread connecting one idea to the…
Things That Do Things
Over the past few days, I’ve been thinking about my animation system. I’ll get into the decisions made regarding that tomorrow, but I want to get into the process I used for making those decisions, and what it means to…
The Last Lie You Ever Tell Yourself
This is a horror story. I missed my chance. It was Halloween a couple of weeks ago. But, you know, this isn’t the right kind of horror story for Halloween. Halloween is a time for the not-quite-scary, the weird and…
Talking Simulators
The problem with dialogue system components in RPGs tends to be that they’re components in RPGs. I’ve been playing Fallout: New Vegas: This game, like the earlier Fallout games, is premised on making important dialogue choices which can have a…
Gaming The System
Over time I’ve started moderating my consumption of media the same way one might moderate their consumption of food or of drugs – by closely monitoring how I feel and react afterwards, what the short and long term effects are,…
Calibrations
There’s two ways to make art. One way is to believe that you have something unique and special to contribute to the world, that something that you can create is worthwhile in some grander sense: The other is to not…
On Why I’m Not Writing About The Beginner’s Guide
So I’ve come to a decision to not write about The Beginner’s Guide, and I think this decision requires some explanation. Obviously, yes, by stating that I’m not writing about it, and then by explaining that statement, I am writing…
Simulations
I’ve recently seen people complaining about the (admittedly trite) fiction writer statement about how a character’s behavior can come seemingly out of nowhere, like they’re coming to life and acting out a will of their own, completely taking the writer…