Publisher and Editor of The Ugly Monster and Getting Into Chess. News junkie. Analog game addict. Music lover. Sci-fi devotee. Night owl. Godless heathen. Anti-conservative. Societal disaster.
If you want to write about media on The Ugly Monster, read this: https://medium.com/theuglymonster/how-to-write-for-the-ugly-monster-89f273d3c586
If you want to write about chess on Getting Into Chess, read this: https://medium.com/getting-into-chess/how-to-write-for-getting-into-chess-7315d3f04a73
Things I Know To Be True
Ellen Ripley is a criminally underrated sci-fi hero.
Guillermo del Toro shouldn't have dropped out of Pacific Rim 2. “AI;DR” should be the Word of the Year.
Star Wars was always political.
Star Trek was always "woke".
Bernie would have beat Trump and none of this shit would have happened.
Tron: Uprising should have gotten a second season.
Dungeons & Dragons is not fun. At all.
Eberron is too good for D&D.
Mia Goth should play someone - anyone - in Henry Cavil's Warhammer 40K project.
Transformers One was neoliberal propaganda, and Orion should have let Megatron execute Sentinel.
Henry Rollins was right about America. It's not a place. It's a video game you try to survive.
Kat Abughazaleh was robbed.
It's time to remake Tank Girl.
FOMO is a abusive marketing strategy and should be outlawed.
The TTRPG scene needs fewer original games and more 3rd party material for Spire: The City Must Fall, DIE:RPG, FIST, Lancer, Daggerheart, ICRPG, Mothership. and maybe Triangle Agency.
Beam Saber seriously needs a new edition with better art.
Lancer seriously needs an alternate ruleset.
Judging a TTRPG by its character sheet - and maybe its cheat sheet - is perfectly reasonable.
TTRPGs should be designed and played more like board games.
The West Wing needs a revival in which Toby drags the Democrats to the actual Left.
The Green Party could win the White House if they ran a Satanist nightclub DJ in 2028.
We need way more writing about Shakespeare on Medium.
Star Trek fans who think they're not Socialists are wrong.
The newly combined Alien/Predator IP is setting up MU/TH/UR as the next Big Bad.
Warhammer 40K should either return to the satirical angle of 1st edition/Rogue Trader, or lean more into the horror aspects of the setting.
Chess is a wargame.
Chess is a terrible metaphor for political strategy.
Luthen and Kleya and the central characters in Star Wars.
The ideal Predator (Yautja) loadout is a shield from Prey, a plasma sword from Badlands, and a plasma pistol from AvP 2.
Transmetropolitan and The Nightly News tried to warn us.
The ideal go-to roleplaying games are Eat the Reich, Spectaculars, Cybergeneration 2e, The Mecha Hack, Dragon Slayers, Mazes, Unbound, and Index Card RPG - Master Edition.
Leftists are better in bed.
These are a few of my favorite things
Moya from Farscape.
The "Star Wars Was Always Political" Trilogy: Andor seasons 1 and 2, and Rogue One.
The scene in Empire when General Veers briefs Vader on the Hoth situation and Vader calls Admiral Ozzel "as clumsy as he is stupid", then video-calls him and Force-chokes him.
When the Punisher calls Daredevil "a wall-to-wall asshole" for not being able to make coffee during a black-out in Born Again season 1.
The Stranger butchering half the jedi order in The Acolyte.
The shootout in Heat.
Grant Morrison's New X-Men.
Knightmare Chess.
Battlebots, specifically Witch Doctor, Mammoth, Rusty, and Saw Blaze.
Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine.
Factiods
My current top 10 songs are Depeche Mode's "Wrong", Caro Emerald's "Tangled Up", "Never Fade Away" from the Cyberpunk 2077 soundtrack, DJ Shadow's "Nobody Speak", Taylor Switf's "Vigilante Shit", The Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil", Tricky's "Ponderosa", 8MM's "Black Cat", "Elevate" from Into the Spider-Verse, and Florence + The Machine's "Everybody Scream".
Stuff I Might Eventually Write About
More songs from the Cyberpunk 2077 soundtrack.
Converting Lancer to either Unbound or The Mecha Hack.
Ludomancy, and how it's mostly nonsense.
Taured Poker.
That one scene in Superman when Lex Luthor's imprisoned ex-girlfriend tried to rat out Superman to Lex so he would let her go.
How games are like tiny governments.
