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Showing posts from May, 2025

Vim Part 3: The Stone is Sharp

Happy Friday! For those of you to whom reality provides an insufficient amount of psychedelic, grave-robbing shenanigans amongst the rusting hulks and inhuman powers of the fallen future, I have another slice of Vim! ...Poor Grit the Quill is out of the snake-siege and into even greater insanities. If you'd like to start the narrative of our brain-damaged-eunuch-scribe-turned-tomb-raider/something-less-than-reliable-narrator from the beginning, you can find the first two chapters here: ( Read Part One here. ) ( Read Part Two here. ) And now, without further ado, Part 3! PREPARE YOURSELVES FOR WEIRD. The stone is sharp. They bring the infants up by helix steps to cast them down upon its point, and in that fall they read the fate and future. Such was my dream that I dreamt as we lay below the moon-glowing mirk and waited to be killed. The old wound hurts greater than the new. These are not my thoughts. They were germs on...

What if Disneyland were staffed by animals? A completely deranged pile of insomniac scribblings from a slow and sleepless Saturday.

Thanks to an unexpected bout of insomnia last night, I am currently operating with approximately 3.5 hours of sleep. I also have 39 pages of rambling, incoherent, hand scrawled notes for something called The Cleverest Beast , which apparently felt very compelling in the wee hours of the morning. I have transcribed those notes here because, you know, why not? Without further ado, I give you the deranged ramblings of the Hyde-esque antimatter alter ego who apparently takes control of my faculties once I cross the insomnia event horizon: Here beginneth the account of Zombie James According to an interesting article sent to me by a friend, Franz Kafka believed that insomnia (from which he suffered most of his life, in case you couldn't tell from his million yard stare and/or the fact that everything he wrote was a waking nightmare) was a great artistic tool. I don't know how much I wish to base my life on Kafka's (for one, I'd like ...

A Curiosity at the Establishment of Madame Z______________

I've got another bit of madness for you! For some reason, I've been in kind of a swordfish mood lately… (Is this what being trapped in an artistic rut* feels like?) *On the plus side, my swordfish-themed-cover-art-skills seem to be improving. Anyways, this one's definitely a rough draft, so if there's anything that feels like it ought to be cut, just say so! Without further ado... At 3:37 PM, Thursday, 37 years ago, the stuffed swordfish over the mantle piece began to weep. The tears were black, slightly viscous, and described by those present as smelling strongly of sandalwood and turpentine. When the tears had not abated by 4:42, but had instead begun to pool on the hearth in what threatened to be a permanently-staining manner, Madame Z_____________ sent for the priest (the local gendarmerie and Madame Z_____________'s lawyer having already been summoned but failing to arrive in a timely manner.) The priest...

More unhinged narrative design: What if RPG stats measured weaknesses instead of strengths? Part Two – Turn those boring old stats into snazzy new anti-stats!

See Part One here! Time to break some more table tops! (and also my face...) Note: If the following diatribe here is a little confusing, it’s probably because of the probable microconcussion that I probably gave myself this morning when I walked straight into the corner of the bathroom wall as I tried to grope my way blindly to the toilet at 4:23 a.m. (I still haven't cleaned up all of the blood.) Side note: if my most noticeable facial scar comes from trying to pee, I'm going to be very put out. Anyways, on to being terrible and cursed and wretched! Last time I talked about this super janky little “Dark Souls style cursed kingdoms of the wretched and undead” minimalist RPG system that I threw together for Garbage Fountain, and I promised the 1.25* of you who actually read the post that I was going to upload rules next time, and behold, next time is here. *We lost .25 due to tariffs. So, without further ado (or cranial trauma) here’s how you ...