He's still being dragged down into an incredibly deep hole with the new Fire Emblem, enough to wonder how some of the math could possibly math in this way. He sounds like me when I got heavily - heavily - into Dynasty Tactics, which I was horrified to learn is twenty-four years old. Fire Emblem is about type-matching and abilities, which is already drugs; Dynasty Tactics is largely about creating a favorable battlefield by positioning your units so that, like striking a match, you attack once and it triggers additional attacks from the rest of your army. I don't know that I've ever had to think that hard in a game since. They made a second one, but I didn't like it as well. That could be due to the fact that it wasn't as good, maybe, but who knows. It's also possible that the exertions of arranging and then triggering ten discrete units on a two-dimensional plane so that they all perform in a harmonious sequence is only something you can feel once.

Thanks for the Birthday wishes guys I appreciate it! Gabe’s Birthday being a worldwide phenomenon is one of my favorite running gags in the strip. 

Strips about "The Christmas In September" go back, yea, unto the site's very founding. This was during a time where "sites" were a thing, luckily we came to our right minds and converted the frontier into a series of corporate intranets. Dodged a bullet, there. But! There are several more strips in that vein, and there are two strips in particular that have the visual cues to help you understand the rich lore he has been embroidering the holiday with. I should tell you that he and I never once discussed a single stitch of this stuff. I'll just get a strip outta nowhere and he's got a fez and there's a fish for some reason.

One of the weirder things about algorithmic media is that I will receive apology videos from people I've never even heard of simply because it's media that has been engaged with beyond a certain threshold. It's a genre; they seem real sad. I thought Bungie's new video was going to be another entry in this Al-Qaeda Hostage genre, but at least I know what this one is about. Bungie's corporate leadership sold them up the river, made impossible promises, and then actual human beings had to try to spin that candy floss into real products, all while getting chopped up like a boosted Audi. A lot of people mourned Destiny, as they were essentially told to by the company itself. But now it's back! Kinda. Maybe?

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave has Mr. Gribbz by the shortest and curliest hairs he's got. You know it's fucked up when he feels compelled to make a whole post about something, as he abhors the written word. But when a game gets him to stop skipping cutscenes, a phenomenon whose rarity would allow me to count it on one hand, that's when you know you're dealing with some all-time shit. I don't think he's a casual-t, but he's way too invested in the story to miss something because of a bad roll.

Sometimes I bounce right off of a Fire Emblem game, and sometimes they get their hooks in me. On paper I should not be into Fortune’s Weave with all its social dynamics and heavy story bits but I somehow managed to play long enough to discover a gameplay loop that has me completely obsessed. 

God damn, Mork drew his ass off on this shit. I was just typing that he seemed to have a sparkle in his voice as I told him about World of Warcraft Forever, but he just called to write the strip and he was already installing it. Soooo…