In Media Res
I just turned forty years old. It feels like the set-up for a joke. Let's talk about it.
Engaging With Art Every Day: Vol 1
I decided to engage with a piece of art every day. Here's what came of it.
This Game Does (Not) Exist
On the philosophy of fake video games and learning to speak again through art.
Even More Stories Living Rent-free in My Head
Looking back at 2025 through the lens of art, if only to make sense of it for myself.
The Daughters of Frankenstein
What do we owe ourselves? What do we owe our art?
Living in Public and Other Modern Agonies
On growing up online and being an adult in an age of horrors.
Constructed Realities Part II
Or: Angela Orosco is Babygirl
Constructed Realities Part I
Or: Monika and Maria Did Nothing Wrong
Some Strange Things You Should Watch for Halloween
20 short weird, scary, funny, and surreal films you can watch right now.
Barbed Wire, Sharp Teeth, and David Lynch's Rabbits
When I was twenty-four, maybe twenty-five, I was standing in the shower and washing my hair one day. This would have been 2010 or 2011. I don't remember...
Three Books About Destroying a Body
UFO Mushroom Invasion by Shirakawa Marina In the final pages of Shirakawa Marina's 1976 manga UFO Mushroom Invasion, humanity's domination of the natural...
Androids Dreaming at the Bottom of the World
Pinocchio and The Fairy With Turquoise Hair Then there appeared at the door a beautiful Baby with blue hair and a white face, like a waxen image, with her...
Finding God in Miami and Other Stories
I had a religious experience once. Well, I guess that's kind of overselling it. It wasn't in a church or a temple because I don't really believe in that sort...
Tomie Kawakami and Her Cordycep Children
Gender, identity, and personhood in Tomie.
Some Strange Things You Can Watch Right Now
I've been trying to be better about watching short films. You could call that my resolution for 2025, I guess, one of four or five vague pacts made quietly...
The Boy Was Never Really There
There's a scene from this movie that kind of lives rent-free in my brain. A boy, fair and slim, wanders the rainy street at night. The city breathes around...
Three More Stories Living Rent-free in My Head
I find myself thinking a lot about perception. Maybe that sounds too abstract. Too big to tackle. Too complicated a thing to unpack in a few words. All of...
Here Are Some Video Essays I Love
It's important to understand that I watch a lot of YouTube. I mean, a lot of YouTube. I watch YouTube videos the way other people watch television. I watch...
I think you should quit
I think you should quit. I do. Quit writing the book. Quit drawing and cartooning. Quit painting. Quit designing. There's dignity in quitting while you're...
This Is (Not) A Ghost Story
I don't put much stock in dreams. When it comes to things like that, I'm kind of an agnostic. There are things that have happened in my life that feel like...
We Wander the Newmaker Plane
I talk about the uneasy nostalgia of 90s games and internet horror that still unsettles me today. Also, I finally talk about Petscop.
I Grieve in Stereo
It's time to talk about Galerians Ash.
Where We Go When We Go
The middle of the year snuck up on me in a way that I didn't expect. That's on me. One moment, it was March and I was just beginning to warm up after a...
We Have to Talk About Jotaro Kujo
An essay on Jotaro Kujo, his aesthetics, his story, how he changes over time, and how it impacts me.
Fires Burning All the Time
When you move through life with an undiagnosed, untreated panic disorder, you curate a rather nasty collection of fears. Some of them were rather vague, like...
I Buried My Love at Toluca Lake
I'm going to make two very normal statements that the non-gamer contingent of my subscribers may not understand. Rest assured, they are very normal. Widely...
Three Stories Living Rent-free in My Head
There is a single panel of Junji Ito's manga Tomie that continues to haunt me. It isn't particularly memorable among the series’ chapters, no more eerie than...
Let It Be Unnamed
Time moves in one direction, memory another. We are that strange species that constructs artifacts intended to counter the natural flow of forgetting.William...
This Story Is (Not) Yours
The sun sets so early in December November 2023 marks a full decade since my first book came out. That's strange to think about. I don't really believe in...
We Happy Sisyphus
"Already at that time [2001], I began to think that if I didn't develop Evangelion as content, there would be no future for anime. If that's the case, I...
This Is (Not) A Dollhouse
When I was eleven, I once stood in the KB Toys store located at the Outlets at Hillsboro in Hillsboro, Texas, and saw the most beautiful doll in the world....
Drowning in Halcyon
Galerians concept artwork by Shou Tajima There is a boy waking in a hospital, a girl hiding in a hotel, and a goddess reigning from her tower. These are...
The Obligatory Writer Newsletter
Through numerous deliberate acts of self-sabotage over the last decade that I have been writing and publishing, I have not nor have I ever been known for my...
The Last Book in The Library of Babel
The library will endure; it is the universe The first time I read The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges, I was in my sun-warmed hostel in San Diego,...
Homecomings and Nevergoings
Stop, 'Cause You're Killing Me Sometime in 2021, I think, my youngest brother, who I have since been fighting with, made a post on his now deleted Instagram....
Navigating the Fearful Romantique
An important thing you need to know about me is that I love love stories, but I don't think I like romances. Or rather, I don't think that romances like me....
Thieves in the Temple
AI is here and, as someone who does stuff on the internet for a living, it's annoying me on a daily basis. The content scraping revolution has taken my...
Jet Black New Year
It's 2023. We meet again. Or perhaps we're meeting for the first time. It depends on when you got here, I guess. I wanted to start this year off with...
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and the Generosity of Storytelling
All six JoJos celebrating the tenth anniversary of the David Production anime adaptation. Left to right: Jolyne Cujoh, Giorno Giovanna, Josuke Higashikata,...
An Empire State of Mind
Let’s Hear it for New York People write about Twitter like they write about New York City. That's what I hear, anyway. Warm, poetic contemplation on what the...
My Year in the Swedish House Mafia
Give Me a Taste of Spotify Pie I don't usually put a lot of stock in Spotify related…things. Yet if I see some new trendy app or widget or doodad that will...
On Wearing Our Influences
Notes on Synthesis I frequently joke about writing thinly veiled fanfiction. It's kind of a funny thing to say about creative influences when you wear them...
Stories, Like Houses, Grow
An essay about Neon Genesis Evangelion. An essay about you. An essay about me.
Have you ever inspired someone?
So, I really like Prince. That isn't controversial to say about one of the most innovative and influential artists of the 20th (and if you were keeping up,...
Futurepast Summer 2022
It’s now over the halfway mark of 2022 and into the depths of summer. Well, the kind of summers we have now, I suppose. Summers have always been both my...
Becoming Unmarketable & Other Writing Philosophies
It looks like it's time to talk again. How's tricks? How's your life? Is that shirt new? For this month's newsletter, I decided to step back from media...
Made with Human Hands: The Rebuild of Evangelion
Part 1.0: A human work ”Eva" is a story that repeats. It is a story where the main character witnesses many horrors with his own eyes, but still tries to...
Orville Peck, Bronco, and Where We Find Connection
Orville Peck by Julia Johnson. I bought Orville Peck's debut album Pony in 2019, where it has remained the only CD in my car to this very day in 2022....
I’ll See You at the Seance
Talking About Talking About Art Hello, hi, it’s good to see you again. I hope February is treating you well. I have returned to shamelessly plug myself...
Notes on Monstrosity #6
Notes on TV: Goodbye, All of Hannibal Lecter As of writing this, it’s November 2021, and I’ve had a complex relationship with the American psychological...