Consider a story like Ghibli's Spirited Away. Chihiro is thrown into a supernatural world dominated by cruelty and injustice, but she doesn't defeat it by hoarding magical power-ups until she's strong enough to punch Yubaba in the face. She wins because she's brave and clever and empathic enough to make friends and...

Tiki is an attitude – a way of engaging with the world – that I think is important for understanding early DnD. And that attitude is seriously unserious – it takes elements that it knows are ridiculous and accepts them as authentic; true-in-the-moment. It holds consequences lightly and laughs at its own pratfalls....

It’s not that our attention has been weaponized, a word that vanishes in hyperbole, but rather, mechanized. As in: Our attentions have been wrest from our control, like a flock of android starlings, or a million IP enabled toasters. We were reasonably autonomous things. Now we’re indifferently synchronous, easily...

Look at the waning bright side snuffed out. Cornered. Closed by corkscrew shades held tight. Now blue suits tend to trend toward the dark, unliked by search light sunflowers. But once in the inside night shadows fade into the dimmed hopes that hold the why. Maybe there they find relief from the unseen walls now...

I can make more than you just like that. SNAP Those fingers and the eye poke sound of sharp denial, and memory. Where’s that ornate? opportunity and lost love, forthright. Withdrawn. Elementary was what you concluded, while swirling birds opened lids.