Writing about depression isn't like dancing about architecture, as the saying goes; it's more like dancing about dancing inside a hologram derived from Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater. Two people being depressed have as much in common as any other two people. We've spoken on a semi-regular basis about this creature, hunched in the corner, sussurating its observations. Gabriel and I entertain devils, but they aren't the same devils. The devils don't even like each other. Even our coping strategies for this shit are antisocial.

- THING ONE -

Or, by Saturday, because that's when the deadline is. Submit them here. Or here! Those links are actually the same link.

So, so much going on. Okay. Let's start.

There's so much that you could say about "the time magazine cover," and there is a cottage industry dedicated entirely to this purpose, gripping it firmly and rasping it on a rasper. I've seen like one paragraph of the article, and a couple of the images, because it doesn't exist and isn't important. It's a Wild West facade; there is no Saloon here. If I tried to find the real article, I think it would just be a picture of Joel Stein with a sheepish downward gaze, hands in his pockets, saying "Aw, shucks" while wearing whatever the facial equivalent of a smiley emoticon is.

Uh, I didn't think I would be writing this post, but something fucking insane is happening on that Kickstarter and we can barely keep up with it.

14 hours to go.

We just crested 400k and change, so thank you very much. 69 hours left, and the next goal is a backer exclusive Behind the Scenes Featurette. What say you? I'd like to see that, too.

When I was a child, my mother told me that woolly mammoths weren't real, and that the devil - or God, I can't remember - had placed tusks and dinosaur bones or whatever to test the faithful. So now that people are making dice from these things, I don't know if my mom was wrong, or if Satan is just very committed to the joke.

We just handed the Club PA exclusive strip for August over to Robert - it's a comic about the enthusiastic, possibly unrelenting fanservice of Ernest Cline's Armada. Gabriel thought Tycho's face in panel 3 was pretty bonkers and he may be right:

Van dropped off the full script for the Automata Kickstarter a couple weeks ago, and when I was downstairs with him a little while ago carving through the first rewrite, I thought, "I should put all the big stuff into one post for people who might be interested. So yes! Here you go:

Removing Peter Dinklage and using Nolan North going forward in Destiny is something I can't readily find an analogue for. It's the sort of thing hundreds of developers would do, if they could; a do-over. What I say in the strip is true, though: I will miss the original in a weird way. The structure of Destiny means that you go back through content all the time, and its success is in creating a kind of mantra out of its gameplay. When Gabe and I are in a mission, we say the lines along with him, or we respond to him like it's a conversation - it's Rocky Horror Picture Show in space, with guns.

I have a card in the new Hearthstone expansion The Grand Tournament, and it just got announced today. Check out the Master Jouster!

Applications for the Penny Arcade Scholarship are now open! Each year Penny Arcade recognizes one student with great potential to impact the game industry in some capacity with a $10,000 academic scholarship. Applicants come from many walks of life and disciplines, but they share the same passion for games and the games community. There are a few requirements:

Dabe did it up, I handled some Clocktalk for the arm, and you can see it on the official Kickstarter page. It's pretty fuckin' rad. Only six days left to go on this thing!

I think I already talked about it, but then, I've been talking to you here for the better part of twenty years; I've already mentioned a lot of things. Having been to Australia a couple times, the time difference seems bad but in practice it's so fucking bad that it only ends up being a couple hours. Scotland is not like that. It just puts you in exactly the wrong part of Pacific Standard Time and now you're fucked.